The Satanic Verses

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embodied an anger arising in part from the frustrations of the migrant experience and generally reflected failures of multicultural integration, both significant Rushdie themes. Clearly, Rushdie's interests centrally include explorations of how migration heightens one's awareness that perceptions of reality are relative and fragile, and of the nature of religious faith and revelation, not to mention the political manipulation of religion. Rushdie's own assumptions about the importance of literature parallel the literal value accorded the written word in Islamic tradition to some degree. But Rushdie seems to have assumed that diverse communities and cultures share some degree of common moral ground on the basis of which dialogue can be pieced together, and it is perhaps for this reason that he underestimated the implacable nature of the hostility evoked by The Satanic Verses, even though a major theme of that novel is the dangerous nature of closed, absolutist belief systems. [11] After Khomeini’s death, Iran’s government announced in 1998 that it would not carry out his fatwa or encourage others to do so. Rushdie now lives in the United States and makes regular public appearances. A whole lot of this book is taken up with a detailed sequence of dream-narratives that dispense with the dream framework and become a comic-ironic history of the life of a religious leader who is never called Mohammed but referred to as either The Prophet or as Mahound, an insulting medieval name for Mohammed. (It came from the French Mahun which was a contraction of Mahomet. Well, so the internet tells me.) So we get the twisty tale of how Mahound eventually got rid of the polytheism of the city of Jahilia and how Islam, here called Submission, became accepted as the true religion. Well, what could possibly be offensive about that, since that is what actually happened? Only everything.

He's been married four times. I'm cool with that... I live in the U.S. so I know that judging someone for that it wrong. That must sting Rushdie's massive ego a bit. Maybe he just doesn’t care. A few parting shots: Salman Rushdie is a storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air.” — The New York Times Book Review Wait a minute, he blinks at his notes, if Iago is evil incarnate, does that not also mean that he is Satan incarnate? Chamcha then is Satan incarnate? Then Othello has to be God? A little bit more corruptible maybe? Let us make him the angel Gibreel, he decided. As an aside, as the angel, he can slip into that reality in his dreams and reenact the story (history?) of Prophet Mohammad in inflammatory fashion, maybe talk about the 'Satanic Verses' since his Satan can't help but gloat over his little jokes. Why not call the novel so too, except that it would mean something else - the verses that the real Satan of the story, Iago, sings in Othello's ear. He knows that this might be cause for misunderstanding, might ruffle a few feathers, but it is just a digression, the real story is beyond that - it is not the Event Horizon. But he can't help himself. He never could keep a story simple. So there I was, actually writing the Book, or rewriting, anyway, polluting the word of God with my own profane language. But good heavens, if my poor words could not be distinguished from the Revelation of God’s own Messenger, then what did that mean? Misappropriating history with such lazy disregard for truth or context, with such an ignorance that turns condescending by transmission -- this is the hallmark of Dan Browns, not great authors. It's as though Brown seized on some of the more inflammatory screeds from the Arian Heresy and wrote a book that went like, "Aha! The Knights Templar were time travelers!" It's not good fiction. That this intentionally inflammatory claptrap rose to the level of world-renowned Great Art speaks more to the global prejudice against Islamic theology than to to the Satanic Verses' literary worth!A novel of metamorphoses, hauntings, memories, hallucinations, revelations, advertising jingles, and jokes. Rushdie has the power of description, and we succumb.” —The Times (London) Buy this book Later, 'The Curtain, hijab, was the name of the most popular brothel in Jahilia" pg. 388, where the wives of Prophet Muhammed work. Literally, he uses their names: Ayesha, Ramlah, Hafsa, Juwairiyah, 'Mary the Copt', Sawdah, etc. "When the news got around Jahilia that the whores of The Curtain had each assumed identity of one of Mahound's wives, the clandestine excitement of the city's males was intense", pg. 393 and "The fifteen-year-old whore 'Ayesha' was the most popular with the paying public", pg. 394. Meanwhile, the Commission for Racial Equality and a liberal think tank, the Policy Studies Institute, held seminars on the Rushdie affair. They did not invite the author Fay Weldon, who spoke out against burning books, but did invite Shabbir Akhtar, a Cambridge philosophy graduate who called for "a negotiated compromise" that "would protect Muslim sensibilities against gratuitous provocation". The journalist and author Andy McSmith wrote at the time "We are witnessing, I fear, the birth of a new and dangerously illiberal 'liberal' orthodoxy designed to accommodate Dr. Akhtar and his fundamentalist friends." [16]

Exhilarating, populous, loquacious, sometimes hilarious, extraordinary . . . a roller-coaster ride over a vast landscape of the imagination.” — The Guardian (London) As an example of how detailed this gets, there’s a whole chapter about Mahound making a deal with the city boss to accept three of the female local gods into his religion in return for the city of Jahilia accepting him as The Prophet. The boss says you can’t just throw out all these three hundred gods, the people won’t stand for it. Well, says Mahound, how about if I say the people can keep these three gods but we’re gonna re-brand them as angels. Okay, says the city boss, that sounds like a deal.

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