Love, Hate and Destruction

Today is St Valentine's Day with all its connotations of love. How sad, then, that it is also the anniversary of the fatwah on Salman Rushdie. I have never read the Satanic Verses but I understand that the passages found so offensive were actually part of a nightmare experienced by one of the characters so could equally be interpreted as being anathema to that character and by extension to the author.

But once the battle lines are drawn so clearly they become more than lines in the sand and cannot be brushed away or washed away as the tides do to our castles on the beach.

But even those things we so cherish that we must see them as indestructible will fall, one day, to the elements. And in doing so they will support new life. The question for us is do we want that new life to include mankind, for surely the way we are going right now suggests the world would be better without us.