The Satanic Verses (novel)
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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, an attempted interpolation in the Qur'an described by Ibn Ishaq in his biography of Muhammad (the oldest surviving text).
Many Muslims find Ibn Ishaq's story deeply disturbing and reject it as false, and many Muslim scholars also reject the story as historically improbable and weakly attested. The novel caused much controversy upon publication in 1988, as many Muslims considered that it contained blasphemous references. India was the first country to ban the book. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, who was also a Shi'a Muslim scholar, then issued a fatwa calling 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" 1. As a result, Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death in July 1991, Ettore Capriolo, the Italian 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 1993. On February 14, 2006, the Iranian state news agency reported that the fatwa will remain in place permanently. [1]
In the UK, 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 voiceover specialist in England.
At the beginning of the novel, both are trapped in a hijacked plane during a voyage from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English coast, but the two are magically saved and land on English soil unharmed. In a miraculous transformation, Farishta takes on the personality of the archangel Gibreel, and Chamcha that of a satyr, which evolves thunderously into 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. He takes revenge on him by destroying his relationship with Allie, through fostering Farishta's pathological jealousy. 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 motivic details as well as by the common theme of divine revelation, religious faith and fanaticism, and doubt.
One of these sequences 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. They all drown in the attempt to walk across the Arabian Sea at Ayesha's bidding.
The second sequence is the one that contains most of the elements that have been criticised as offensive to Muslims. It is a thinly transformed re-narration of the life of the prophet Muhammad (called "The Messenger" in the novel) in Mecca ("Jahilia" in the novel). At its centre is the episode of the "Satanic Verses", where the "Messenger" first pronounces a revelation in favour of the polytheistic deities of pre-Islamic Mecca, in order to placate and win over the population, but later renounces these as an error induced by Satan. The narrative also presents two fictional opponents of the "Messenger": the demonic heathen priestess Hind and the irreverent skeptic and satirical poet Baal. When the "Messenger" returns to the city in triumph, Baal organizes an underground brothel in which the prostitutes take on the identities of the "Messenger"'s wives. Also, one of "Messenger"'s companions claims that he, doubting the "Messenger"'s authenticity, had subtly altered portions of the Qur'an as "Messenger" narrated it to him.
A third dream sequence presents the figure of a fanatic expatriate religious leader, the "Imam", set again in a contemporary 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 motives to the figure of the "Messenger".
Reception: Timeline
- September 26, 1988 - book is published in the U.K.
- October 5, 1988 - importation of the book into India is banned
- November 21, 1988 - the 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 banned in South Africa and Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia, Bangladesh, Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Qatar followed within weeks
- December 1988 and January 1989 British Muslims hold book burnings in Bolton and Bradford. The Islamic Defence Council demands that Penguin Books apologize, withdraw the book, pulp any extant copies, and never reprint it.
- February 12, 1989: six people are killed and 100 injured during protests in Islamabad, Pakistan
- February 13, 1989 one person is killed and 60 injured in riots in Srinigar, India
- February 14, 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa calling on all Muslims to execute all those involved in the publication of the book. 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 program of the British government, and issues a statement regretting the offense his book had caused. Khomeini responds by reiterating that "it is incumbent on every Muslim to employ everything he has, his life and his wealth, to send [Rushdie] to hell."
- February 22, 1989 The book is published in the United States. Two major bookstore chains, under threat, remove the book from a third of the nation's bookstores.
- On February 24 1989, an Iranian businessman offered a U.S.$ 3 million bounty for the death of Rushdie.
- February 24, 1989 12 die in rioting at Bombay
- February 28, 1989 Two bookstores in Berkeley, California are firebombed.
- 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 book. 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, the penalty is 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 book 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 book.
- In May 1989 Popular musician Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) gave indirect support for the fatwa, and stated according to the New York Times during a British television documentary that if Rushdie showed 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." [2] For more see also Cat Stevens: Rushdie Controversy
- After the death of Khomeini in 1989, Rushdie published an essay in 1990, In Good Faith, to appease his critics and issued an apology in which he seems to have reaffirmed his respect for Islam. However, Iranian clerics did not retract the fatwa..
- 1990: five bombings target bookstores in England
- July 1991 Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator is stabbed to death; the Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, is seriously wounded.
- 2 July 1993 Thirty-seven people died when their hotel in Sivas, Turkey was burnt down by locals protesting against Aziz Nesin, Rushdie's Turkish translator
- October 1993, the Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, is shot and seriously injured.
- 1993 The 15 Khordad Foundation in Iran raised the reward for Rushdie's murder to $300,000.
- In 1997, the bounty was doubled, and the next year the highest Iranian state prosecutor restated his support.
- In 1998 the Iranian government publicly declared that it would not carry out the death sentence against Rushdie. This was announced as part of a wider agreement to normalise relations between Iran and the United Kingdom. Rushdie subsequently declared that he would stop living in hiding, and that he regretted attempts to appease his critics by making statements to the effect that he was a practicing Muslim. Rushdie affirmed that he is not, in fact, religious. Despite the death of Khomeini and the Iranian government's official declaration, according to certain members of the Islamic fundamentalist media the fatwa remains in force:
- "The responsibility for carrying out the fatwa is 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."
- In 1999, an Iranian foundation placed a $2.8 million bounty on Rushdie's life, and in February 2003, Iran's Revolutionary Guards reiterated 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." [3]
- In early 2005, Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie was 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 reported on the anniversary of the decree that the government-run Martyrs Foundation had announced, "The fatwa by Imam Khomeini in regards to the apostate Salman Rushdie will be in effect forever", and that one of Iran’s state bonyad, or foundations, had offered a $2.8 million bounty on his life. [4]
See also
- Censorship in South Asia
- Censorship by organized religion
- Freedom of speech
- Freedom of speech versus blasphemy
References
- 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