The Satanic Verses Controversy - Controversial Elements of The Satanic Verses

Controversial Elements of The Satanic Verses

"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to a legend of the Prophet Mohammad, when a few verses were supposedly spoken by him as part of the Qur'an, and then withdrawn on the grounds that the devil had sent them to deceive Mohammad into thinking they came from God.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, but are described by Ibn Ishaq in the first biography of Mohammad and also 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. 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 The phrase Arab historians and later Muslims used to describe the incident of the withdrawn verses was not "Satanic verses", but the gharaniq verses; the phrase 'Satanic verses' was unknown to Muslims, and was coined by Western academics specialising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). When attention was drawn to a book with this title, "Muslims found 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".

Rushdie's depiction of the Prophet in his novel, who was clearly intended to be in some sense an avatar of Muhammad, and several other elements of the work, were also considered blasphemous.

According to Anthony McRoy, these included the use of the name Mahound, said to be a derogatory term for Muhammad used by the English during the Crusades; the use of the term Jahilia, denoting the 'time of ignorance' before Islam, for the holy city of Mecca; the use of the name of the Angel Gabriel (Gibreel) for a film star, of the name of Saladin, the great Muslim hero of the Crusades, for a devil, and the name of Ayesha the wife of Muhammad for a fanatical Indian girl who leads her village on a fatal pilgrimage. Moreover, the brothel of the city of Jahilia was staffed by prostitutes with the same names as Muhammad's wives, who are viewed by Muslims as 'the Mothers of all Believers'.

Other issues many Muslims have found offensive include Abraham being called a "bastard" for casting Hagar and Ishmael in the desert; and a character named Salman the Persian who serves as one of the Prophet's scribes, an apparent reference to the story, controversial among Muslims, of a Meccan convert by the name of Ibn Abi Sarh, who left Islam after the Prophet failed to notice small changes he had made in the dictation of the Qur'an. Salman the Persian is also the name of one of the companions of the Prophet, another potential source of offense.

Daniel Pipes identified other more general issues in the book likely to have angered pious Muslims: A complaint in the book by one of Mahound's companions : "rules about every damn thing, if a man farts let him turn his face to the wind, a rule about which hand to use for the purpose of cleaning one's behind ...", which was said to mix up "Islamic law with its opposite and with the author's whimsy"; the prophet of Rushdie's novel, as he lies dying, being visited in a dream by the Goddess Allat, on the grounds that this suggested either that she exists or that the prophet thought she did; the angel Gibreel's vision of the Supreme Being in another dream as "not abstract in the least. He saw, sitting on the bed, a man of about the same age as himself", balding, wearing glasses and "seeming to suffer from dandruff". A complaint by one of the characters about communal violence in India: "Fact is, religious faith, which encodes the highest aspirations of human race, is now, in our country, the servant of lowest instincts, and God is the creature of evil".

The Guardian, an English newspaper, published on 15 September 2012 a series of recollections of various British people involved in the controversy. Lisa Appagnesi, ex-president of English PEN, observed “Intransigence is never so great as when it feels it has a god on its side.” Inayat Banglawala, the founder and chair of Muslims4UK, recalled, “Of course, our demands were in retrospect totally over the top and very embarrassing”. One of the lawyers involved, Geoffrey Robertson QC, rehearsed the arguments and replies made when 13 Muslim barristers had lodged a formal indictment against Rushdie for the crime of blasphemous libel: it was said that God was described in the book as “the Destroyer of Man”, yet He is described as such in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation, especially of men who are unbelievers or enemies of the Jews; that the book contained criticisms of the prophet Abraham, yet the Islamic, Christian and Jewish traditions themselves see Abraham as not without fault and deserving of criticism; that Rushdie referred to Mohammed as “Mahound”, a conjurer, a magician and a false prophet, yet these remarks are made by a drunken apostate, a character with whom neither reader nor author has any sympathy; that the book insults the wives of the Prophet by having whores use their names, yet the wives are explicitly said to be chaste and the adoption of their names by whores is to symbolise the corruption of the city then being described (perhaps symbolising Mecca in its pre-Islamic state); that the book vilified the companions of the Prophet, calling them “bums from Persia” and “clowns”, yet the character saying this is a hack poet hired to write propaganda against the Prophet and does not reflect the author’s beliefs; that the book criticised Islam for having too many rules and seeking to control every aspect of life, yet while characters in the book do make such remarks these cannot constitute blasphemy since they do not vilify God or the Prophet. This case led to the abolition of the crime of blasphemy in English law.