Salman Rushdie takes on Imran Khan over 'immeasurable hurt'

[nitetrogen70]

haha who cares about what this joker thinks king Khan all the way

 

[SQ8]

I like IK's term for Rushdie..
Extremist.

 

[karan.1970]

Im the Dim comment was a little low one.. Didnt like that One bit..

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

couldnt help but chuckle @ the Qaddadi comparison......lets step back and analyze the situation. There are a lot of people that dislike Rushdie; the guy gets snubbed at literary festivals; the guy needs Scotland Yard to protect his scared, cowardly ***. People spit at his name, his books are banned in some countries.

lets look at Imran Khan. He's the former captain of Pakistan Cricket team (and won the country a world cup title). He had 10 women chasing behind him at any time, trying to get his autograph and a phone number. On just a month's advance notice, he drew a 5-figure crowd in Lahore and Karachi; he's been on almost every imaginable media outlet answering questions and giving interviews. There are people out there that worship him and see him as a hero (even indians)

when was the last time you heard people flocking around Rushdie to give him the time of day, save for bigots who have a similar agenda that he has (which is nothing more than cheap publicity)......

the writing is on the wall.....haters gonna' hate.

Doesnt HAfeez Saeed, a designated terrorist enjoy a haloed status in Pakistan ??

HARDLY!!!!

and what's the relevance?

 

[Vassnti]

If Rushdie calls for tolerance and the right to express his opinion, it doesnt seem fair for him to critisize Imran Khan for expressing his.

 

[khanz]

Imran said I caused immeasurable hurt to Muslims.In real world, immeasurable hurt iscaused by terrorists based in Pakistan who attack countries like India."

Hats off sir, truer words have never before been spoken.

say whatever you want but pakistan will always have the last laugh when it comes to rushdie lol he's just bitter because he was banned from the country and despite his anti-pakistan sentiments ironically his own mother chose to move there and lived in pakistan in her last years and i bet that tore him up inside ! rushdie infact himself admitted she was quite safe there .Thank god she moved to pakistan where she was able to live in peace

 

[anonymus]

Imran Khan a Puny politician​

Nadeem F Paracha

Recently, Pakistani cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan boycotted an annual event in India in which controversial author Salman Rushdie was also invited to attend. As a Pakistani and a Muslim I can entirely understand Khan's stand in this respect, both as a matter of principle as well as a political move.

Rushdie, an accomplished author, faced the wrath of Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini after the publication of his satirical novel, Satanic Verses, in late 1988. There was a lot more to Khomeini's contentious 'fatwa' than the simple case of a sensitive Muslim going haywire about a perceived insult to his and his community's religious sentiments by an agonistic.

Violent Distractions

What gets missed in the recalling of the whole Khomeini vs. Rushdie episode is the fact that the Iranian regime was desperately looking for high-profile distractions that it could offer to its subjects squirming from the economic and political (as well as the psychological) affects of its prlonged war with Iraq.

As the regime's high command became increasingly fidgety, it went into overdrive 'cleansing the society of (the largely perceived) anti-Islam and anti-state' elements.

The fatwa against Rushdie came at a time (1988) when Khomeini unleashed the wrath of the state and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards' against a host of 'enemies' (both in and out of jail). Between the July and December 1988, Khomeini ordered the slaughtering of 4,482 members of leftist political groups and anti-Khomeini outfits who'd been loitering in the cramped jails of Iran. The state-sponsored extra-judicial executions became a worldwide human rights issue when Amnesty International raised the case. Conveniently, Khomeini responded to the criticism with the Rushdie fatwa.

Sudden Reactions

Equally conveniently, most Muslims across the world remember (rather fondly) Khomeini's fatwa, but have forgotten the massacre of the thousands of Iranian dissidents ordered by a vicious regime in Iran. Also missing in their reaction is the fact that Khomeini's fatwa was nothing more than a shrewd political maneuver designed to steal the fire initially set by Amnesty International to the crooked woodworks of the Iranian regime.

Of course, one just cannot expect a man like Imran Khan to even bother considering to look at this particular aspect of history from the lens of a detached political observer. He's a reactionary.

I also seriously doubt he's even read Rushdie's book which, ironically, is one of his weakest works. I read it and disliked it. It just doesn't have the satirical punch and power Rushdie's other books are known for, especially Midnight's Children.

