I finally got back on the diet & exercise wagon this morning, which means I was up early and watching TV while I put in my twenty minutes on the elliptical. Usually, I watch VH1 (they actually play videos in the morning; who knew?). But this morning the TV was on CSPAN when I clicked it on, so I ended up watching a Book TV episode featuring Salman Rushdie speaking at the Center For Inquiry in NYC. I’ve only read one novel and a few essays by Rushdie, but I have a lot of respect for him. I’ve seen him speak on several talk shows, and he always raises the level of discourse. He personifies a sort of secular, urbane reasonableness and wit that I, in my better moments, aspire to. And his remarks on Islam and the role religion should (or shouldn’t) play in politics are spot on.
I enjoyed the part of his lecture that I caught and wanted to share it with you, but I couldn’t find any video of it yet. I did, though, find a podcast of the lecture over at pointofinquiry.org. The podcast starts off with an interview with Ibn Warraq, who also introduces Rushdie’s lecture. Warraq is the author of Why I am Not a Muslim, which I take to be in the veign of Bertrand Russell’s famous work. I’ve read Russell’s book and recommend it; I haven’t read Warraq’s. In fact, I don’t know anything about Warraq.
The lecture with Rushdie starts 20:45 into the mp3, which is 1:06:57 long (they include his responses to questions at the end, and those were quite good. I’ll try to find those, if they were captured). If anyone with better YouTube/Google Video Kung-Fu than me finds a link to video of this, feel free to post it in the comments, or send me a link and I’ll edit the original post. The lecture itself took place on October 11, 2006. It’s a 23MB mp3, so you need wide pipes or a lot of patience to download it.
And, on a lighter note, I’m sure my fellow bloggers will get a kick out of this new Sonic commercial: