The Satanic Verses

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For the controversy over the novel by Salman Rushdie, see The Satanic Verses controversy.
For the verses known as "Satanic Verses", see Satanic Verses.
The Satanic Verses
File:Satanic verses.jpg
AuthorSalman Rushdie
LanguageEnglish
GenreMagic Realism, Novel
PublisherViking Books
Publication date
1988
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages546 pp
ISBNISBN 0670825379 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
Followed byHaroun and the Sea of Stories 
File:The Satanic Verses.jpg
The Satanic Verses (1988), 2006 Vintage paperback edition

The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, first published in 1988 and inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. The title refers to the Satanic Verses, a possible interpolation in the Qur'an described by Ibn Ishaq in his biography of Muhammad (the oldest surviving biography). The disputed verses allow for prayers of intercession to be made to three Pagan Meccan goddesses: Allat, Uzza, and Manah.[1] The part of the story that deals with the "Satanic verses" in the book "was based on the accounts of the Arab historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari."[1] Some Islamic and most non-Muslim Western historians and commentators on the Qur'an have accepted this story of Muhammad's momentary acceptance of the verses. However, a common Muslim viewpoint is that the existence of the verses is just a fabrication created by non-Muslims.[2]

The novel caused much controversy upon its publication, as many Muslims felt that it contained blasphemous references. It has been noted that "the vehement protest against Rushdie’s book derived in large part from the title, which Muslims found incredibly sacrilegious."[1] This is likely due to the fact that "the phrase 'Satanic verses' does not come directly from [the Arab historian] al-Tabari (though the latter attributes the source of the verses to Satan)" instead it comes from academics specializing in studying middle east culture (most notably William Montgomery Watt's Muhammed, Prophet and Statesman)[1]. As historian Daniel Pipes points out "Muslims know the omitted verses as the gharaniq ("birds") verses. Since the phrase "Satanic verses" is unknown in Islam, and the "verses" of the title was translated into Arabic as ayat (which refers solely to the "verses of the Qur’an"), many Muslims took Rushdie’s title to refer to the whole of the Qur’an as being the work of the Devil."[1]

As the controversy spread, India was the first country to ban the book followed by many others.[3] Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, a Shi'a Muslim scholar, issued a fatwa that called for the death of Rushdie and claimed that it was the duty of every Muslim to obey.

On February 14, 1989, the Ayatollah broadcast the following message on Iranian radio: "I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Qur'an, and all those involved in its publication who are aware of its content are sentenced to death."[4]As a result, Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese language translator of the book was stabbed to death on July 11, 1991; Ettore Capriolo, the Italian language translator, was seriously injured in a stabbing the same month, and William Nygaard, the publisher in Norway, survived an attempted assassination in Oslo in October of 1993. On February 14, 2006, the Iranian state news agency reported that the fatwa will remain in place permanently.[5]

In the United Kingdom, however, the book garnered great critical acclaim. It was a 1988 Booker Prize Finalist, eventually losing to Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda.

Plot summary

The novel consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism, interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The frame narrative, like many other stories by Rushdie, involves Indian expatriates in contemporary England. The two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are both actors of Indian Muslim background. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar who specializes in playing Hindu deities. Chamcha is an emigrant who has broken with his past Indian identity and works as a voice over specialist in England.

At the beginning of the novel, both are trapped in a hijacked plane during a flight from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English Channel, but the two are magically saved and float down to the English coast unharmed. In a miraculous transformation, the two are reborn; Farishta takes on the personality of the archangel Gibreel, and Chamcha, that of a devil. Farishta's transformation can be read on a realistic level as the delusional symptom of the protagonist's developing schizophrenia.

Both characters struggle to piece their broken lives back together. Farishta seeks and finds his lost love, the English mountaineer Allie Cone, but their relationship is overshadowed by his mental illness. Chamcha, having miraculously regained his human shape, now bears a revengeful hatred towards Farishta for having forsaken him after their common fall from the hijacked plane. Chamcha takes revenge on him by fostering Farishta's pathological jealousy and thus destroying his relationship with Allie. In another moment of crisis, Farishta realizes what Chamcha has done, but forgives him and even saves his life.

