Humanism and Anti-Humanism: Homage to Salman Rushdie.

This essay looks at the problems raised by the persecution of Salman Rushdie, author of Satanic Verses. When Imam Khomeini called for the defenders of true faith to execute Rushdie by whatever means, informed observers thought that the imam found himself in a difficult situation vis-à-vis his Sunni opponents and seized an occasion to trump their intransigent attitude and to affirm his own authority over Islam. By this event alone, it has had the virtue of bringing out a maleficent pole of religious universalism and of reawakening somewhat those who are nodding off into the cult of relativism.