In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Interpretation
The quote criticizes religion as a source of conflict and calls for an honest examination of its impact on society.
Salman Rushdie's quote reflects a strong condemnation of the role of religion in perpetuating violence and injustice in the world. He argues that while society often discusses religion with a veneer of 'respect,' this narrative fails to address the real harm and crimes committed in its name. Rather than allowing religion to be a protective cloak for wrongdoing, Rushdie urges a more candid conversation about its influence, suggesting that innocence cannot shield individuals from accountability in the face of religiously motivated acts of violence.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in global conflicts, one might use this quote to challenge the status quo.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
Good advice is rarer than rubies.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.
During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream.
War is never a lasting solution for any problem.
Christian worship is the most momentous, most urgent, most glorious action that can take place in human life.
The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.
To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with.
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