The Satanic Verses controversy
Encyclopedia
The Satanic Verses controversy was the heated and sometimes violent Muslim reaction to the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses
. Many Muslims accused Rushdie of blasphemy
or unbelief and in 1989 Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini
of Iran
issued a fatwa
ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. Numerous killings, attempted killings, and bombings resulted from Muslim anger over the novel.
The Iranian government backed the fatwa against Rushdie until 1998, when the government of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami
said the government 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" – despite this being the view of many Muslims – that no one should be free to "insult and malign Muslims" by disparaging the "honour of the Prophet" Muhammad
.
angered Indira Gandhi
because it seemed to suggest "that Mrs. Gandhi was responsible for the death of her husband through neglect." His 1983 novel 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."
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. 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." After the Ayatollah's fatwa however, he was accused by Iranian government of being "an inferior CIA agent". 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 (especially as translated into Arabic), "which Muslims found incredibly sacrilegious", and took to mean the book's author claimed verses of the Qur'an, in fact the whole book, was "the work of the Devil".
The title refers to an alleged incident in the ministry of the Prophet Muhammad
, when a few verses were supposedly spoken by Muhammad as part of the Qur'an and then subsequently withdrawn on the grounds that the devil had sent them, deceiving Muhammad into thinking they came from God. These "Satanic Verses
" are therefore not found in the Qur'an, but are described by Ibn Ishaq
in the first biography of Muhammad, and also appear in other biographies of the prophet's life. The disputed verses permitted prayers of intercession to be made to three pre-Islamic Meccan goddesses: Allāt
, Uzza
, and Manah
— a violation of the Islamic principle of monotheism
. The utterance and withdrawal of the so-called Satanic Verses forms an important subplot 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, however, was not "Satanic verses", but gharaniq ("birds") verses. The phrase 'Satanic verses' was unknown to Muslims, and was coined by Western academics specializing in the study of Middle Eastern culture
(most notably William Montgomery Watt
in his book Muhammed, Prophet and Statesman, according to scholar Daniel Pipes
).
Rushdie's depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, and several other elements of the novel, are also considered highly controversial or outright blasphemous. According to Islamic Studies scholar Anthony McRoy, these include the use of the name Mahound, a derogatory term for Muhammad used during the Crusades
; and the use of the term Jahilia, denoting the 'time of ignorance' before Islam, for the holy city of Mecca
. In addition, in Rushdie's novel a film star becomes the Angel Gibreel (Gabriel), while a character named Saladin
, (named after the great Muslim hero of the Crusades) becomes a devil. Also, the character of a fanatical Indian girl who leads her village on a fatal pilgrimage is called Ayesha
, which is also the name of the wife of Muhammad.
Perhaps most offensive to Muslims, in Rushdie's novel the brothel of the city of Jahilia is staffed by prostitutes who take the names of Muhammad's wives
. Since Muslims believe that the wives of the Prophet are 'the Mothers of all Believers', they esteem them.
Other issues many Muslims have found offensive include:
One observer (Daniel Pipes) identified other more general issues in the book likely to have angered pious Muslims:
s would be offended, call me names, and then I could defend myself in public… I honestly never expected anything like this."
The Satanic Verses was published by Viking Penguin on September 26, 1988. Upon its publication the book
garnered considerable critical acclaim in the author's home, the United Kingdom. On November 8, 1988 it received the Whitbread Award
for novel of the year, worth £20,000. According to one observer, "almost all the British book reviewers" were unaware of the book's connection to Islam because Rushdie has used the name Mahound instead of Muhammad for his chapter on Islam.
references. By October 1988 letters and phone calls began to come into Viking Penguin from Muslims angry with the book and demanding it be withdrawn. Before the end of the month the book was banned in India. In November 1988 it was also banned in Bangladesh
, Sudan
, and South Africa. By December 1988 it was also banned in Sri Lanka
. March 1989 saw it banned in Kenya
, Thailand
, Tanzania
, Indonesia
, and Singapore
. The last nation which banned the book was Venezuela
in June 1989. The only nation with a predominantly Muslim population where the novel remains legal is Turkey.
In the United States, the FBI was notified of 78 threats to bookstores in early March 1989, thought to be a small proportion of the total number. B. Dalton
bookstore chain received 30 threats in less than three hours. Bombings of book stores included two in Berkeley California. In New York, the office of the community newspaper The Riverdale Press was all but destroyed by firebombs in retaliation for an editorial defending the right to read the novel and criticizing the bookstores that pulled it from their shelves. But the United Kingdom was the country where violence against bookstores occurred most often and persisted the longest. Two large bookstores in Charing Cross
Road, London, (Collets and Dillons
) were bombed on April 9. In May, explosions went off in the town of High Wycombe
and again in London, on Kings Road
. Other bombings include one at a large London department store (Liberty's), in connection with the Penguin Bookshop inside the store, and at the Penguin store in York
. Unexploded devices were found at Penguin stores in Guildford
, Nottingham
, and Peterborough
.
The bombings meant that hardly a single bookstore sold Rushdie's novel openly in the UK. In the United States, it was unavailable in about one-third of the bookstores. In many others which carried the book, it was kept under the counter.
issued by Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini
, the Supreme Leader of Iran
, created a major international incident.
