'Muslims fear female sexuality'
2006-01-19 14:40
Berlin - British author Salman Rushdie said the West had failed to grasp the extent to which Islamic extremism was rooted in men's fear of women's sexuality.
Rushdie told German weekly magazine Stern that his latest novel, Shalimar the Clown, dealt with the deep anxiety felt among many Islamic men about female sexual freedom and lost honour.
When asked if the book drew a link between "Islamic terror and damaged male honour", Rushdie said he saw it as a crucial, and often overlooked, point.
"The Western-Christian world view deals with the issues of guilt and salvation, a concept that is completely unimportant in the East because there is no original sin and no saviour," he said.
"Instead, great importance is given to 'honour'. I consider that to be problematic. But of course it is underestimated how many Islamists consciously or unconsciously attempt to restore lost honour."
When asked why he probed the issues in his new novel in the context of a love triangle, he said: "It has a lot to do with sexual fear of women."
Rushdie, 58, said that much of the anger toward the West was provoked by that split on sexual issues.
"(It is) because Western societies do not veil their women. Because they do not defuse this potential danger," he said.
The Indian-born Rushdie, who lives in New York with his fourth wife Padma Lakshmi, told Stern that he has lived without security protection for seven or eight years.
"I go where I please," he said. "I went to India often in the last few years, which I enjoyed."
Rushdie was forced into hiding after the late Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious edict, in 1989, calling for his execution because of alleged blasphemy and apostasy in his novel The Satanic Verses.
The author had a $2.8 bounty placed on his head by a Tehran-based foundation.