{"id":5515,"date":"2008-11-11T22:05:59","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T03:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=5515"},"modified":"2008-11-11T20:10:50","modified_gmt":"2008-11-12T01:10:50","slug":"rushdie_on_reli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/11\/rushdie_on_reli\/","title":{"rendered":"Rushdie on Religion and the Imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Wednesday night, I had the chance to sit in on a fascinating conversation on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Religion and the Imagination\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with Salman Rushdie. The author of Midnight\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Children [soon to be adapted for film by Deepa Mehta<\/a>], The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, <\/em>and East, West<\/em> was, of course, the perfect person to launch Columbia University\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s newly founded Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life<\/a>. The Institute\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mission is to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bring together scholars and students in various fields to reflect and respond to the issues brought about by the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153resurgence of religion and, with it, religious and cultural intolerance and conflict [that] are emerging as powerful forces in the new century.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \"Rushdie2.jpg\"<\/p>\n\n

Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Literature, introduced Rushdie as someone who has been \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fighting religious intolerance with humor, proving that we can fight moral seriousness with humor.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

The stage in Columbia’s always inspiring (and very crowded) Low Library Rotunda was set simply with two arm chairs–one for Rushdie, who was was all suited up, and the other for his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153interviewer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gauri Viswanathan, Professor of Religion and Comparative Literature, dressed as always, in a sari. The conversation was an intellectual one peppered with doses of Rushdie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s subtle (and sometimes pointed) humor and the topics of conversation ranged from everything to his relationship with religion and his hopes for robust religious debate to his thoughts on Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s win earlier that week<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t live in a world of drama, dance, and love… We live in a world of death, destruction, and bombs… I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hoping something happened on Tuesday that will change that,” Rushdie said, referring to the election of Barack Obama. “I have no utopian tendencies. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m good at seeing what I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like. But this week, I do feel optimistic,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rushdie laughed. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an odd feeling, one I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not familiar with. The last time I felt like this was after the election of Tony Blair and look what happened!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rushdie paused as the audience chuckled at his dark skepticism, then added, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 I hope it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that way this time. Actually … I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it is.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

More on the evening\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s highlights below the fold. Professor Viswanathan got the evening started by asking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What does literary imagination add to religious imagination?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153All literature began as sacred literature,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Rushdie. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t words to express some things except religious words, for example, the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsoul<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. I don’t believe in an afterlife or heaven or hell, yet there isn’t a secular word for that feeling that we are not only flesh and blood. Whether you’re religious or not you may find yourself obliged to use language shaped by religion. … As Arthur Koestler wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a ghost in the machine.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

What Rushdie says he has found most useful about religion is its power to create myth, which he does draw inspiration from in his writing. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The amount of complexity pushed into a small story\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is what impresses him, he said, giving an example of how a single myth can be interpreted in so many different ways. This, according to him, is similar to what religions have in common; a single religious text can also be interpreted in myriad ways.<\/p>\n\n

He went on to emphasize that though his books address religion, he is not, however, religious. “I am not interested in devotion. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not interested in writing books other than those that express inter-human devotion, which is temporary.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

Gods, the way he sees it, were invented by human beings to answer the two big questions of life: One, the question of origins: “Where do we come from?” Two, the question of ethics: “”How should we live?”<\/p>\n\n

“I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need religion to answer those questions,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Rushdie, proposing that religion has been wrong on both counts. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Regarding origins, I think you can say [they are all wrong.] The world was not created in six days and God rested on the seventh. It was not created in the churning of a giant pot. Or the sparks unleashed by the udders of a giant cow against the boulders of a a gigantic chasm. And regarding ‘how shall we live,’ I don’t want answers that come from some priest. \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 When religion gets in the driving seat, it becomes an inquisition. I would prefer that the answer to these big questions came from debates. The debate is the thing from which flows the ethical life.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

And, yet, Rushdie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s books have and do take on religion and ethics and the supernatural. How come? How does he square the two?<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Miracles, magic, imagination, they all argue inside me. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t reconcile them,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rushdie laughed. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Creative writing is an implicit argument against pure rationalism. The way an imaginative piece comes to life is mysterious. The bit of me sitting here [in this hall] is rationalistic, but when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m writing books, something weird happens; and the result is what you would call supernaturalism. As a person, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need it. As a writer, I need it to explore the world. That tension, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just there. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just so.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

Later on that evening, Rushdie acknowledged that though he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite explain it, he does believe in the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mystical experience\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153phenomenon called revelation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that St. John the Divine and Joan of Arc experienced. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to put words in his mouth, but it sounded to me like he was hinting that there may be a bit of revelation in the writing process as well.<\/p>\n\n

