From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.

Rushdie’s line is a blunt indictment of the long-standing tendency to invoke divine authority as moral cover for actions that would otherwise be condemned—violence, oppression, censorship, or cruelty. By saying this has been true “from the beginning,” he frames the problem as structural rather than incidental: religion (or claims about God) can be instrumentalized to convert private interest into sacred duty and to silence dissent by treating disagreement as impiety. The quote also reflects Rushdie’s broader preoccupation with the collision of faith, power, and freedom of expression, suggesting that the appeal to God often functions less as spiritual guidance than as a rhetorical tool to make the indefensible seem righteous.