Course:LIBR548F/2012WT1/The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Often called “the most talked about and the least read book of recent times”, The Satanic Verses is the controversial 1988 novel by Salman Rushdie, winner of the Whitbread Prize, and short-listed for the Booker Prize. More frequently, however, it is known as the subject of a religious edict (or ‘fatwa’) by Iran’s then Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini which, on February 14th 1989, sentenced to death both the author and anyone involved in the publishing or translating of the book.

The Novel

The Satanic Verses is an intricate story about redemption, transformation, alienation, doubt, and migration. There are three main story lines to the book. In the first, two men fall out of the sky from a “Himalayan height”, singing and talking the whole way down (one with a bowler hat still firmly in place). They land safely on the banks of the English Channel only to realize that they have started to transform. The second story line is about a young woman in India leading fellow believers on a long and difficult pilgrimage. The third plot is the one which stirred the bulk of the controversy, and from which the novel draws its name; it details the dreams of Gibreel Farishta (one of the falling men, at this point battling psychosis) concerning the founding days of a new religion (see more in the controversy section below).

The Controversy

Though the dream section of the novel deals with “a prophet not called Mohammed living in a city not called Mecca, inventing a religion not called Islam” the parallels are clear and intentional. In this retelling of the founding of the religion, the character of the prophet (Mahound) is offered a bargain by the local leader where if he admits to including merely three of the deities from their current pantheistic worship as beings lesser than god but greater than man, then the new religion will become the official one throughout the region. Mahound brings this question to the archangel Gibreel (from whom he receives the word of god which becomes the holy book –not called the Qur’an) and is told to accept the offer. Shortly after, Mahound realizes or decides that he was in fact tricked and that he had been speaking to the devil and not the archangel. These passages are then stricken from the holy book for they are not the word of god, they are The Satanic Verses. This, and other smaller matters, cause an immediate stir among the Muslim population, primarily in the UK, upon the book’s publication in September of 1988. There were a number of marches in the streets condemning the book and calling for its ban. It was not until February of the following year, however, that things took a much more serious turn. On St. Valentine’s Day of that year Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued his religious edict condemning the author and publishers, and indeed anyone associated with its publication or sale, to death. Rushdie was immediately taken into secure custody and would remain in hiding for the next nine years. He had, in Martin Amis’ memorable phrase “vanished into the front page”.

Violence

Though Rushdie himself emerged from the affair, as of yet, uninjured, others were not so lucky. Below is a partial list of violent acts perpetrated in the name of the fatwa:

• Two major bookstores in London were firebombed (Dillons and Collets); and smaller explosions or bombing attempts occurred elsewhere in London, York, and High Wycombe, plus multiple unexploded bombs discovered in Penguin stores (the UK publisher) throughout the UK;
• Two bookstores in Berkeley California were bombed;
• A young man killed himself and destroyed two floors of the hotel in which he was staying when the bomb he intended to use to kill Rushdie accidentally exploded;
• More than a dozen were killed during Satanic Verses-related riots in Rushdie’s hometown of Bombay;
• Two Muslim community leaders in Belgium were murdered for opposing the fatwa;
• The Italian translator Ettore Capriolo was non-fatally stabbed in August of 1991;
• William Nygaard, the book’s publisher in Norway, narrowly escaped assassination in 1993;
• Aziz Nesin, the Turkish translator, was targeted by a fire set at a book convention in 1993 and, though he managed to escape, 37 others were killed;
• Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator, was killed in the summer of 1991.

Current Status

In 1998 the Iranian government declared that they would “neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie”. Though the fatwa remains in place (an edict such as this can only be removed by he who ordered it, and Khomeini died only four months after it was first issued), and is in fact renewed in Iran nearly every year, Rushdie now lives his life in the open.

Enduring Legacy

Perhaps the most long-lasting legacy of the so-called ‘Rushdie Affair’ is the chilling influence it and other events have had on the willingness of publishing companies to print controversial works; in particular those that risk offending Muslims. One writer puts it that the fatwa has “in effect become internalised". Rushdie himself believes that The Satanic Verses would not be published in the political climate of today.

Annotated Bibliography

“Looking back at Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses” The Guardian (2012). Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/14/looking-at-salman-rushdies-satanic-verses?INTCMP=SRCH
A fascinating look back to the time the fatwa was declared by friends and others near to the story.

Anthony, Andrew. “How One Book Ignited a Culture War”. Guardian (2009). Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/11/salman-rushdie-satanic-verses
An excellent investigation into not only ‘The Rushdie Affair’ but also the effect it has had on the industry, and how the original controversy foreshadowed much of the major news stories of this millennium.

Pipes, Daniel. “Two Decades of the Rushdie Rules”. Commentary. 130.3 (2010): 31-35.
A more scholarly look at how the controversy changed how society deals with religious issues, in particular with regards to Islam.

Further Reading

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Notes on Salman Rushdie's the Satanic Verses

Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie - his memoir of life under the fatwa.

Salman Rushdie on twitter.