For many of us the name Salman Rushdie seemed like a voice from the past. A South Asian Indian who moved to England and then to America, Rushdie earned the undying enmity of fundamentalist Muslims for his novel The Satanic Verses published in 1989. We hadn’t heard much about him until a radical extremist stabbed him last Saturday as he was beginning to deliver a lecture.
We hear the word fatwa and think, “That doesn’t happen here – in America.” But the attempts to remove books from library shelves and restrictions on what children and teachers can discuss in a classroom is simply an extension of fatwa mentality that seeks to restrict what people can read.
Fatwa mentality is the idea that we can limit the human mind and imagination, that some questions are too dangerous to ask or try to answer. Attacks on the freedom to think come in many forms and is not limited to one particular religion or another. Attacks are also led by religious persons who fear that they do not have answers to all the questions that might be asked. Faith should be a vehicle for expanding the mind, not shrinking it.
Prayer for the Day
Renew our spirits, O God, and open our minds,
Helping us to be receptive to new questions;
Center our lives in you, O God, for you are the center of all life,
A light of life in a world dark with despair and fear.
Help us to hold fast to understanding and wisdom
So we may share your grace with all whom we meet.
In the name of the One who is the fount of understanding,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet, censored by authorities (1932-2017)
A word to the unwise. Torch every book. Char every page. Burn every word to ash. Ideas are incombustible. And therein lies your real fear.
- Ellen Hopkins, American novelist
How eighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them – they are more than the sand;
I come to the end – I am still with you.
Psalm 39: 17-18