Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say. In the West, some "friends" turned against me, calling me by yet another set of insulting names. Now I was spineless, pathetic, debased; I had betrayed myself, my Cause; above all, I had betrayed them.
I also found myself up against the granite, heartless certainties of Actually Existing Islam, by which I mean the political and priestly power structure that presently dominates and stifles Muslim societies. Actually Existing Islam has failed to create a free society anywhere on Earth, and it wasn't about to let me, of all people, argue in favor of one.


Address at Columbia University (1991)

Salman Rushdie Quotes

Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say. In the West, some friends turned against me, ...

Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say. In the West, some friends turned against me, ...

Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say. In the West, some friends turned against me, ...

Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say. In the West, some friends turned against me, ...