In an interview with NBC's TODAY, Rushdie called the anti-Islamic film that sparked widespread unrest "disgraceful."
"I think clearly the video was a flashpoint," Rushdie told Matt Lauer. "From what I can see it was an outrageous, disgraceful little malevolent thing, but by now I think that the reaction we’re seeing is really the release of a much larger outrage. We sort of live in an age of outrage, and people seem to be defining themselves by their outrage and seem to feel that it justifies itself."
While he sees some connection between the current protests in the Middle East over and his own experience running from a fatwa, or religious edict, he doesn't feel sorry for the creator of the film.
"He did it on purpose," Rushdie said. The filmmaker "set out to create a response, and he got in spades."
Rushdie joins us a guest tonight on The Last Word at 10pm ET in an exclusive interview.
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I just loved Lawrence's line about Bill O' Reiley's next book "How to Lose a Presidential Election". LMAO!!!! I love Lawrence O' Donnell! What a brilliant man!
Religious extremists are all looking for an excuse to make noise. We have more of them right here in the good old USA than you can shake a cross at, equally as cruel and violent as what we see here today, they are better known as the KKK. The US government has brought much of this on us by supporting israel even when they have been the cause of the violence and wars. Israel is very much like an unruly child that needs to be punished for their misbehaving, we need to spank them, take their toys away from them and make them sit in the corner for a couple hours. They seem to having difficulty playing with others as well, maybe they need an attitude adjustment. Like Mr Rushdie said, israel promoted and funded this production just to get a response such as we see today. By the way his book Satanic Verses can be applied to the bible and the torah as well. Deism is a wonderful thing.
Is Matt Lauer really as stupid as he appeared to be or was he just pretending thaat he didn't know the difference between a provocateur and an honest novelist? Mr. Rushdie had to tell him 3 times that he hadn't much sympathy for the movie maker because he made the movie to provoke outrage and that is what he got.
I think the thing we are all missing is that people living in Islamic countries run by dictators have all been taught to "hate America" for years without knowing what America actually is.
The only thing that has changed is that these countries now have some form of democracy.
Education and opinion have not changed.
We won't "win" until education happens.
The deposed dictators were the only people standing in the way of anarchy and the US needs to be responsible enough to own that.
Isn't it amazing just how many of the moderate Muslim peoples, especially their professionals, are leaving their societies to live and work and prosper in the relgiously and free speech tolerant Westen Democracies? All you need to know, folks!