If Salman Rushdie were a character in one of his own ornate epics, his rise to international notoriety as the target of a fatwa would be portrayed as his destiny. The events of Rushdie's life are allegory for the unavoidable world-historical collision between rootless cosmopolitanism and theocratic absolutism, between civilization (with its values of secularism, skepticism, and relativism) and the gathering forces of a new medievalism. His... More >>>