Nothing Is Sacred, Thank God

Readers of The Running Mule have often discerned a biased and admiring bent towards the rabble rousing of Christopher Hitchens. For reasons more than just the fact that he smokes in the shower, I find his dialectic and demeanor engaging but then I drink lot. What you probably don't know is that one my favorite books is The Satanic Verses. I received a copy for X-Mas 1988 after traveling for some months in the Middle East and was been blown away by Salman Rushdie's mastery of language. It reminded me of my father's favorite tale of power run amok, Bulgakov's The Master and the Margarita and made me curious about Islam in a positive way. I even began reading the Koran. But just then the Ayatollah Khomeini issued the fatwa that commanded the world's Muslims to kill Rushdie for the blasphemous crime of having written The Satanic Verses. I was dumbfounded. Khomeini must be crazy and I thought, 'fuck him,' no one will go along with this medieval hypocrisy. But now I see (more clearly) that I must have been the one who was crazy. Crazy to believe people were free of the fear organized religion preys upon. What an asshole I am. Haha.

Anyway, I was overjoyed to see Hitchens had written of Rushdie in the most recent Vanity Fair. It reinvigorated my affinity for his work but also reminded me of the horrible loss the world has suffered because of this islamic demagoguery. Please read Assassins of the Mind. It's got all the markings of a best seller: perverse religiosity, murdered innocents, armies of zombies at the ready, state-sponsored terrorism and a very real threat to cultural freedom of expression. I am gonna dig out a copy of The Satantic Verses tuck it under my arm a parade up and down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn cuz blasphemy can go to goddamn hell.