On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, a Shi'a Muslim scholar, issued a fatwa
calling for the death of Rushdie and his publishers. Khomeini is thought to have issued the fatwa after hearing about a 10,000-strong protest against Rushdie and his book in Islamabad, Pakistan, where six protesters were killed in an attack on the American Cultural Center.
Broadcast on Iran
ian radio, the judgement read:
Although Khomeini did not give the legal reasoning for his judgement, it is thought to be based on the ninth chapter of the Qur'an, called At-Tawba
, verse 61: "Some of them hurt the prophet by saying, 'He is all ears!' Say, 'It is better for you that he listens to you. He believes in God, and trusts the believers. He is a mercy for those among you who believe.' Those who hurt God's messenger have incurred a painful retribution."
Several days after the fatwa was declared Iranian officials offered a bounty for the killing of Rushdie, who was thus forced to live under police protection for the next nine years. On 7 March 1989, the United Kingdom and Iran
broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy.
In 1989, a man using the alias Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh, accidentally blew himself up along with two floors of a central London hotel while preparing a bomb intended to kill Rushdie.
In the mean time there were several attacks on those involved in the publishing of the book and who "were aware" of its "contents." Hitoshi Igarashi
, the Japanese translator of the book The Satanic Verses
, was stabbed to death on July 11, 1991. Two other translators of the book survived attempted assassinations. Ettore Capriolo, the Italian language
translator, was seriously injured in a stabbing the same month as his Japanese counterpart. Aziz Nesin
, the Turkish language translator, was the intended target in the events that led to the Sivas massacre
in July 1993, which resulted in the deaths of 37 people. William Nygaard
, the publisher in Norway, barely survived an attempted assassination in Oslo
in October 1993.
This "was relayed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran via official channels before being released to the press."
Author and scholar on Islam, Anthony McRoy said that Khomeini's interpretation of the Islamic law that led him to refuse the apology follows the same line of reasoning as the eighth- and ninth-century Muslim jurist Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`i
. In Al-Risala (Maliki Manual) 37.19 Crimes Against Islam, Shafi`i ruled that an "apostate is also killed unless he repents... Whoever abuses the Messenger of God … is to be executed, and his repentance is not accepted."
Other leaders, while supporting the fatwa, claimed that British Muslims were not allowed to carry out the fatwa themselves. Prominent amongst these were the Muslim Parliament
and its leader Dr Kalim Siddiqui
, and after his death in 1996, his successor, Ghayasuddin Siddiqui
. His support for the fatwa continued, even after the Iranian leadership said it would not pursue the fatwa, and re-iterated his support in 2000.
Meanwhile in America, the director of the Near East Studies Center at UCLA, George Sabbagh, told an interviewer that Khomeini was "completely within his rights" to call for Rushdie's death.
In May 1989 in Beirut, Lebanon, British citizen Jackie Mann
was abducted, "in response to Iran's fatwa against Salman Rushdie for the publication of book the Satanic Verses and more specifically, for his refuge and protection in the United Kingdom." He joined several Westerners held hostage
there. Two months earlier a photograph of three teachers held hostage was released by Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine
with the message that it "would take revenge against" all institutions and organization that insulted in one way or another "members of the Prophet Mohammed's family." The Iranian supported and financed radical Shia group Hezbollah is considered to be the actual perpetrator of the kidnappings.
Anthony McRoy claimed that that "In Islamic society a blasphemer is held in the same hostile contempt as a paedophile in the West. Just as few if any people in the West mourn the murder of a child molester, few Muslims mourn the killing of a blasphemer."
of free speech, freedom of religion
, and that Khomeini had no right to condemn to death a citizen of another country living in that country, but the death sentence was also criticized on Islam
ic grounds.
According to Bernard Lewis
, a death warrant without trial, defense, etc. violates Islamic jurisprudence. In Islamic Fiqh
, apostasy by a mentally sound adult male is indeed a capital crime. However, Fiqh also:
Other Islamic scholars outside of Iran took issue with the fact that the sentence was not passed by an Islamic court, or that it did not limit its "jurisdiction only [to] countries under Islamic law." Muhammad Hussan ad-Din, a theologian at Al-Azhar University
, argued "Blood must not be shed except after a trial [when the accused has been] given a chance to defend himself and repent." Abdallah al-Mushidd, head of Azhar's Fatwa Council stated "We must try the author in a legal fashion of Islam does not accept killing as a legal instrument."
The Islamic Jurisprudence Academy in Mecca urged that Rushdie be tried and, if found guilty, be given a chance to repent, (p. 93) and Ayatollah Mehdi Ruhani, head of the Shi'i community in Europe and a cousin of Khomeini, criticized Khomeini for 'respect[ing] neither international law nor that of Islam.'
There was also a question of the fatwa against Rushdie's publishers. According to Daniel Pipes: "The Sharia
clearly establishes that disseminating false information is not the same of expressing it. 'Transmitting blasphemy is not blasphemy' (naql al-kufr laysa kufr). In addition, the publishers were not Muslim and so could not be "sentenced under the Islamic laws of apostasy." If there was another legal justification for sentencing them to death, "Khomeini failed to provide" it.
