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 m… - Salman Rushdie

الحقيقة مسألة نسبية، لذا بقدر ما تنأى عن الماضي، يبدو لك هذا الماضي محسوسًا ومعقولًا أكثر، وبقدر ما تقترب من الحاضر، يبدو لك أبعد وأبعد عن المعقولية

Children going to school, a congregation in a synagogue, shoppers in a supermarket, a man on the stage of an amphitheater are all, so to speak, inhabiting a stable picture of the world. A school is a place of education. A synagogue is a place of worship. A supermarket is a place to shop. A stage is a performance space. That’s the frame in which they see themselves. Violence smashes that picture. Suddenly they don’t know the rules — what to say, how to behave, what choices to make. They no longer know the shape of things. Reality dissolves and is replaced by the incomprehensible

I determined to make my peace with Islam, even at the cost of my pride. Those who were surprised and displeased by what I did perhaps failed to see that ... I wanted to make peace between the warring halves of the world, which were also the warring halves of my soul... . The really important conversations I had in this period were with myself.
I said: Salman, you must send a message loud enough to ... make ordinary Muslims see that you aren't their enemy, and you must make the West understand a little more of the complexity of Muslim culture ..., and start thinking a little less stereotypically... . And I said to myself: Admit it, Salman, the Story of Islam has a deeper meaning for you than any of the other grand narratives. Of course you're no mystic, mister... . No supernaturalism, no literalist orthodoxies ... for you. But Islam doesn't have to mean blind faith. It can mean what it always meant in your family, a culture, a civilization, as open-minded as your grandfather was, as delightedly disputatious as your father was. ... Don't let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying word, I urged myself; remember when it meant family. ... I reminded myself that I had always argued that it was necessary to develop the nascent concept of the "secular Muslim," who, like the secular Jew, affirmed his membership of the culture while being separate from the theology... . But, Salman, I told myself, you can't argue from outside the debating chamber. You've got to cross the threshold, go inside the room, and then fight for your humanized, historicized, secularized way of being a Muslim.