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The Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life marked its inauguration Nov. 6 with three public lectures, examining the themes of religion as it relates to art, politics and the imagination.

Who better to discuss the latter—on religion and imagination—than novelist Salman Rushdie, who faced death threats after publishing his 1988 book The Satanic Verses, considered blasphemous by many Muslim communities.

Rushdie, who spoke to a packed audience in Low Rotunda, sat in conversation with Gauri Viswanathan, professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia, and was introduced by Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.

Rushdie talked about the universal quality of language. He said, "We are all a language animal," and "have to use language to define ourselves." But he added that some things cannot be expressed without using a religious word and that the power of this language is felt whether or not one is religious.

He offered the word "soul" as an example. "What does that mean if you are not a religious person?" he asked. "I don't believe in an afterlife or a heaven or hell, and yet I feel when I use that word it has some meaning...There isn't a secular word for that feeling that we are not only flesh and blood."

When discussing his latest book, The Enchantress of Florence, Rushdie admitted that he does not have "utopian tendencies." Indeed, he said, his writings frequently contain a bleak point of view, a reflection of how he feels about the world today.

"We live in a harsh world," he said. "We don't live in this world of tolerance, happiness, music and dance...We live in a world of death, bombs and destruction." However, he did concede that he was having an uncharacteristically "optimistic week," referring to the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections just two days earlier.

"I hope something happened on Tuesday which can change that," added Rushdie, "but it's difficult to live at this moment in the history of the world and be an optimist."

In a question-and-answer period, Rushdie offered a humorous response to a question from the audience about whether his oppression contributed to the wide attention he has received as a writer. "I was doing just fine before then," he said with a laugh. "I would've been quite happy, thank you very much, to chug along at that level" rather than dodging death threats. Rushdie in 1989 received death threats made by the former leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who ordered international mercenaries to carry out the sentence.

More seriously Rushdie added, "A lot of writers are oppressed. Whether their work continues to be interesting or not in the end has to do with the work, not the oppression."

The Rushdie event capped off the day of religious-themed discussions. On the topic of art, religion and politics, Thomas Krens, director of Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, talked about the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and how the foundation hopes the museum will serve as a platform for reasonable dialogue, continuing education and cultural exchange.

In another discussion, Columbia faculty members engaged Charles Taylor, emeritus professor of philosophy at McGill University, on his most recent book, A Secular Age, which traces the modern age's emergence of secularism not in opposition to religion, but in the midst of the religious.

Mark Taylor, chair of the Department of Religion, co-directs the institute with Alfred Stepan, professor of government at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

"We need to understand religion historically but also critically," he said.

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