Salman Rushdie's Is Nothing Sacred?

Salman Rushdie is defending literature as both sacred and necessary, which I completely agree with. I've heard of Rushdie before this class, because of his controversial writing conflict with Iran. Rushdie is an atheist, coming from a Muslim society, where there is a bounty on his head for his writing of The Satanic Verses. At first I was puzzled as to why an atheist would think literature was sacred, but the way he describes his theories, makes me believe an atheist can have a religion where they worship other things than God, such as literature. Clearly Rushdie stands up for his beliefs in a way that would make most of us quiet, for fear of our lives. I think if he is taking such risks, we should think about what he says.

I understand when he describes literature as his "first love," since I've loved to reading and writing since I was very young. Rushdie describes how he feels about non-readers, saying "it has always been a shock to meet people for whom books simply do not matter and people who are scornful of the act of reading, let alone writing." It seems like people either love literature or don't have time for it, because they would rather be outside and active, because they believe reading is boring. I've always been puzzled as to why people don't want to read, but figure it's just their loss. Rushdie seems to take the same opinion, saying, "I have been obliged to accept" that people don't value books.

Rushdie states that this essay is to "restate what is most precious about the art of literature- to answer the attack, not by an attack, but by a declaration of love." He implies he will not attack people for their lack of reading or their faith in God, saying he will not be an attacker or as extreme as "true believers." He describes forceful "true believers" as being like the extremists who have tried to force him into believing in their religion in his home country and are trying to punish him for his non-beliefs, by trying to assassinate him. He is very accepting of non-readers and faithful people, saying, "Love need not be blind. Faith must, ultimately, be a leap in the dark." He is simply letting us know what he thinks and letting us make up our minds about it, hoping we will agree with him based on the facts he lays out, like other writers do when they publish their works.

Rushdie also describes literatures as a sanctuary, saying it is "the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear the voices taking about everything in every possible way." I believe literature is also a safe place, we can live in, without having societal backlash. To read literature, we must have an open mind and lots of questions. The writings are supposed to make us think and reflect on what we can do to change ourselves in a way we would want to.

I thought his references to Herbert Read's theories of the monkey tribes in Japan, where one tribes washes the bananas and one doesn't. For the past couple of weeks, I have been studying monkeys and chimpanzees' similarities to humans for my Biological Anthropology class, and there is only a 2% difference in our DNA and several similarities in our cultures and how we interact with each other. In our society, people are like the monkeys, with one tribe as readers and the other non-readers.