Rushdie says the Arab Spring offers crucial lessons

From H S Rao
London, Jun 26 (PTI) The revolutions sweeping the Arab
world trash the myth that people living in the Islamic world
have different needs, believes controversial Indian-origin
author Salman Rushdie, who calls it an important lesson to be
learnt from the Arab Spring.
Rushdie said the spirit behind the Arab uprisings was
not religious, but guided by the basic needs of freedom and
choice.
"It's an old-fashioned revolution: It's about jobs and
freedom. What it shows is that people everywhere want the
same thing. The idea that Islamic culture is different, that
Islamic people want different things -- garbage.
The fact that there was hardly anything religious
about the uprisings is a lesson to be learnt from the Arab
Spring, he told The Times.
"Everybody wants the same thing: to be free, to choose
their own futures, to feel that there is a future. This is
universal," he said.
He was also critical of what he called "the cultural
relativist mistake" of the UK, regarding tolerance of
religious extremism.
"The mistake is to think that this is their culture
and you've got to let them have it; at the lunatic fringes you
get people like George Galloway, and a tolerance for what
ought to be intolerable.
"But the problem is the mainstream acceptance of his
relativist argument; and I think that's dangerous," he said.