This is in reference to Eric Wood’s column, “Remember the anniversary of the Salman Rushdie fatwa” (CT, Mar. 5). I deplore the insensitivity in the inane opinion of Mr. Wood. Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa was self-defeating, since it unfortunately changed the focus of the controversy. The crux of the issue is simply that no decent and cultured person would launch an unwarranted assault on the character of the founder of a great faith in the name of fiction and literature. No amount of fiction or notion of freedom of expression would justify, for example, anybody hurting the feelings of Holocaust victims. I believe that Dan Brown’s example in the column is irrelevant, as Brown did not caricature Jesus Christ, but only the Catholic Church.
I think that Mr. Wood only remembered the unjustified fatwa, but does not recall Rushdie’s false, indecent and hurtful representation of Prophet Muhammad. Instead of Rushdie, let us gauge Muhammad through the words of Mahatma Gandhi in his statement in “Young India” in 1924: ‘’It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own
mission.’’
Syed Ahmad
Graduate electrical engineer