The Islamic Republic's response to calls for a trial was to denounce its Islamic proponents as "deceitful." President Khomeini accused them of attempting to use religious law as "a flag under which they can crush revolutionary Islam."
However, some in Iran have continued to reaffirm the death sentence. In early 2005, Khomeini's fatwa was reaffirmed by Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage
to Mecca
. Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards
have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid. Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it, with Ruhollah Khomeini having died in 1989.
On February 14, 2006, the Iranian state news agency reported that the fatwa will remain in place permanently.
Salman Rushdie reported that he still receives a "sort of Valentine
's card" from Iran each year on February 14 letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him.
He was also quoted saying, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat."
while another British writer compared the Ayatollah Khomeini "with a familiar ghost from the past - one of those villainous Muslim clerics, a Faqir of Ipi
or a mad Mullah
, who used to be portrayed, larger than life, in popular histories of the British Empire." Media expressions of this included a banner headline in the popular British newspaper the Daily Mirror referring to Khomeini as "that Mad Mullah".
The Independent newspaper worried that Muslim book burning demonstrations were "following the example of the Inquisition
and Hitler
's National Socialists
", and that if Rushdie was killed, "it would be the first burning of a heretic
in Europe in two centuries." Peregrine Worsthorne of the Sunday Telegraph feared that with Europe's growing Muslim population, "Islamic fundamentalism
is rapidly growing into a much bigger threat of violence and intolerance than anything emanating from, say, the fascist National Front
; and a threat, moreover, infinitely more difficult to contain since it is virtually impossible to monitor, let alone stamp out ..."
On the Muslim side, the Iranian government saw the book as part of a British conspiracy against Islam. It broke diplomatic relations with UK on March 7, 1989 giving the explanation that "in the past two centuries Britain has been in the frontline of plots and treachery against Islam and Muslims", It accused the British of sponsoring Rushdie's book to use it as a political and cultural tact on earlier military plots that no longer worked. It also saw itself as the victor of the controversy, with the European Community countries capitulating under Iranian pressure. "When Europeans saw that their economic interests in Muslim countries could be damaged, they began to correct their position on the issue of the insulting book. Every official started to condemn the book in one way or another. When they realized that Iran's reaction, its breaking of diplomatic relations with London, could also include them, they quickly sent back their ambassadors to Tehran to prevent further Iranian reaction".
Although British bookseller W.H. Smith sold "a mere hundred copies a week of the book in mid-January 1989", it "flew off the shelves" following the fatwa. In America it sold an "unprecedented" five times more copies than the number two book, Star by Danielle Steel
, selling more than 750,000 copies of the book by May 1989. B. Dalton, a bookstore chain that decided not to stock the book for security reasons, changed its mind when it found the book "was selling so fast that even as we tried to stop it, it was flying off the shelves." Rushdie earned about $2 million within the first year of the book's publication, and the book is Viking's all-time best seller.
His wife, Marianne Wiggins
, reported that in the first few months following the fatwa the couple moved 56 times, once every three days. In late July Rushdie separated from Wiggins, "the tension of being at the center of an international controversy, and the irritations of spending all hours of the day together in seclusion", being too much for their "shaky" relationship.
Late the next year Rushdie declared, "I want to reclaim my life", and in December signed a declaration "affirming his Islamic faith and calling for Viking-Penguin, the publisher of The Satanic Verses, neither to issue the book in paperback nor to allow it to be translated." This also failed to move supporters of the fatwa and by mid 2005 Rushdie was condemning Islamic fundamentalism
as a
, Persian
or other languages for which the majority of mother tongue speakers are Muslims; it was never published or even sold in the countries where most Muslims lived; and was a work of fiction—a demanding, densely written novel
unlikely to appeal to the average reader.
Some of the explanations for the unprecedented rage unleashed against the book were that:
The last point also explains why one of the few groups to speak out in Muslim countries against Khomeini and for Rushdie's right to publish his book were other writers. Nobel prize winners Wole Soyinka
of Nigeria and Naguib Mahfouz
of Egypt, both attacked Khomeini, and both received death threats as a result.
Some writers did criticise Rushdie. British author Roald Dahl
called Rushdie's book sensationalist and Rushdie "a dangerous opportunist".
, Robert Runcie
, demanded that the government expand the Blasphemy Act
to cover other religions, including Islam.
Michael Walzer wrote that the response revealed an evolution of the meaning of blasphemy; it moved away from a crime against God and toward something more temporal.
Former United States president Jimmy Carter
, while condemning the threats and fatwa
against Rushdie, stated, "we have tended to promote him and his book with little acknowledgment that it is a direct insult to those millions of Moslems whose sacred beliefs have been violated and are suffering in restrained silence the added embarrassment of the Ayatollah's irresponsibility." He also held that Rushdie must have been aware of the response his book would evoke: "The author, a well-versed analyst of Moslem beliefs, must have anticipated a horrified reaction throughout the Islamic world." He saw a need to be
"sensitive to the concern and anger" of Muslims and thought severing diplomatic relations with Iran would be an "overreaction." Some rabbis, such as Immanuel Jakobovits
, chief rabbi
of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, opposed the book's publishing.
The Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, first published in 1988 and inspired in part by the life of Prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters...
. Many Muslims accused Rushdie of blasphemy
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
or unbelief and in 1989 Ayatollah
Ayatollah
Ayatollah is a high ranking title given to Usuli Twelver Shī‘ah clerics. Those who carry the title are experts in Islamic studies such as jurisprudence, ethics, and philosophy and usually teach in Islamic seminaries. The next lower clerical rank is Hojatoleslam wal-muslemin...
Ruhollah Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran...
of Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
issued a fatwa
Fatwa
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar. The person who issues 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 fatwa against Rushdie until 1998, when the government of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami
Mohammad Khatami
Sayyid Mohammad Khātamī is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, Shiite theologian and Reformist politician. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 3, 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture in both the 1980s and 1990s...
said the government no longer supported the killing of Rushdie.
The issue was said to have divided "Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
from Westerners
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
along the fault line of culture," and to have pitted a core Western value of freedom of expression
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
– that no one "should be killed, or face a serious threat of being killed, for what they say or write" – despite this being the view of many Muslims – that no one should be free to "insult and malign Muslims" by disparaging the "honour of the Prophet" Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
.
Previous controversies
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," and has been described as "a disaffected intellectual who criticises or makes fun of nearly everything". His second book Midnight's ChildrenMidnight's Children
Midnight's Children is a 1981 book by Salman Rushdie about India's transition from British colonialism to independence and the partition of India. It is considered an example of postcolonial literature and magical realism...
angered Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
because it seemed to suggest "that Mrs. Gandhi was responsible for the death of her husband through neglect." His 1983 novel Shame
Shame (novel)
Shame is Salman Rushdie's third novel, published in 1983. Like most of Rushdie's work, this book was written in the style of magic realism. On the face of it, Shame is a novel about Pakistan and about the people who ruled Pakistan. One of the main aims of the novel is to portray the lives of...
"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
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977, and prior to that, 4th President of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973. Bhutto was the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party — the largest and most influential political party in Pakistan— and served as its chairman until his...
) and his successor and executioner Raza Hyder (Zia ul-Haq)... 'The Virgin Ironpants'... has been identified as Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto was a democratic socialist who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996....
, a Prime Minister of Pakistan."
Positions Rushdie took as a committed leftist
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
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
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
, 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
Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi or "September 1942" 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.He seized power in a...
three years later. 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." After the Ayatollah's fatwa however, he was accused by Iranian government of being "an inferior CIA agent". 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.
Controversial elements of The Satanic Verses
The title refers to an alleged incident in the ministry of the Prophet Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
, when a few verses were supposedly spoken by Muhammad as part of the Qur'an and then subsequently withdrawn on the grounds that the devil had sent them, deceiving Muhammad into thinking they came from God. These "Satanic Verses
Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses was a purported incident where a small number of apparently pagan verses were temporarily included in the Qur'an by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, only to be later removed...
" are therefore not found in the Qur'an, but are described by Ibn Ishaq
Ibn Ishaq
Muḥammad ibn Isḥaq ibn Yasār ibn Khiyār was an Arab Muslim historian and hagiographer...
in the first biography of Muhammad, and also appear in other biographies of the prophet's life. The disputed verses permitted prayers of intercession to be made to three pre-Islamic Meccan goddesses: Allāt
Allāt
' or ' was a Pre-Islamic Arabian goddess who was one of the three chief goddesses of Mecca. She is mentioned in the Qur'an , which indicates that pre-Islamic Arabs considered her as one of the daughters of Allah along with Manāt and al-‘Uzzá....
, Uzza
Uzza
Al-Uzzá was one of the three chief goddesses of Arabian religion in pre-Islamic times and was worshiped as one of the daughters of Allah by the pre-Islamic arabs along with Allāt and Manāt. Al-‘Uzzá was also worshipped by the Nabataeans, who equated her with the Greek goddess Aphrodite Ourania...
, and Manah
Manah
' was one of the three chief goddesses of Mecca. The pre-Islamic Arabs believed Manāt to be the goddess of fate. She was known by the cognate name Manawat to the Nabataeans of Petra, who equated her with the Graeco-Roman goddess Nemesis and she was considered the wife of Hubal...
— a violation of the Islamic principle of monotheism
Monotheism
Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...
. The utterance and withdrawal of the so-called Satanic Verses forms an important subplot 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, however, was not "Satanic verses", but gharaniq ("birds") verses. The phrase 'Satanic verses' was unknown to Muslims, and was coined by Western academics specializing in the study of Middle Eastern culture
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
(most notably William Montgomery Watt
William Montgomery Watt
William Montgomery Watt was a Scottish historian, an Emeritus Professor in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh...
in his book Muhammed, Prophet and Statesman, according to scholar Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal...
).
Rushdie's depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, and several other elements of the novel, are also considered highly controversial or outright blasphemous. According to Islamic Studies scholar Anthony McRoy, these include the use of the name Mahound, a derogatory term for Muhammad used during the Crusades
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
; and the use of the term Jahilia, denoting the 'time of ignorance' before Islam, for the holy city of Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
. In addition, in Rushdie's novel a film star becomes the Angel Gibreel (Gabriel), while a character named Saladin
Saladin
Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was an Arabized Kurdish Muslim, who became the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He led Muslim and Arab opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...
