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  • Islam doesn't have to mean blind faith. It can mean what it always meant in your family, a culture, a civilization, as open-minded as your grandfather was, as delightedly disputatious as your father was.... Don't let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying word, I urged myself; remember when it meant family.

    "Excerpts From Rushdie's Address: 1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Metaphor'". Address at Columbia University, www.nytimes.com. December 12, 1991.