Salmon Rushie: Any Recommendations?

I was listening to Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat today. I'm on the second-to-last cassette tape, and he is discussing "Islamo-Leninism" and the threat that Islamic fundamentalists have in terrorizing away the trust necessary for a flat world. He mentioned the fatwah issued against Rushdie, and I was reminded that I've never read any of his books.

Have any of you? Are any particularly good? I don't want to read him simply because he was banned in the Islamic world. But I have heard that he writes well too.

So many books these days are full of sexual stuff; I'd rather stay clear of that, too. Not sure whether Rushdie feels the compulsion to pepper his books in that way!

I'll write more about The World is Flat once I finish it. But it did make me sad to read that the Arab Islamic world is stuck: humiliated because they are half-way between the flat and the unflat worlds, and thus able to see what they are missing; angry because the US has supported injustices both from Israel and from Arab dictators, for our own oil and security interests. I haven't been to the Middle East for 10 years -- pre-9/11. Will I feel the same warmth from Palestinians when Taylor and I go to Israel in 3 weeks, or will there be more anger seething under the surface?

It also makes me sad -- angry, even -- that there has not been enough push-back within the Arab Muslim world to the way that fundamentalists are reinterpreting their religion. I think there is some deep evil in the way Islam is used by terrorists, and yet the Arab states have not waged the necessary ideological war against those fundamentalists -- in part because they themselves are often illegitimate and thus cannot lead a discussion about democracy, pluralism, peace, and tolerance. This makes me mad!