, (named after the great Muslim hero of the Crusades) becomes a devil. Also, the character of a fanatical Indian girl who leads her village on a fatal pilgrimage is called Ayesha
Aisha
Aisha bint Abu Bakr also transcribed as was Muhammad's favorite wife...
, which is also the name of the wife of Muhammad.
Perhaps most offensive to Muslims, in Rushdie's novel the brothel of the city of Jahilia is staffed by prostitutes who take the names of Muhammad's wives
Muhammad's marriages
Muhammad's wives were the eleven or thirteen women married to the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Muslims refer to them as Mothers of the Believers . Muslims use the term prominently before or after referring to them as a sign of respect...
. Since Muslims believe that the wives of the Prophet are 'the Mothers of all Believers', they esteem them.
Other issues many Muslims have found offensive include:
- AbrahamAbrahamAbraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
is called a "bastard" for casting HagarHagar (Bible)Hagar , according to the Abrahamic faiths, was the second wife of Abraham, and the mother of his first son, Ishmael. Her story is recorded in the Book of Genesis, mentioned in Hadith, and alluded to in the Qur'an...
and IshmaelIshmaelIshmael is a figure in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, and was Abraham's first born child according to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ishmael was born of Abraham's marriage to Sarah's handmaiden Hagar...
in the desert. - A character in the book named Salman the Persian who serves as one of the Prophet's scribes, an apparent takeoff on the story found in a Tafsir (Anwar al-Tanzil wa Asrar al-Ta'wil) 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. Contemporary Muslims argue accounts of the story are unreliable, and in any case Ibn Abi Sarh later reconverted and became a good Muslim again after being captured and was spared the sword for his apostasy. Salman the Persian is also the name of one of the companions of the Prophet, another potential source of offense. In the dreams of one of the central characters (Gibreel Farishta) Salman is seen confiding to the poet Baal (one of the most vehement critics of Mohammed) that he has doubts about the veracity of the Prophet's revelations. Salman's suspicions gather momentum when he subtly changes some of the Prophets' sayings while writing them down, but his acts go unnoticed. Salman is also angry and disappointed when he realises that the Prophets' revelations have started taking on the form of increasingly oppressive rules and that he can sense opportunism in the timing of these revelations.
One observer (Daniel Pipes) identified other more general issues in the book likely to have angered pious Muslims:
- The 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 ...." This mixes up "Islamic law with its opposite and with the author's whimsy."
- As the prophet of Rushdie's novel lies dying, he is visited by the Goddess al-Lat, indicating either that al-Lat exists or the prophet thought she did.
- The angel Gibreel's vision of the Supreme Being is described 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."
- Regarding communalist violence in India, often religious in nature, a character in the book complains: "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."
Early reaction
Before the publication of The Satanic Verses the publisher received "warnings from the publisher's editorial consultant" that the book might be controversial. Later Rushdie would reflect upon the time when the book was about to be published while speaking to an interviewer, he said "I expected a few mullahMullah
Mullah is generally used to refer to a Muslim man, educated in Islamic theology and sacred law. The title, given to some Islamic clergy, is derived from the Arabic word مَوْلَى mawlā , meaning "vicar", "master" and "guardian"...
s would be offended, call me names, and then I could defend myself in public… I honestly never expected anything like this."
The Satanic Verses was published by Viking Penguin on September 26, 1988. Upon its publication the book
The Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, first published in 1988 and inspired in part by the life of Prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters...
garnered considerable critical acclaim in the author's home, the United Kingdom. On November 8, 1988 it received the Whitbread Award
1988 Whitbread Awards
-References:*...
for novel of the year, worth £20,000. According to one observer, "almost all the British book reviewers" were unaware of the book's connection to Islam because Rushdie has used the name Mahound instead of Muhammad for his chapter on Islam.
Muslim anger
In Islamic communities the novel began causing controversy almost at once because of what some Muslims considered blasphemousBlasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
references. By October 1988 letters and phone calls began to come into Viking Penguin from Muslims angry with the book and demanding it be withdrawn. Before the end of the month the book was banned in India. In November 1988 it was also banned in Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
, Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
, and South Africa. By December 1988 it was also banned in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
. March 1989 saw it banned in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, and Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
. The last nation which banned the book was Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
in June 1989. The only nation with a predominantly Muslim population where the novel remains legal is Turkey.
In the United States, the FBI was notified of 78 threats to bookstores in early March 1989, thought to be a small proportion of the total number. B. Dalton
B. Dalton
B. Dalton Bookseller was an American retail bookstore chain founded in 1966 by the Dayton's department store chain. Located primarily in shopping malls, B. Dalton competed primarily with Waldenbooks, and operated 798 stores at its peak...
bookstore chain received 30 threats in less than three hours. Bombings of book stores included two in Berkeley California. In New York, the office of the community newspaper The Riverdale Press was all but destroyed by firebombs in retaliation for an editorial defending the right to read the novel and criticizing the bookstores that pulled it from their shelves. But the United Kingdom was the country where violence against bookstores occurred most often and persisted the longest. Two large bookstores in Charing Cross
Charing Cross
Charing Cross denotes the junction of Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square in central London, England. It is named after the now demolished Eleanor cross that stood there, in what was once the hamlet of Charing. The site of the cross is now occupied by an equestrian...
