Salman Rushdie

There is an interview with author, Salman Rushdie, in the August/September issue of Reason magazine, which is now available online. Readers of a cedrtain age will remember Rushdie as the author of The Satanic Verses, which earned him a death sentence from Iran's nutbag and Jimmy Carter nemisis, Ayatollah Komeini. Since the dear Ayatollah went on to his just reward without lifting the death fatwa, it remains in effect today. Here's the intro to the Rushdie interview:

Reason: The Iconoclast: Salman Rushdie discusses free speech, fundamentalism, America's place in the world, and his new essay collection: "Salman Rushdie is a political novelist whose political and novelistic instincts have long been in tension with each other. From age 15 he was drawn to the Marxist left, an attraction that eventually led him to the jungles of Nicaragua as a guest of the Sandinista regime. The result was 1987's The Jaguar Smile, which issued an overly optimistic account of Nicaragua's future under its socialist rulers. The book made Rushdie a darling of the left and a pariah among conservatives."

We almost skipped this article when reading the print edition this summer, but we were curious about how living in hiding had affected his views. He turned out to have a lot of interesting things to say. We wouldn't say he's become a libertarian or thoroughly embraced the virtues of capitalism. However, he has certainly acquired a reality-based view of the true nature of radical Islam.

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