What Did Salman Rushdie Say About Islam? On the Fatwa and the Satanic Verses (1992)

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• published: 01 Dec 2013
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The Satanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was the heated and frequently violent reaction of some Muslims to the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, which was first published in the United Kingdom in 1988. Many Muslims accused Rushdie of blasphemy or unbelief and in 1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwā ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. Numerous killings, attempted killings, and bombings resulted from Muslim anger over the novel. The Iranian government backed the fatwā against Rushdie until 1998, when the succeeding government of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said it no longer supported the killing of Rushdie. The issue was said to have divided "Muslim from Westerners along the fault line of culture," and to have pitted a core Western value of freedom of expression—that no one "should be killed, or face a serious threat of being killed, for what they say or write"—against the view of many Muslims—that no one should be free to "insult and malign Muslims" by disparaging the "honour of the Prophet" Muhammad. English writer Hanif Kureishi called the fatwā "one of the most significant events in postwar literary history." Even before the publication of The Satanic Verses, the books of Salman Rushdie stoked controversy. Rushdie himself saw his role as a writer "as including the function of antagonist to the state".[8] His second book Midnight's Children angered Indira Gandhi because it seemed to suggest "that Mrs. Gandhi was responsible for the death of her husband through neglect".[9] His 1983 roman à clef Shame "took an aim on Pakistan, its political characters, its culture and its religion... [It covered] a central episode in Pakistan's internal life, which portrays as a family squabble between Iskander Harappa (Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) and his successor and executioner Raza Hyder (Zia ul-Haq)... 'The Virgin Ironpants'... has been identified as Benazir Bhutto, a Prime Minister of Pakistan".[9] Positions Rushdie took as a committed leftist prior to the publishing of his book were the source of some controversy. He defended many of those who later attacked him. Rushdie forcefully denounced the Shah's government and supported the Islamic Revolution of Iran, at least in its early stages. He condemned the U.S. bombing raid on Tripoli in 1986 but found himself threatened by Libya's leader Muammar al-Gaddafi three years later.[10] He wrote a book bitterly critical of U.S. foreign policy in general and its war in Nicaragua in particular, for example calling the United States government, "the bandit posing as sheriff".[11] After the Ayatollah's fatwā however, he was accused by Iranian government of being "an inferior CIA agent".[12] A few years earlier, an official jury appointed by a ministry of the Iranian Islamic government had bestowed an award on the Persian translation of Rushdie's book Shame, which up until then was the only time a government had awarded Rushdie's work a prize. "[V]ehement protest against Rushdie's book" began with the title itself. The title refers to a legend of the Prophet Mohammad, when a few verses were supposedly spoken by him as part of the Qur'an, and then withdrawn on the grounds that the devil had sent them to deceive Mohammad into thinking they came from God. These "Satanic Verses" are not found in the Qur'an, are not included in the first biography of Mohammad by Ibn Ishaq but appear in other accounts of the prophet's life. They permitted prayer to three pre-Islamic Meccan goddesses: Al-lāt, Uzza, and Manah — a violation of monotheism.[13] The utterance and withdrawal of the so-called Satanic Verses forms an important sub-plot in the novel, which recounts several episodes in the life of Muhammad. The phrase Arab historians and later Muslims used to describe the incident of the withdrawn verses was not "Satanic verses", but the gharaniq verses; the phrase 'Satanic verses' was unknown to Muslims, and was coined by Western academics specialising in the study of Middle Eastern culture (orientalism).[14] When attention was drawn to a book with this title, "Muslims found [it] incredibly sacrilegious", and took it to imply that the book's author claimed that verses of the Qur'an were "the work of the Devil". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushdie_Affair