Well-known writer Salman Rushdie Monday said that a
harsher version of Islam was spreading with the help of Saudi Arabia's oil
money.
"What has developed now
is a harsher Islam partly because of the spread of
Wahhabi ideas, with the help of colossal amount of Saudi oil money, partly
because of the rise of the Ayatollahs and Shia Islam," Rushdie said in an
interview to CNN-IBN news channel.
Religious activists
in several countries across the world recently indulged in violence against a
film depicting Prophet Muhammad in
a negative light.
But, Rushdie said
attacks against free speech in India too were worrying.
Rushdie has
recently published his long awaited memoir 'Joseph Anton', based on his nine
years of living under an Iranian religious decree (fatwa).
"All you have
to do is look at the attacks on Ramanujam's essay on the 300 Ramayanas which
was removed from the Delhi University syllabus,
the attack on Rohinton Mistry's novel which was immediately removed from the
Bombay University syllabus, and the attack on cartoonist Aseem Trivedi for his
perfectly okay cartoons," he said.
According to the
writer, Indian leaders were lampooned in cartoons after freedom but never
attempted to suppress them.
Stating that Hindu
intolerance was just as bad as Islamic intolerance,
Rushdie wondered, "It is that majoritarian intolerance. For instance, M.F.
Husain being attacked for painting Saraswati unclothed, well I haven't seen
pictures of Saraswati clothed, where are they, who paints them?" asked
Rushdie.
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