Road, London, (Collets and Dillons
Dillons Booksellers
Dillons was a bookshop and subsequently a bookselling chain, based in the United Kingdom, which traded between 1932 and 1999.Founded by Una Dillon in 1932, Dillons was for most of its history most closely associated with its signature building on Gower Street in London, near University College...
) were bombed on April 9. In May, explosions went off in the town of High Wycombe
High Wycombe
High Wycombe , commonly known as Wycombe and formally called Chepping Wycombe or Chipping Wycombe until 1946,is a large town in Buckinghamshire, England. It is west-north-west of Charing Cross in London; this figure is engraved on the Corn Market building in the centre of the town...
and again in London, on Kings Road
Kings Road
King's Road or Kings Road, known popularly as The King's Road or The KR, is a major, well-known street stretching through Chelsea and Fulham, both in west London, England...
. Other bombings include one at a large London department store (Liberty's), in connection with the Penguin Bookshop inside the store, and at the Penguin store in York
York
York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...
. Unexploded devices were found at Penguin stores in Guildford
Guildford
Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
, Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
, and Peterborough
Peterborough
Peterborough is a cathedral city and unitary authority area in the East of England, with an estimated population of in June 2007. For ceremonial purposes it is in the county of Cambridgeshire. Situated north of London, the city stands on the River Nene which flows into the North Sea...
.
The bombings meant that hardly a single bookstore sold Rushdie's novel openly in the UK. In the United States, it was unavailable in about one-third of the bookstores. In many others which carried the book, it was kept under the counter.
Fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini
While there was already a considerable amount of protest by Muslims in the first months after the book's publishing, the fatwaFatwa
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar. The person who issues a fatwā...
issued by Ayatollah
Ayatollah
Ayatollah is a high ranking title given to Usuli Twelver Shī‘ah clerics. Those who carry the title are experts in Islamic studies such as jurisprudence, ethics, and philosophy and usually teach in Islamic seminaries. The next lower clerical rank is Hojatoleslam wal-muslemin...
Ruhollah Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran...
, the Supreme Leader of Iran
Supreme Leader of Iran
The Supreme Leader of Iran is the highest ranking political and religious authority in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The post was established by the constitution in accordance with the concept of Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists...
, created a major international incident.
On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, a Shi'a Muslim scholar, issued a fatwa
Fatwa
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar. The person who issues a fatwā...
calling for the death of Rushdie and his publishers. Khomeini is thought to have issued the fatwa after hearing about a 10,000-strong protest against Rushdie and his book in Islamabad, Pakistan, where six protesters were killed in an attack on the American Cultural Center.
Broadcast on Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian radio, the judgement read:
In the name of God the Almighty. We belong to God and to Him we shall return. I would like to inform all intrepid Muslims in the world that the author of the book Satanic Verses, which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur'an, and those publishers who were aware of its contents, are sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, where they find them, so that no one will dare to insult the Islamic sanctity. Whoever is killed on this path will be regarded as a martyr, God-willing.
In addition, if anyone has access to the author of the book but does not possess the power to execute him, he should point him out to the people so that he may be punished for his actions. May God's blessing be on you all. Rullah Musavi al-Khomeini.
Although Khomeini did not give the legal reasoning for his judgement, it is thought to be based on the ninth chapter of the Qur'an, called At-Tawba
At-Tawba
Surah At-Tawbah also known as al-Bara'ah "the Ultimatum" in many hadith is the ninth chapter of the Qur'an, with 129 verses. It is one of the last Madinan Suras. It is the only Sura of the Qur'an that does not begin with the bismillah...
, verse 61: "Some of them hurt the prophet by saying, 'He is all ears!' Say, 'It is better for you that he listens to you. He believes in God, and trusts the believers. He is a mercy for those among you who believe.' Those who hurt God's messenger have incurred a painful retribution."
Several days after the fatwa was declared Iranian officials offered a bounty for the killing of Rushdie, who was thus forced to live under police protection for the next nine years. On 7 March 1989, the United Kingdom and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy.
In 1989, a man using the alias Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh, accidentally blew himself up along with two floors of a central London hotel while preparing a bomb intended to kill Rushdie.
In the mean time there were several attacks on those involved in the publishing of the book and who "were aware" of its "contents." Hitoshi Igarashi
Hitoshi Igarashi
was a Japanese scholar of Arabic and Persian literature and history and the Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. He completed his doctoral programme in Islamic art at the University of Tokyo in 1976, and was research fellow at the Royal Academy of Iran until the Islamic...
, the Japanese translator of the book The Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, first published in 1988 and inspired in part by the life of Prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters...
, was stabbed to death on July 11, 1991. Two other translators of the book survived attempted assassinations. Ettore Capriolo, the Italian language
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
translator, was seriously injured in a stabbing the same month as his Japanese counterpart. Aziz Nesin
Aziz Nesin
Aziz Nesin was a famous Turkish writer and humorist of Crimean Tatar origin and author of more than 100 books.-Pseudonyms:...
