Salman Rushdie in his words: "No one has the right not to be offended. That right does not exist"

Before being a novelist, Salman Rushdie was a historian and academic at Cambridge;

After becoming a novelist, he has gone on to become a writer for the press and a moral essayist.

Although of a different type of morality:

Many of the key figures of his are in his articles and aphorisms.

For example: "faith without doubts is addiction".

WHAT KIND OF IDEA ARE YOU?

(THE SATANIC VERSES)

"What kind of idea are you?

Are you the kind that compromises, agrees, conforms to society, seeks a good position and tries to survive: or are you the type of damned and bestial crossed, intractable and rigid notion that prefers to split

?

That kind of idea that almost inevitably, 99 times out of 100, is crushed but, when it does 100, it changes the world?

THE RIGHT TO OFFEND.

BBC INTERVIEW (2012)

“No one has the right to not be offended.

That right does not exist in any statement you have read.

If someone is offended, it's your problem and nothing happens: many things offend many people.

Now I could walk into a bookstore and point out some books that I find very unattractive in what they say.

If you start reading a book and decide you don't like it, you don't have to finish it.

To read a 600-page novel and then say you've been deeply offended...well, that's trying really hard to be offended."

ABOUT THE SACRED.

LOS ANGELES TIMES (2005)

“The moment we say that any system of ideas is sacred, whether it be a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment we declare that a set of ideas is immune from criticism, satire, mockery or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's government's anti-incitement to religious hatred bill has set out to create that impossibility.

In private it will be said that the law is designed to please 'Muslims'.

But

instead."

LIVE WITHOUT FEAR.

THE GUARDIAN, 2001

Fundamentalists are against (to offer just a short list) political party systems, universal suffrage, responsible governments, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, skirts Short films, dancing, the theory of evolution, sex, men without beards... They are tyrants, not Muslims.

[...] The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing.

In his view of his world, he is absolutely certain of it, while we are sunk in our sybaritic indulgences.

To prove him wrong, we must first believe him.

We must agree on what matters:

.

These will be our weapons.

Not to make war, but to live without fear.

How to defeat terrorism?

Don't be terrified.

Don't let fear rule your life.

Even if you're scared."

THE PURE.

IMAGINARY HOMELANDS (1992)

"Those who opposed the novel most vociferously are today of the opinion that mixing with a different culture inevitably weakens and ruins one's culture.

I am of the opposite opinion.

, the impurity, the mixture, the transformation that arises from new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies and songs.

He rejoices in mestizaje and fears the absolutism of the pure».

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