Salman Rushdie
To put it as simply as possible:
I am not a Muslim.[...]
I do not accept the charge of apostacy, because I have never in my adult life affirmed any belief, and what one has not affirmed one can not be said to have apostasized from. The Islam I know states clearly that 'there can be no coercion in matters of religion'. The many Muslims I respect would be horrified by the idea that they belong to their faith purely by virtue of birth, and that a person who freely chose not to be a Muslim could therefore be put to death. [Salman Rushdie, In Good Faith, 1990]
God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith. [...]and afterwards, to prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down. [...]
From that day to this I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person. [Salman Rushdie, In God We Trust, 1985]
I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in. [Salman Rushdie, on David Frost show]
I don't think there is a need for an entity like God in my life. [Salman Rushdie, interview with David Frost)]
If I were asked for a one-sentence soundbite on religion, I would say I was against it. [Salman Rushdie, to Reuters News Service, 4/17/96]
Score. :lamo
eace