Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.
I'm a novelist. Fortunately I don't have to rule the world.
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
Why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences?
Prophet Mohammed would have no objection to The Satanic Verses.
Doris Lessing really doesn't care what the critics say. In fact, she orders her publishers not to send her the reviews and gets cross with them if they do because she doesn't want that in her head. She's going where she's going, and that's where she wants to go.