Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 63
Rushdie: Haunted By His Unholy Ghosts 63 It would seem now, that since the unprecedented spread of Islam, especially into Europe, it has made the Christians sit up and take notice of Islam’s very real threat to their plans of world domi- nance; and now being the Muslims’ turn to preach that Islam is the one and only true light to the right path, the ball is very much in Islam’s court. To control this ‘problem’, as it certainly had become one for the Christian nations, they pushed forward even more forcibly this idea of an emerging united world culture with the observation that all religions show that they are all doing more or less the same thing anyway, with similar aims! Therefore, this way of thinking would leave no room for the adherents of any faith to consider itself to be superior to that of another. It was almost, on the part of the Christian nations, like an act of abject surrender. Even Watt in his book, Muhammad at Medina, makes this very interesting and noteworthy observation: ‘The world is becoming increasingly one world, and in this one world there is a tendency towards unification and uniformity. Because of this tendency the day will doubtless come when there will be a set of moral principles which not merely claim universal validity but are actually accepted almost universally throughout the one world. Now Muslims claim that Muhammad is a model of conduct and character for all mankind. In doing so they invite world opinion to pass judgement upon him. Up till now the mat- ter has received scant attention from world opinion, but, because of the strength of Islam, it will eventually have to be given serious consideration. ’ ( p. 333). The truth of the matter is that the character of Muhammad(sa) and the religion of Islam has been receiving a lot of attention, espe- cially in the last century, and that it has been given the most serious of considerations, but all for the wrong reasons !