Rushdie glad he wrote 'Satanic Verses'

Rushdie's remarks about the book he wrote 20 years ago came in the second of a series of interviews with leading cultural figures filmed exclusively for 'The Times' daily.

He said he would regret not having written a book confronting major religious and philosophical questions.

"The question I'm always asking myself is; are we masters or victims? Do we make history or does history make us? Do we shape the world or are we just shaped by it?

"The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events, I think, a great question and one that I have always tried to ask. In that sense I wouldn't not have wanted to be the writer that asked it," he told Australian broadcaster Cilve James.

Rushdie's comments came at a time when extremists have again driven a literary figure into hiding – this time Martin Rynja, a Dutch-born London publisher who had agreed to release 'The Jewel of Medina', a controversial novel about the Prophet Muhammad.

Rushdie, in the interview, said he is an atheist who found dead religions "much more attractive" but added he has nothing against true believers until their faith spills over into the public sphere and becomes "my business".

The Satanic Verses was banned in India, and Ayatollah Khomeini, then supreme leader of Iran, in 1989 issued a 'fatwa' calling on all Muslims to murder Rushdie forcing him to go into hiding for the best part of ten years.