Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa

Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa

January 5, 2009

There's no word on what he played, but Sir Salman Rushdie told UK newspaper The Times that he indulged in some computer games while dodging a fatwa issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini from 1988 until 1998.

Khomeini lodged the death sentence against Rushdie following the publication of his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses. The book was regarded as blasphemous by some segments of the global Islamic community.

GameCulture notes, however, that Rushdie was rather dismissive of games in a 2008 interview with Stephen Colbert:

I think video games, YouTube, you know, these are the things that will change the world. Because when people see what garbage everybody else is consuming, they want it too.

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Comments

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by DarkSaber - January 5, 2009 at 9:25 am -0500

Dismissive of games or not, he's right about YouTube.

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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by Neeneko - January 5, 2009 at 9:27 am -0500

Considering that the bulk of games _are_ garbage and how consumerism works, I'm not sure I disagree with him.

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by DarkSaber - January 5, 2009 at 9:33 am -0500

Yeah. Dismissive? Maybe. Accurate? Definitley.

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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by GoodRobotUs - January 5, 2009 at 9:45 am -0500

Though, in all fairness 'Junk Media' has existed in various forms for centuries in almost every culture, it just that it has the technology to proliferate far faster these days. There are catacombs under Cairo with Heiroglyphic graffiti in it, the original YouTube, as it were.

 

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by Neeneko - January 5, 2009 at 10:19 am -0500

Heh.  Quite true ^_^ The internet has sped up the issue but fundementally chaged nothing.

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by DarkSaber - January 5, 2009 at 11:04 am -0500

Graffiti is nothing to do with youtube. The original youtube would probably have been a public area where people came and acted out shitty scenes from plays while someone sang a pop song from the time across the action, and then other idiots all said 'OMG UR TEH GREETEST' and gave them 5 star ratings despite a complete lack of originality, ability or talent.

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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by Derovius - January 5, 2009 at 12:40 pm -0500

 Egads, people have differing opinions?! Unacceptable.

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by GoodRobotUs - January 5, 2009 at 8:45 pm -0500

You mean like Speakers Corner in London, which has also existed for several centuries?

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by Bennett Beeny - January 5, 2009 at 10:52 am -0500

I wonder what games he played that would cause him to label them all as junk.  There were some bad games out during the 1990s, but some great games too.

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by Derovius - January 5, 2009 at 10:52 am -0500

Let us not forget the internets true gift to humanity: boatloads of (free) smut.

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by thefremen - January 5, 2009 at 11:06 am -0500

 In 1998 he would have been playing Half-Life. Now he probably just sees commercials for GOW2 which look exactly like Die Hard 5.

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by MartyB - January 5, 2009 at 1:00 pm -0500

 Well if he was in hiding for 10 years, and all he can do is play video games to pass the time...

 

Then i'd get sick of it too...  i can play a game 2 weeks and then get sick of it and find other things to do.  and he wasn't a gamer to begin with, he played because he had nothing else to do.

 

you can imagine after 10 years he's sick and tired of it

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by Mr. Stodern - January 5, 2009 at 2:30 pm -0500

Well, considering that for every one great game from '88 to '98, you had a dozen shitty ones, I can't say blame him for the garabage comment.

Then again, he could just be the kind of person who thinks the novel is the end-all be-all of the human experience, and that everything young people are into pales in comparison. I run into waaay too many poeple like that, I'll tell you.

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by digdug - January 5, 2009 at 6:27 pm -0500
I think he meant that as a joke, in part. But he also meant it as being something positive. He's saying American and western culture in general will destroy Islamic fundamentalism. Its our "soft power" that will defeat the terrorists, not our military. They can withstand the assault by our miltary, but they cant last against Disney, Hannah Montana, Hollywood, Grand Theft Auto, etc...
Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by Orange Soda - January 5, 2009 at 7:23 pm -0500

First waterboarding and now Hannah Montana? Doesn't the US have any humane tricks left up its sleeve?

[/bad joke]

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by Lucid - January 5, 2009 at 8:05 pm -0500

Yeah, I'm not sure I disagree or feel particularly put out by that comment either.

And even if he is a 'literary snob' he would have a point. Novels are still well ahead of videogames in terms of having examples of profundity in their works. But I doubt that's what he would be pushing towards. There's garbage in every medium, and I'd imagine he'd feel the same way about a lot of popular fiction.

Re: Author Salman Rushdie Gamed While Dodging Decade-long Fatwa
Submitted by JustChris - January 5, 2009 at 10:09 pm -0500

As Zach de la Rocha said, "The critics rush me like Salman Rushdie".

GameSnooper

GamePolitics ShoutBox

Posted 07/04/09 at 09:24pm
PHX Corp: For those that want to know what i watching it's called man vs cartoon(a.k.a fixing Wile E. coyote's Mistakes one trap at a time by EMERTEC)
Posted 07/04/09 at 08:20pm
GoodRobotUs: Went out for my Mum's 65th Birthday, which is the only relevance 4/7 has in the UK for me ;)
Posted 07/04/09 at 08:18pm
Andrew Eisen: Beach + fireworks + root beer + strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, whipped topping, and pound cake = my Fourth of July!
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:58pm
GoodRobotUs: Which seems to be the only point Jack proved, that some people find some games offensive. i.e. Nothing.
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:57pm
GoodRobotUs: The discussion was supposed to be whether games were dangerous not 'Do you find some games offensive'...
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:55pm
GoodRobotUs: Some agreed, some didn't, but it was their choice to make, not the governments.
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:55pm
GoodRobotUs: By asking the audience their opinion, he more or less proved that it's a matter of personal choice
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:55pm
GoodRobotUs: Meh, he ended proving Mark's point for him
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:26pm
Erik: Jack if you are reading this you are a LIAR. There is no legal weight to the MPAA's ratings.
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:24pm
JDKJ: I still think my buddy the midget who rides a unicycle backwards while juggling four bowling pins would have been a much bigger hit with that crowd. And he can make up statistics and misinterpret studies, too.
Posted 07/04/09 at 06:33pm
Alyric: Of course, Mark falls into the common trap about Columbine, which had nothing to do with bullying, etc. See: http://slate.msn.com/id/2099203/?GT1=3256 for a more thorough explanation.
Posted 07/04/09 at 06:32pm
PHX Corp: Read this http://www.destructoid.com/sgc-09-liveblogging-the-jack-thompson-debate-138502.phtml#ext
Posted 07/04/09 at 05:54pm
PHX Corp: JT is afraid of such ban then advocates it That's what i call a total Hypocrite
Posted 07/04/09 at 05:50pm
PHX Corp: AE: JT is a -Bleeping- Jackass
Posted 07/04/09 at 05:07pm
Andrew Eisen: JT "knew it would be a good audience." Not what he said on Tuesday.
Posted 07/04/09 at 05:01pm
Andrew Eisen: VG cause violent behavior. VG companies influence behavior to get sales. Yeah, that makes sense. (To be fair, the Twitter feed makes deciphering JT's point pretty tough.)
Posted 07/04/09 at 04:52pm
Andrew Eisen: Yes, it's been proposed but as far as I know it has not been passed. Big difference.
Posted 07/04/09 at 04:50pm
Cheater87: http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/formats/xbox360/all-violent-video-games-be-banned-in-germany-$1301757.htm
Posted 07/04/09 at 04:49pm
Andrew Eisen: Far as I know, Germany has not banned all violent video games.
Posted 07/04/09 at 04:44pm
Cheater87: Jack wants the US to follow Germany's total video game ban.
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