, the Turkish language translator, was the intended target in the events that led to the Sivas massacre
Sivas massacre
The Sivas massacre refers to the events of July 2, 1993 which resulted in the deaths of 37 people, mostly Alevi intellectuals, and two hotel employees. Two people from the mob were also dead...
in July 1993, which resulted in the deaths of 37 people. William Nygaard
William Nygaard
William Nygaard is a retired Norwegian publisher who graduated with a degree in economics in 1967. He is also chairman of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.-Business career:...
, the publisher in Norway, barely survived an attempted assassination in Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
in October 1993.
Rushdie's apology
Taking a cue from Iranian President Ali Khamene'i (a former "favourite pupil" and long-time lieutenant of Khomeini), who suggested that if Rushdie "apologizes and disowns the book, people may forgive him", Rushdie issued "a carefully worded statement" the next day regrettingprofoundly the distress the publication has occasioned to the sincere followers of Islam. Living as we do in a world of many faiths, this experience has served to remind us that we must all be conscious of the sensibilities of others.
This "was relayed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran via official channels before being released to the press."
Refusal of Rushdie's apology
On February 19 Khomeini's office replied
The imperialist foreign media falsely alleged that the officials of the Islamic Republic have said the sentence of death on the author of The Satanic Verses will be retracted if he repents. Imam Khomeini has said:
This is denied 100%. Even if Salman Rushdie repents and become the most pious man of all time, it is incumbent on every Muslim to employ everything he has got, his life and wealth, to send him to Hell.
The Imam added:
If a non-Muslim becomes aware of Rushdie's whereabouts and has the ability to execute him quicker than Muslims, it is incumbent on Muslims to pay a reward or a fee in return for this action.
Author and scholar on Islam, Anthony McRoy said that Khomeini's interpretation of the Islamic law that led him to refuse the apology follows the same line of reasoning as the eighth- and ninth-century Muslim jurist Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`i
Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`i
Abū ʿAbdullāh Muhammad ibn Idrīs al-Shafiʿī was a Muslim jurist, who lived from 767 CE to 820 CE. He was active in juridical matters and his teaching eventually led to the Shafi'i school of fiqh named after him. Hence he is often called Imam al-Shafi'i...
. In Al-Risala (Maliki Manual) 37.19 Crimes Against Islam, Shafi`i ruled that an "apostate is also killed unless he repents... Whoever abuses the Messenger of God … is to be executed, and his repentance is not accepted."
Support for Khomeini's fatwa
In Britain, The Union of Islamic Students' Associations in Europe issued a statement offering its services to Khomeini. Despite incitement to murder being illegal in the United Kingdom, one London property developer told reporters, "If I see him, I will kill him straight away. Take my name and address. One day I will kill him."Other leaders, while supporting the fatwa, claimed that British Muslims were not allowed to carry out the fatwa themselves. Prominent amongst these were the Muslim Parliament
Muslim Parliament
The Muslim Parliament of Great Britain is a Muslim organization founded in 1992 in London by Dr Kalim Siddiqui, Director of the Muslim Institute, based on a proposal published in July 1990 under the title The Muslim Manifesto. The Muslim Parliament consists mainly of appointees, including women and...
and its leader Dr Kalim Siddiqui
Kalim Siddiqui
Kalim Siddiqui, Ph.D. was an Indian British writer and Islamic activist.-Early life:Siddiqui was born in the village of Dondi Lohara, CP, British India on September 15, 1931...
, and after his death in 1996, his successor, Ghayasuddin Siddiqui
Ghayasuddin Siddiqui
Ghayasuddin Siddiqui is an academic and political activist. He was born in Delhi, India, migrated to Pakistan in late 1947 and moved to the UK in 1964....
. His support for the fatwa continued, even after the Iranian leadership said it would not pursue the fatwa, and re-iterated his support in 2000.
Meanwhile in America, the director of the Near East Studies Center at UCLA, George Sabbagh, told an interviewer that Khomeini was "completely within his rights" to call for Rushdie's death.
In May 1989 in Beirut, Lebanon, British citizen Jackie Mann
Jackie Mann
Jackie Mann DFM was a British former RAF fighter pilot in the "Battle of Britain", who in later life was kidnapped by Islamic Jihadist terrorists in Lebanon in May 1989, and held hostage for more than two years.- Early life :...
was abducted, "in response to Iran's fatwa against Salman Rushdie for the publication of book the Satanic Verses and more specifically, for his refuge and protection in the United Kingdom." He joined several Westerners held hostage
Lebanon hostage crisis
The Lebanon hostage crisis refers to the systematic kidnapping in Lebanon of 96 foreign hostages of 21 national origins – mostly American and western European – between 1982 and 1992...
there. Two months earlier a photograph of three teachers held hostage was released by Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine
Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine
Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine was a Lebanese radical Shia group that claimed credit for the January 24, 1987 abduction of three American and one Indian professors – Alann Steen, Jesse Turner, Robert Pohill, Mithal Eshwar Singh – from Beirut University College in West Beirut...
with the message that it "would take revenge against" all institutions and organization that insulted in one way or another "members of the Prophet Mohammed's family." The Iranian supported and financed radical Shia group Hezbollah is considered to be the actual perpetrator of the kidnappings.
