Students, faculty and members of the Ann Arbor community packed into Rackham Auditorium yesterday to hear the award-winning writer Salman Rushdie interviewed. Though Rushdie's play, "Midnight's Children" debuts at the Power Center today, his topic of conversation was not literature but his political views.

"Why should we talk of the political Rushdie at all? Why should we not entirely abandon Salman to the literary scholars? Because Salman is an intense political being," said Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Center for South Asian Studies, who interviewed Rushdie.

Rushdie has indeed been a character of intense political concern since 1989, when the spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwah - an order for his death - against him for the views on Islam expressed in his novel, "The Satanic Verses," which Khomeini and much of the Muslim community viewed as heretical.

Since then, Rushdie said he has developed very strong notions about the right to free speech, and this was one of his major concerns in tonight's engagement.

"If you live in a society where you have free speech, you don't think about it that often. When you have enough air to breath, you don't think about the air, and when someone starts turning off the tap, you suddenly start noticing that air is important," Rushdie said. "I got involved in the subject of free speech after somebody tried to take away mine."

But Rushdie did admit there is a line to be drawn.

"Free speech is not limitless. In general I agree that the direct incitement of violence is a limiting point," he said.

Rushdie, raised in a Muslim family and now an atheist, also touched on the issue of terrorism.

"It's about a particular version and interpretation of Islam which many Muslims reject, but nevertheless it's a version and interpretation of Islam which is and has been in the last generation spreading across the Muslim world (made up of people) who, in my mind think in very backward terms," he said. "In my mind the so-called 'war against terror' can only be won when Muslim countries decide that they will no longer tolerate that form of Islam. The reason why these groups, the fanatics and terrorists, have been able to survive and flourish is because they have been allowed to survive and flourish in Muslim countries. The solution to fanatic Islam lies in the hands of Muslim countries, not in the hands of the West."

Rushdie went on to say that such groups have been a cancer to the Muslim world, a fact which becomes evident when one considers the former glory of cities like the now war-torn Beirut.

"The peace protests have not put up any credible alternative to solve the problems in the Middle East. When you hear those opposed to the war saying the alternatives they have to war, its frankly pathetic. Saddam Hussein would just laugh if he heard those strategies as a way to deal with him," Rushdie said. "In most of my life, I have been on the peace trail, to quote that great philosopher Cat Stevens," he said.

"I'm no Bushie," he added. "The idea that Iraq is a genuine near and present danger to the United States, I don't buy it. (But) when you listen to the description of what has been happening in Iraq over the past 37 years, the way in which the people of Iraq have been treated by this incredibly brutal despot, the idea that he should be removed is very hard to argue against as a benefit to humanity."