The Blasphemy we all need - Ross Dauthat quotes Christopher Hitchens in his article today It’s safe to say that the late Christopher Hitchens had a more positive view of blasphemy than the one I’ve sketched above, and a more capacious view of the situations in which it’s worth praising and defending. But on this point I’m in complete agreement with these words of his, from a 2006 column that’s made the rounds today: When Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988, he did so in the hope of forwarding a discussion that was already opening in the Muslim world, between extreme Quranic literalists and those who hoped that the text could be interpreted. We know what his own reward was, and we sometimes forget that the fatwa was directed not just against him but against “all those involved in its publication,” which led to the murder of the book’s Japanese translator and the near-deaths of another translator and one publisher. I went on Crossfire at one point, to debate some spokesman for outraged faith, and said that we on our side would happily debate the propriety of using holy writ for literary and artistic purposes. But that we would not exchange a word until the person on the other side of the podium had put away his gun. Read it here: mobile.nytimes/blogs/douthat/2015/01/07/the-blasphemy-we-need/?_r=0&referrer= #JeSuisCharlie
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 15:16:23 +0000
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