freedom of expression ? the story to read . by rushdie himself

Even as the Iranian fatwa is enhanced  and freedom of expression comes under attack all over the world , here is the story to read. By Rushdie himself.


The book took more than four years to write. Afterward, when people tried to reduce it to an “insult,” he wanted to reply, “I can insult people a lot faster than that.” But it did not strike his opponents as strange that a serious writer should spend a tenth of his life creating something as crude as an insult. This was because they refused to see him as a serious writer. In order to attack him and his work, they had to paint him as a bad person, an apostate traitor, an unscrupulous seeker of fame and wealth, an opportunist who “attacked Islam” for his own personal gain. This was what was meant by the much repeated phrase “He did it on purpose.” Well, of course he had done it on purpose. How could one write a quarter of a million words by accident? The problem, as Bill Clinton might have said, was what one meant by “it.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/17/120917fa_fact_rushdie?printable=true&currentPage=all