Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Bush helped Islamic terror: Rushdie

The Bush administration helps the cause of Islamic terrorism by failing to engage in serious dialogue with the international community, author Salman Rushdie said on Tuesday. Rushdie -- infamous for living for years under threat of death after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1989 pronouncement that his novel The Satanic Verses was blasphemous -- said he believes US isolationism has turned not just its enemies against America, but its allies too. "What I think plays into Islamic terrorism is ... the curious ability of the current administration to unite people against it," Rushdie told Reuters in an interview. Rushdie said he found it striking how the "colossal sympathy" the world felt for the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been squandered so quickly. The novelist, born in India and raised in Britain, attributed the shift in sentiment toward the United States to the Bush administration's "unilateralist policies" and its "unwillingness to engage with the rest of the world in a serious way." "This go-it-alone attitude gets people's backs up," he said of President George W. Bush's foreign policy.

4 Comments:

At April 13, 2005 2:57 PM, Blogger chaoticsynapticactivity said...

Not like Rushdie didn't try out the go it alone startegy, only to find out it made him a lot of enemies, and got him a death threat from a soverign nation. Sounds pretty much like the history surrounding President Bush's actions.

Does this mean he'll retract the "Satanic Verses" story and have all copies destroyed world-wide, so he can reach out to those who disagree?

 
At April 13, 2005 10:09 PM, Blogger Final Historian said...

Having met Rushdie, he is a nice guy and means well, but isn't an expert in geo-political affairs.

 
At April 13, 2005 11:52 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Squandered sympathy", what a joke. The left-wing newspapers in Europe were fairly beside themselves with smug joy after 9-11. I was there at the website of one of the most prominent lefty European newspapers, only a day or two after 9-11 -- I saw it all.

 
At April 14, 2005 12:04 PM, Blogger Runnymede1215 said...

It's dissapointing to read such mainstream cliché-statements from Rushdie.


He seems to subscribe to the popular opinion that it's the victims of terror who are guilty of provoking the aggressors, and are required to appease the islamists, hoping that this will make them possible to live with. ("Give the "Palestinians" what they want and all our problems will go away!!")



That's just absurd, the islamists are always looking for, and will always find some reason to attack the non-muslim world, if they think themselves capable of winning in the long run.


Their Jihad is obligatory, and guarantees them their place in paradise.


The US should continue to "go-it-alone", and expect no help or support from European or other countries.


The only moral thing to do is to stand up to the aggressors, the fact that the majority of nations would disagree doesn't change this. You are not right just because you are on the majority side.


Swedish anti-islamist discussion forum, FOMI, and my blog Islamkritik

 

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