https://youtu.be/IerteSOfbZ8?si=ZZU5i0tmzxGKbgj-
Below is a unified, flowing summary that incorporates all the points you listed and aligns them with Rushdie’s themes in the 2012 session.
1. Origins, Ethics, and the Role of Religion
The discussion opens with the fundamental human questions: Where do we come from? and What should we do? Rushdie emphasizes that ethics precede religion, not the other way around. Humans developed moral frameworks long before organized religion attempted to codify them.
Origin stories, he notes, are often culturally powerful but not literally true—they offer meaning, identity, and beauty, but they should not be mistaken for factual accounts.
Echoing Christopher Hitchens’ views, the session touches on how religious texts provide comfort and wisdom for many, yet their value diminishes when they are used prescriptively to control how others live. Rushdie himself says he has no notion of the sacred in the traditional religious sense; instead, he sees ethics as something individuals must work out for themselves: “My morals I work out for me.”
2. Religion as One System — Not the System
Religion is described as just one method of codifying right and wrong — not the exclusive authority. Societies have developed many systems of ethics, philosophy, and civic culture that function independently of religious doctrine.
This view reinforces Rushdie’s long‑standing insistence that freedom of thought requires accepting diversity in moral and philosophical approaches.
3. On Censorship, Banning Books, and the Satanic Verses Reaction
Rushdie’s reflections on censorship are sharp and grounded in experience. He observes that:
Banning books only makes them more glamorous.
Suppression draws attention; visibility deflates mystique.
“If you bring things out into the open,” he says, “you can simply dust them away.”
People who burn or ban books are usually the ones who haven’t read them.
He highlights the irony that outrage often comes from those least informed.
Reading is voluntary.
“Nobody is forcing anyone to read anyone.”
People should read what resonates with them — literature is a landscape wide enough for everyone.
He also mentions how Shame, an earlier novel, was awarded a prize in Iran — a contrast to the Satanic Verses backlash — showing how shifts in political climate create inconsistent moral reactions.
4. Gender, Autonomy, and Symbolism
Your note about the burqa touches on Rushdie’s comments about how cultural symbols can be interpreted differently across contexts. He refers to a kind of betrayal felt when women in the West voluntarily wear symbols that, for many women elsewhere, are markers of coercion or lack of choice.
He points to the complexity of identity, agency, and how symbols carry very different meanings depending on a woman’s freedom (or lack thereof) to choose them.
5. Free Speech vs. Threatened Environments
Rushdie draws a clear distinction between:
Freedom of expression, which must be upheld,
and the atmosphere of threat, which tries to shape or silence expression.
He stresses that disagreement is normal — even healthy. But how we respond to disagreement is what defines a society’s maturity.
As you noted: “Our views can be different, but how we respond is what matters.”
Threats, intimidation, or violence in response to speech are not expressions of belief but attempts at control.
6. Human Reactions, Power, and the ‘Megalomaniac’ Response
Your mention of a “megalomaniac reaction” refers to Rushdie’s critique of disproportionate responses to The Satanic Verses, particularly from political and religious leaders seeking to weaponize outrage for influence.
He points out that while his earlier book Shame was celebrated, The Satanic Verses triggered extreme reactions — showing how political motives, not purely religious sentiment, shape what becomes offensive.
Bringing It All Together
The integrated discussion presents a worldview that is:
- Ethical before religious
- Deeply committed to free speech
- Suspicious of censorship and authoritarianism
- Supportive of individual reasoning over imposed morality
- Aware of how cultural symbols can wound or liberate
- Clear that disagreement is normal but threats are not
- Sad that Dan Brown is the single most depressing in the modern literature.
Production of art is the confidence. There should not be a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
Russia needed an enemy to produce that kind of literature as they do. In China it will not be published. There are brilliant artist, but they can work within the limits given by the Government.
I am a very obstinate person. When someone is trying to supress me, I become firmer. Best work on a artist, is when they become better irrespective of the voices around them.
Continue writing as it had not happened. Be stub-born enough. Literature as a vocation. There are enough books in the world already. We will not be able to read the books available in the world. Add something better to it.
We need to have a slightly thicker skin. It looks to be fashionable to be offended. Dan Brown, I would defend his right to live.
If offended is the line you draw on sand, then you can never cross that. Someone or the other will always be offended. You have to deal with it. It is the price you pay for your own freedom. The defense of freedom of speech begins when people say what you can stand, if you feel that should not be said, you are sensor.
When does one know literature is their calling? A strong motivation, it's a kind of work for which you have to be a self-starter. The reason you write, is you are unable to avoid writing it. It is a question of looking inside and see if you have the motivation or not. Dedication and devotion to the art. Internal motivation. If not be an accountant.
Real prize of literature is that you have created something that last, and people will continue to read it in the present and future. Desire to right could be for instant gratification. 'Green Hat' by Michele Hant, sold like anything, but not available now.
Freedom of decent, decent of freedom. There is no fineness and accuracy in oppression. There is no such thing as almost free. You are either free or not free. The limitations on freedom do exist. Who guards the guards? Principle must be liberty.
Favorite novels, what day of the week it is. I don't read the books I write. The book's that are banned are the ones that win prizes.
Alice in wonderland, because that is the child the author knew. When you publish your book, you either get away with it, or you don't get away with it.
Any way past it is to go through it, it is a way of dealing with it. It is taking ownership and taking charge.
You sit alone in a room, and hope what your produce will be valuable to people, that requires optimism.
William Faulkner - small place, but lifetime of writing. Salman Rushdie have been in three countries, and studies History. So, whatever he wrote, he tends to add history to it.
I can't show anyone any unfinished work. 1981 Booker Prize. Graduated from Cambridge in 1968. Determination.
When a writer enters the family, the family is screwed.
What Rushdie actually stands for per that video was: Free speech, even when it offends, Speaking up rather than staying silent, the necessity of debate, argument, and expression in a democratic society.
Rushdie has long argued that freedom of expression requires the freedom to offend, otherwise it ceases to exist. He urges people not to suppress ideas, warning that silenced ideas often gain power in the dark, and that it is better to confront them openly through argument.
I agree with you..but per Rushdee there is either full freedom and nothing in between. Not sure which, but he says he has written about it in one of his books.
His words more or less were "Freedom of decent, decent of freedom. There is no fineness and accuracy in oppression. There is no such thing as almost free. You are either free or not free. The limitations on freedom do exist. Who guards the guards? Principle must be liberty."
Interestingly one of his sentence was, "You show me the line, and I would like to cross it".
I am a very obstinate person. When someone is trying to supress me, I become firmer. Best work on a artist, is when they become better irrespective of the voices around them.
Continue writing as it had not happened. Be stub-born enough.
“Better to speak and be wrong than to stay silent and never think at all.”
"Freedom of speech? Without the freedom to offend, it doesn't exist"
- Salman Rushdie ❤️
I agree 100% with him. Freedom of expression is absolute, or it doesn't exist.
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