Being Rahul Dahiya

I have to share this letter which Salman Rushdie wrote to a Chief Rabbi who denounced Rushdie's book 'The Satanic Verses'. ------------------------------------------------------- Dear Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, I have visited at least one college in which young Jewish men were being taught, rigorously and judiciously, the principles and practices of judicious and rigorous thought. Theirs were some of the most impressive and honed young minds I have ever encountered and I know they would understand the danger and impropriety of making false moral equivalences. It is a shame that a man they might look to as a leader has become neglectful of the proper process of the mind. “Both Mr. Rushdie and the Ayatollah have abused freedom of speech,” you say. Thus a novel which, love it or hate it, is in the opinion of at least a few critics and judges a serious work of art is equated with a naked call for murder. This ought to be denounced as a self-evidently ridiculous r...