The Arts, Creativity and the Common Good

Novelist Salman Rushdie is best known as the author of Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses. The latter novel, deemed sacrilegious by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni, brought him under a fatwa in 1989. Forced to live in exile, Rushdie produced some of his most compelling work including The Moor’s Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath her Feet. A recent book, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002, explores both personal and public reactions to the fatwa. Mr. Rushdie was born in Bombay and graduated from King’s College, Cambridge, in England. In his writings, Rushdie draws on his unique upbringing and personal history to comment on modern life. He has received numerous awards, including the Booker Prize for Midnight's Children, the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, the Writers' Guild Award, the James Tait Black Prize, the Aristeion Prize for Literature, Britian and Germany’s Author of the Year Prizes, and the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger. In 2004, Rushdie was elected President of PEN American Centre, a branch of the world’s oldest human rights organization. Rushdie's newest novel, Shalimar the Clown, is scheduled for release this fall. Mr. Rushdie’s writings and work are testimony to the power of the artist in society.



Salman Rushdie, The Times of London, August 11, 2005
"Muslims unite! A new Reformation will bring your faith into the modern era."

"The deeper alienations that lead to terrorism may have their roots in these young men's objections to events in Iraq or elsewhere, but the closed communities of some traditional Western Muslims are places in which young men's alienations can easily deepen. What is needed is a move beyond tradition -- nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air.