How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. The story is told through the life of Saleem Sinai, born at the. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them. Salman Rushdie’s second novel, about modern India’s coming-of-age, received the Booker Prize, and became an international success. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. In his world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. But what are we for? What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the preceding list - yes, even the short skirts and the dancing - are worth dying for? Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of people: um, I'm against that. At the age of fourteen, Rushdie was sent to Rugby School in England where he excelled in his studies. His paternal grandfather was an Urdu poet, and his father a Cambridge educated businessman.

I would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we are against is a no brainer. Rushdie was born in 1947 to a middle-class Moslem family in the great city of Bombay, India.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for but by what we are against. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. “The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings.

Shalimar rushdie