Both later return to India. Farishta, still suffering from his illness, kills Allie in another outbreak of jealousy and then commits suicide. Chamcha, who has found not only forgiveness from Farishta but also reconciliation with his estranged father and his own Indian identity, decides to remain in India.

Embedded in this story is a series of half-magic dream vision narratives, ascribed to the disturbed mind of Gibreel Farishta. They are linked together by many thematic details as well as by the common motif of divine revelation, religious faith and fanaticism, and doubt.

One of these sequences contains most of the elements that have been criticized as offensive to Muslims. It is a transformed re-narration of the life of the prophet Muhammad (called "Mahound" or "the Messenger" in the novel) in Mecca ("Jahilia"). At its centre is the episode of the Satanic Verses, in which the prophet first pronounces a revelation in favour of the old polytheistic deities in order to win over the population, but later renounces this revelation as an error induced by Shaitan. There are also two fictional opponents of the "Messenger": a demonic heathen priestess, Hind, and an irreverent skeptic and satirical poet, Baal. When the prophet returns to the city in triumph, Baal organises an underground brothel where the prostitutes assume the identities of the prophet's wives. Also, one of the prophet's companions claims that he, doubting the "Messenger"'s authenticity, has subtly altered portions of the Qur'an as they were dictated to him.

The second sequence tells the story of Ayesha, an Indian peasant girl who claims to be receiving revelations from the Archangel Gibreel. She entices all her village community to embark on a foot pilgrimage to Mecca, claiming that they will be able to walk on foot across the Arabian Sea. The pilgrimage ends in a catastrophic climax as the believers all walk into the water and disappear, amid disturbingly conflicting testimonies from observers about whether they just drowned or were in fact miraculously able to cross the sea.

A third dream sequence presents the figure of a fanatic expatriate religious leader, the "Imam", set again in a late-20th-century setting. This figure is a transparent allusion to the life of Ayatollah Khomeini in his Parisian exile, but it is also linked through various recurrent narrative motifs to the figure of the "Messenger".

Wikiquote has quotations related to The Satanic Verses.

Literary criticism and analysis

Over all the book received favorable reviews from literature critics.

Timothy Brennan called the work "the most ambitious novel yet published to deal with the immigrant experience in Britain" that captures the immigrants dream-like disorientation and their process of "union-by-hybridization". The book is seen as "fundamentally a study in alienation."[6]

Muhammd Mashuq ibn Ally wrote that "The Satanic Verses is about identity, alienation, rootlessness, brutality, compromise, and conformity. These concepts confront all migrants, disillusioned with both cultures: the one they are in and the one they join. Yet knowing they cannot live a life of anonymity, they mediate between them both. The Satanic Verses is a reflection of the author’s dilemmas." The work is an "albeit surreal, record of its own author's continuing identity crisis."[6] Ally said that the book reveals the author ultimately as a victim, "the victim of nineteenth-century British colonialism."[6] Rushdie himself spoke confirming this interpretation of his book saying that it was not about the Islamic faith "but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay."[6] He has also said "It’s a novel which happened to contain a castigation of Western materialism. The tone is comic."[6]