But was I offended by Verses as a Muslim? That was a question for me (and me alone) to answer; I didn't have to be told by a bigoted spiritual leader of a murderous regime about what constitutes blasphemy in my faith and what should be done to those who supposedly commit blasphemy.

Such are the decisions between the individual and whatever God or Gods he or she follows. I am a huge admirer of authors like Charles Darwin, Thomas Pine, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, but does that mean I've become an atheist?

Perhaps if my faith was weak, I would have. And I am convinced people from any faith who end up making such a hue and cry about their religion and then need to exhibit it loudly, their faith is puny and so are they.

Cornered Tiger?

And here is where I would like to put Imran as well. A fantastic sportsman, a passionate philanthropist, but a puny politician and man of faith. For more than 15 years this man has been hogging television screens, mouthing loud big nothings about how terrible Pakistani politicians are and how he has this magic formula to eradicate corruption. A fool fooling the foolish.

I've known a number of staunch and pious Muslims who instead of boycotting their 'enemies' have actually gone on to intellectually confront them in seminars, through TV debates, at conferences.

In fact, a sophisticated hate-monger and Islamic puritan like Zakir Naik has actually turned the above into a highly-lucrative business venture for himself in which he televises 'debates' between him and (an albeit handpicked) motley crue of Hindu, Christian and Jewish fanatics.

Many in Pakistan have been aware of Imran's dilemma of being both a charmingly and refreshingly naive Mr Clean as well as a man riddled with the reactionary drawing room urban middle-class biases that have become such a mainstay of a number of bourgeois men and women of central Punjab in Pakistan.

Imran isn't the first politician brimming with contradictions. But his contradictions are usually of a very blundering kind. And I say this as a frustrated long-time fan. The list of his political, ideological and moral contradictions is long, so let's just concentrate on the one his boycott exhibited.

And The Hypocrisy

This 'cornered tiger' (as his fans like to call him) and this bold 'tsunami' actually chickened out when during a recent interview he gave to a well-known TV anchor, he refused to say that his coming kingdom would tackle men like Hafiz Saeed - a volatile sectarian figure known for his not-very-peaceful thoughts about non-Muslims, Ahmadis and the Shia and the Barelvi Sunni sects.

The reason given was that 'in Pakistan it is not safe to take the name of certain very angry men and organisations'. So, it's okay to lambast and insult men like Zardari, Nawaz and Rushdie who may be offending, but are not killers, but not wise to take the names of men who actually bite back? How brave.

Once hailed as a super-duper hero in places like India and the West as the 'right kind of Pakistani leader', it is only now that these countries are discovering what a number of Pakistanis have always known: Khan, as a politician and an ideologue, is a charade. A good man gone wrong in his politics and moralistic dispositions. A man who is disastrously mixing up his Chomsky with Maududi.

(The writer is a Karachi-based columnist for Dawn. This article is exclusive to ET.)


Who's afraid of Salman Rushdie? Imran Khan a punny politician? - Economic Times

 

[EjazR]

One of the mos respected newspapers in India, Indian Express editorializes how the Rushdie event was not one of his best.

Salman Rushdie's satanic Versus - Indian Express
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Continuing his tirade, he went on to quip: “Imran is afraid of facing my bouncers. Imran knew that he would share the stage with me." It was quite unnecessary and a bit crass and boorish and it certainly took away from the essence of his speech -- creative freedom and liberty. More so when he made fun of Imran's playboy lifestyle and the many women in his life, conveniently forgetting that he himself has been married four times and is currently divorced and often seen in the company of well known or attractive women. For a man of his undoubted literary talents and intellectual ability, it was probably his least inspiring moment. More so, considering that seated in the front row were two of Imran Khan's closest friends in India, Parmeshwar and Adi Godrej. It was a satanic side of Rushdie that few had seen before, and would not like to in future.

 

[Xeeshan]

Dear All,

Please follow the link below to hear what Imran himself has to say about Rushdie.

This video covers everything. From Freedom of Speech to Hafiz Saeed, the Pakistani extremists and Indian concerns...the despise-Rushdie sentiment and why is that so...

The Buck Stops Here: Imran Khan on NDTV about Salman Rushdie (March 21, 2012) > Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf > Insaf Videos

I would like all self-proclaimed spokes-persons of Rushdie, on this forum, to reply to the arguments made by Khan in NDTV's program.