“He looked at the bloodstains drying on the darkened square, evidence here in new York City of the force of a gathering fury on the far side of the world: a group fury, born of long injustice, beside which his own unpredictable temper was a thing of pathetic insignificance, the indulgence, perhaps, of a privileged individual with too much self-interest.”
—Salman Rushdie, in “Fury,” a novel he published a few weeks before 9/11.

“Of course this is ‘about Islam.’ The question is, what exactly does that mean? After all, most religious belief isn’t very theological. Most Muslims are not profound Koranic analysts. For a vast number of ‘believing’ Muslim men, “Islam” stands, in a jumbled, half-examined way, not only for the fear of God — the fear more than the love, one suspects — but also for a cluster of customs, opinions and prejudices that include their dietary practices; the sequestration or near-sequestration of “their” women; the sermons delivered by their mullahs of choice; a loathing of modern society in general, riddled as it is with music, godlessness and sex; and a more particularized loathing (and fear) of the prospect that their own immediate surroundings could be taken over — ‘Westoxicated’ — by the liberal Western-style way of life.

—Salman Rushdie, in a New York Times Op-Ed, Nov. 2, 2001.