• For many people, I've ceased to be a human being. I've become an issue, a bother, an "affair".... And has it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it?

    Salman Rushdie: For many people, I've ceased to be a human being. I've become an issue, a bother, an "affair".... And has it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it?
    "Excerpts From Rushdie's Address: 1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Metaphor'". Address at Columbia University, www.nytimes.com. December 12, 1991.
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