Saleem Sinai Saleem Sinai Saleem Sinai is the protagonist of the Booker Prize-winning novel "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie. His life is closely intertwined with the events that take place in his homeland of pre- and post-colonial India, and newly created Pakistan and Bangladesh (East Bengal). He is born at the moment in time when India and Pakistan emerge from British rule and lives during the new tumultuous struggles that engulf the new nations following 15 August 1947. Sinai embodies these physical struggles and rifts during, and serves as a metaphor for, the spiritual, religious, political and intellectual traumas of the young
Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie of a well-known British national trait ... dry humour on my part." Robertson: You don't think that this man deserves to die? Y. Islam: Who, Salman Rushdie? Robertson: Yes. Y. Islam: Yes, yes. Robertson: And do you have a duty to be his executioner? Y. Islam: Uh, no, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act – perhaps, yes. [Some minutes later, Robertson on the subject of a protest where an effigy of the author is to be burned] Robertson: Would you