Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 19
Rushdie: Haunted By His Unholy Ghosts 19 The hatred for Islam by the West is all too plain and all too clear to see. Only the world does not wish to observe and turns a blind eye to the hell being presented right in front of them. For some reason the Christian nations of the West display a vam- pirish concupiscence for the blood of Islam - the blood of no other faith or religion seems as satiating to them as that of Islam. There seems to be no fear of other world religions like Buddhism or Hinduism. Is it because Islam does not enjoy the aura of transfig- uring distance and exotic magic that surrounds the image of these Indian religions in the mind of the general public? Professor Josef van Ess, a German historian, expresses his views on this subject of the hatred for Islam in Hans Kung’s Christianity and the World Religions : ‘Interest in Islam goes way back. . . . . The things one hears or reads in the media about Islam, like the things intellectuals generally have to say about it are alarming. Alarming in a double sense: first, because of the bias and prejudices that these judgements betray, and second because of the demonising accent with which they are rendered. Nobody is afraid of Buddhism or Hinduism; vis-ê-vis Islam, however, fear is the normal attitude. . . In this sort of climate, stereotypes flourish; the desire for information is all too quickly satisfied by generalisations and hasty conclusions. . . . anti-Islamic cliches lie deep in the sub- conscious and often meet with unanimous approval, for example in newspaper cartoons. This is because Islam doesn’t form part of our cultural heritage. . . . Teachers were and still are hardly prepared to handle the subject. ’ (Kung, Christianity and the World Religions pp. 5-6). Hans Kung, in the same book, expresses a similar fear : ‘Over the course of history, Islam has often been a disturbing, threatening, alarming reality for Christendom; and in fact for most Christians it still remains almost two thousand years after Christ and fourteen hundred years after