Reception: Timeline

See also: The Satanic Verses controversy
  • September 26, 1988: The novel is published in the UK.
  • October 5, 1988: India bans the novel's importation.
  • November 21, 1988: Grand sheik of Egypt's Al-Azhar calls on Islamic organizations in Britain to take legal action to prevent the novel's distribution
  • November 24, 1988: The novel is banned in South Africa and Pakistan; bans follow within weeks in Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia, Bangladesh, Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Venezuela and Qatar.
  • December 1988-January 1989: British Muslims hold book burnings in Bolton and Bradford; Islamic Defense Council demands that Penguin Books apologise, withdraw the novel, destroy any extant copies, and never reprint it.
  • February 12, 1989: Six people are killed and 100 injured during anti-Rushdie protests in Islamabad, Pakistan.
  • February 13, 1989: One person is killed and over 100 injured in anti-Rushdie riots in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir.[7]
  • February 14, 1989: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issues a fatwa calling on all Muslims to execute all those involved in the publication of the novel; the 15 Khordad Foundation, an Iranian religious foundation or bonyad, offers a monetary reward for the murder of Rushdie.
  • February 16, 1989: Rushdie enters the protection programme of the British government and issues a statement regretting the offence the novel has caused; Khomeini responds by reiterating: "It is incumbent on every Muslim to employ everything he has, his life and his wealth, to send [Rushdie] to hell."
  • February 17, 1989: Iranian leader Ali Khamenei says Rushdie could be pardoned if he apologises.[8]
  • February 18, 1989: Rushdie apologizes just as Khamenei has suggested; initially, IRNA (the official Iranian news agency) says Rushdie's statement "is generally seen as sufficient enough to warrant his pardon".[9]
  • February 22, 1989: The novel is published in the U.S.A.; major bookstore chains Barnes and Noble and Waldenbooks, under threat, remove the novel from one-third of the nation's bookstores.
  • February 24, 1989: Iranian businessman offers a $3 million bounty for the death of Rushdie.
  • February 24, 1989: Twelve people die and 40 are wounded when a large anti-Rushdie riot in Bombay, Maharashtra, India starts to cause considerable property damage and police open fire.[10]
  • February 28, 1989: Two bookstores in Berkeley, USA, are firebombed for selling the novel.
  • March 7, 1989: Britain breaks diplomatic relations with Iran.
  • March 1989: The Organization of the Islamic Conference calls on its 46 member governments to prohibit the novel. The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar sets the punishment for possession of the book as three years in prison and a fine of $2,500; in Malaysia, three years in prison and a fine of $7,400; in Indonesia, a month in prison or a fine. The only nation with a predominantly Muslim population where the novel remains legal is Turkey. Several nations with large Muslim minorities, including Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Tanzania, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, also impose penalties for possessing the novel.
  • May 1989: Popular musician Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) gives indirect support for the fatwa and states during a British television documentary, according to the New York Times, that if Rushdie shows up at his door, he "might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like... I'd try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is." Yusuf Islam later denies giving any support to the fatwa.[11] For more on this topic see Cat Stevens: Rushdie Controversy
  • June 3, 1989: Khomeini dies.
  • 1990: Rushdie apologised to Muslims and even formally re-converted to Islam,[12] but recanted a short time later describing it as the "biggest mistake of my life" in an interview he gave to Anne McElvoy of The Times published on August 26, 1995.
  • 1990: Rushdie publishes an essay on Khomeini's death, "In Good Faith", to appease his critics and issues an apology in which he seems to reaffirm his respect for Islam; however, Iranian clerics do not retract the fatwa.
  • 1990: Five bombings target bookstores in England.
  • July 1991: Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel's Japanese translator, is stabbed to death; and Ettore Capriolo, its Italian translator, is seriously wounded.
  • July 2, 1993: Thirty-seven Turkish intellectuals and locals participating in the Pir Sultan Abdal Literary Festival, die when their hotel in Sivas, Turkey, namely the Madimak Hotel, is burnt down by 2000 members of various anti-democratic, pro-sharia radical Islamist groups protesting against Aziz Nesin, Rushdie's Turkish translator.
  • October 1993: The novel's Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, is shot and seriously injured.
  • 1993: The 15 Khordad Foundation in Iran raises the reward for Rushdie's murder to $300,000.
  • 1997: The bounty is doubled, to $600,000.
  • 1998: Iranian government publicly declares that it will "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie."[13] This is announced as part of a wider agreement to normalise relations between Iran and the United Kingdom. Rushdie subsequently declares that he will stop living in hiding, and that he regrets attempts to appease his critics by making statements to the effect that he is a practicing Muslim. Rushdie affirms that he is not, in fact, religious. According to some of Iran's leading clerics, despite the death of Khomeini and the Iranian government's official declaration, the fatwa remains in force. Iran's foreign minister Kamal Kharazi also pointed out that:

"The responsibility for carrying out the fatwa was not the exclusive responsibility of Iran. It is the religious duty of all Muslims – those who have the ability or the means – to carry it out. It does not require any reward. In fact, those who carry out this edict in hopes of a monetary reward are acting against Islamic injunctions."[14]

  • 1999: An Iranian foundation places a $2.8 million bounty on Rushdie's life.
  • January 2002: South Africa lifts its ban on the Satanic Verses ."[15]
  • February 16, 2003: Iran's Revolutionary Guards reiterate the call for the assassination of Rushdie. As reported by the Sunday Herald, "Ayatollah Hassan Saneii, head of the semi-official Khordad Foundation that has placed a $2.8 million bounty on Rushdie's head, was quoted by the Jomhuri Islami newspaper as saying that his foundation would now pay $3 million to anyone who kills Rushdie."[16]
  • March 2004: 16 years after the first English edition Hungarian translation is published, the translator's name not specified for security reasons.
  • Early 2005: Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie is reaffirmed by Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it.
  • February 14, 2006: Iran’s official state news agency reports on the anniversary of the decree that the government-run Martyrs Foundation has announced, "The fatwa by Imam Khomeini in regard to the apostate Salman Rushdie will be in effect forever", and that one of Iran’s state bonyad, or foundations, has offered a $2.8 million bounty on his life.[5]
  • June 15, 2007: Rushdie receives knighthood for services to literature sparking an outcry from Islamic groups some renewing the call for his assassination.
    Further information: Knighthood of Salman Rushdie

See also

References

Notes
  1. ^ a b c d e John D. Erickson (1998). Islam and Postcolonial Narrative. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  2. ^ The "Satanic Verses"
  3. ^ Joseph Bernard Tamney (2002). The Resilience of Conservative Religion: The Case of Popular, Conservative Protestant Congregations. Cambridge, UK: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge.
  4. ^ "Ayatollah sentences author to death". BBC. 1989-02-14. Retrieved 2007-01-22. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ a b "Iran says Rushdie fatwa still stands". Iran Focus. 2006-02-14. Retrieved 2007-01-22. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ a b c d e Ian Richard Netton (1996). Text and Trauma: An East-West Primer. Richmond, UK: Routledge Curzon.
  7. ^ "Freedom of Information and Expression in India". London: Article 19. Oct. 1990. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ Article "Iran suggests an apology could save life of Rushdie; Rushdie controversy." The Times (London, England), 1989-02-18, accessed via Infotrac.
  9. ^ Article "Iranians in confusion after Rushdie apologizes; Rushdie controversy." The Sunday Times (London, England), 1989-02-19, accessed via Infotrac.
  10. ^ Mark S. Hoffman. World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1990. World Almanac Books.
  11. ^ R. Whitney, Craig (1989-05-23). "Cat Stevens Gives Support To Call for Death of Rushdie". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-01-22. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ [1]
  13. ^ Anthony Loyd (June 8, 2005). "Tomb of the unknown assassin reveals mission to kill Rushdie". The Times.
  14. ^ Waseem Shehzad (October 16, 1998). "Imam Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie still stands". Muslimedia.
  15. ^ "SA unbans Satanic Verses at library's request". Star. 2002-01-15. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  16. ^ Hamilton, James (2003-02-16). "Revived fatwa puts $3m bounty on Rushdie". Sunday Herald. Retrieved 2003-04-04. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Publications
  • 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature', Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald & Dawn B. Sova, Checkmark Books, New York, 1999. ISBN 0-8160-4059-1

Further reading

  • Daniel Pipes: The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West (1990), Transaction Publishers, (2003), with a postscript by Koenraad Elst. ISBN 0-7658-0996-6
  • Elst, Koenraad: The Rushdie Rules Middle East Quarterly, June 1998
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