Given the mission of Columbia’s new Institute, it was natural that the conversation should steer toward questions of conflict and religious extremism. Rushdie lamented the self-destructiveness within religions and praised the creation of Columbia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Institute for its role in promoting healthy debate and discussion on the role of religion in public life. He talked about how his attempt to depict early convulsions of the birth of religion (namely Islam) in Satanic Verses was viewed as heretic.<\/p>\n\n

“There is so much contemporary scholarship about the origins of Islam,” Rushdie said. “If you insist that the text is the uncreated word of God, then the social and economic conditions of the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century are unimportant, because God works on a broader canvas than that. If, however, you are willing to look at the text as an event inside the history of the period, it illuminates the text. And I think it’s a tragedy that it’s not really acceptable to do this inside the tradition.”<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great shame in the world of Islam that so much contemporary scholarship is not permitted because of the divine origin notion,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 because historicizing the text would really open up and illuminate it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

During the course of the evening, Rushdie reminisced somewhat nostalgically about the Islam he knew as a youth. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I grew up in that world where people could still be devout Muslims (like my grandfather who prayed five times a day) and yet, we as children, could make fun of him, asking him why spent more time with his bottom up in the air than not … He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d get cross with us, but also laugh and invite us to debate with him.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

Something I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know before this evening was that Rushdie is not really Salman Rushdie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family name. His father invented it because he was an admirer of the philosopher Ibn-Rushdie.<\/p>\n\n

From the Huffington Post<\/a>, this passage captures (near-verbatim) the points that Rushdie made:<\/p>\n\n

One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush’d, the 12th century Arab philosopher known as Averroes in the West. In his time, he was making the non-literalist case for interpreting the Koran.
\n\nOne argument of his with which I’ve also had sympathy is this: In the Judeo-Christian idea, God created man in his own image and, therefore, they share some characteristics. By contrast, the Koran says God has no human characteristics. It would be demeaning God to say that. We are merely human. He is God.
\n\nIbn Rush’d and others in his time argued that language, too, is a human characteristic. Therefore it is improper – in Koranic terms – to argue that God speaks Arabic or any other language. That God would speak at all would mean he has a mouth and human form. So, Ibn Rush’d said, if God doesn’t use human language, then the writing down of the Koran, as received in the human mind from the Angel Gabriel, is itself an act of interpretation. The original text is itself an act of interpretation. If that is so, then further interpretation of the Koran according to historical context, rather than literally, is quite legitimate.
\n\nIn the 12th century, this argument was defeated. It needs to raised again in the 21st century. <\/blockquote>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mind having another go at that,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rushdie told the audience, aligning himself closely with his 12th century namesake.<\/p>\n\n

During the course of the evening, Rushdie mourned the loss of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153composite culture of Kashmir which used to be neither Muslim nor Hindu\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and where members of both religions would stop by the same roadside altars to pay homage to Sufi saints. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sad to see that gone,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The self-destruction of Muslim culture by other Muslims is a grievous wound.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (One audience member was quick to point out to Rushdie in the Q&A session that followed that Hindus and Muslims in India do both still pay homage to Sufi saints, even in Kashmir.)<\/p>\n\n

Referring to the fatwa placed on him and the perception of his work as anti-Islamic, Rushdie argued, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ideas shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be seen as being antithetical to argument,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d pointing out the argumentative Jesuit tradition as an example. On another occasion, Rushdie has said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153All other major religions have gone through this process of questioning, but remain standing. An Islamic questioning might well undermine the radicals, but it won’t undermine Islam.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Relativism is the dangerous death of liberalism,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rushdie said, calling himself a believer in universalism. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We human beings are more genetically the same than we are not so there are universal rights and culture or religion can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be an excuse to say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Let them kill novelists because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what they do!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The answer to religion is not no religion but finding another way to be with religion,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he proposed, arguing for a world where \u00e2\u20ac\u0153there is no suppression of religion.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

He thus supported his position:<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are language animals and we have to be allowed to use language. This is a universal right. You take language away from human beings and you take humanity away. Similarly, we are dreaming animals who live richly through our imagination. You have to imagine the hyperlink before you can construct the hyperlink. You have to imagine the wheel before you can construct the wheel. What starts as a dream becomes a reality. To tell us there are dreams we can have and we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have is a crime against humanity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/blockquote>\n\n

It was an inspiring and relevant evening, where Rushdie came across at times as an idealist who still dreams of pitching a tent where ideas can be discussed. “Ideas are not permanent so maybe a tent is a good place to discuss ideas,” he said at one point in the evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Wednesday night, I had the chance to sit in on a fascinating conversation on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Religion and the Imagination\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with Salman Rushdie. The author of Midnight\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Children, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, <\/em>and East West<\/em> was, of course, the perfect person to launch Columbia University\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s newly founded Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life<\/a>.<\/p> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5515"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}