Anthony McRoy claimed that that "In Islamic society a blasphemer is held in the same hostile contempt as a paedophile in the West. Just as few if any people in the West mourn the murder of a child molester, few Muslims mourn the killing of a blasphemer."
On Islamic grounds
In the West, Khomeini's fatwa was condemned on the grounds that it violated the universal human rightsHuman rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
of free speech, freedom of religion
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
, and that Khomeini had no right to condemn to death a citizen of another country living in that country, but the death sentence was also criticized on Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic grounds.
According to Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...
, a death warrant without trial, defense, etc. violates Islamic jurisprudence. In Islamic Fiqh
Fiqh
Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists....
, apostasy by a mentally sound adult male is indeed a capital crime. However, Fiqh also:
... lays down procedures according to which a person accused of an offense is to be brought to trial, confronted with his accuser, and given the opportunity to defend himself. A judge will then give a verdict and if he finds the accused guilty, pronounce sentence…
Even the most rigorous and extreme of the classical jurist only require a Muslim to kill anyone who insults the Prophet in his hearing and in his presence. They say nothing about a hired killing for a reported insult in a distant country.
Other Islamic scholars outside of Iran took issue with the fact that the sentence was not passed by an Islamic court, or that it did not limit its "jurisdiction only [to] countries under Islamic law." Muhammad Hussan ad-Din, a theologian at Al-Azhar University
Al-Azhar University
Al-Azhar University is an educational institute in Cairo, Egypt. Founded in 970~972 as a madrasa, it is the chief centre of Arabic literature and Islamic learning in the world. It is the oldest degree-granting university in Egypt. In 1961 non-religious subjects were added to its curriculum.It is...
, argued "Blood must not be shed except after a trial [when the accused has been] given a chance to defend himself and repent." Abdallah al-Mushidd, head of Azhar's Fatwa Council stated "We must try the author in a legal fashion of Islam does not accept killing as a legal instrument."
The Islamic Jurisprudence Academy in Mecca urged that Rushdie be tried and, if found guilty, be given a chance to repent, (p. 93) and Ayatollah Mehdi Ruhani, head of the Shi'i community in Europe and a cousin of Khomeini, criticized Khomeini for 'respect[ing] neither international law nor that of Islam.'
There was also a question of the fatwa against Rushdie's publishers. According to Daniel Pipes: "The Sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
clearly establishes that disseminating false information is not the same of expressing it. 'Transmitting blasphemy is not blasphemy' (naql al-kufr laysa kufr). In addition, the publishers were not Muslim and so could not be "sentenced under the Islamic laws of apostasy." If there was another legal justification for sentencing them to death, "Khomeini failed to provide" it.
The Islamic Republic's response to calls for a trial was to denounce its Islamic proponents as "deceitful." President Khomeini accused them of attempting to use religious law as "a flag under which they can crush revolutionary Islam."
Questions of political motivation
Some speculate that the fatwa (or at least the reaffirmation of the death threat four days later) was issued with motives other than a sense of duty to protect Islam by punishing blasphemy/apostasy. Namely:- To divide Muslims from the West by "starkly highlight[ing] the conflicting political and intellectual traditions" of the two civilizations. Khomeini had often warned Muslims of the dangers of the West - "the agents of imperialism [who] are busy in every corner of the Islamic world drawing our youth away from us with their evil propaganda." He knew from news reports the book was already rousing the anger of Muslims.
- To distract the attention of his Iranian countrymen from his capitulation seven months earlier to a truce with IraqIraqIraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
(20 July 1988) ending the long and bloody Iran–Iraq War, (a truce Iraq would have eagerly given him six years and hundreds of thousands of lives earlier), and strengthen the revolutionary ardour of Iranians worn down by the bloodshed and privation of that war. According to journalist Robin Wright, "as the international furor grew, Khomeini declared that the book had been a `godsend` that had helped Iran out of a `naive foreign policy`".
- To win back the interest in and support for the Islamic RevolutionIranian RevolutionThe Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
among the 90% of the population of the Muslim world that was Sunni, rather than Shia like Khomeini. The Iran–Iraq War had also alienated Sunni, who not only were offended by its bloodshed, but tended to favor Iran's Sunni-led opponent, Iraq. At least one observer speculated that Khomeini's choice of the issue of disrespect for the Prophet MuhammadMuhammadMuhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
was a particularly shrewd tactic, as Sunni were inclined to suspect Shia of being more interested in the Imams AliAli' |Ramaḍān]], 40 AH; approximately October 23, 598 or 600 or March 17, 599 – January 27, 661).His father's name was Abu Talib. Ali was also the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and ruled over the Islamic Caliphate from 656 to 661, and was the first male convert to Islam...
and Husayn ibn AliHusayn ibn AliHussein ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib was the son of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib and Fātimah Zahrā...
than in the Prophet.
- To steal the thunder of Khomeini's two least favorite enemy states, Saudi ArabiaSaudi ArabiaThe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
and the United States, who were basking in the glory of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. This withdrawal, seen by many as a great victory of Islamic faith over an atheist superpower, was made possible by billions of dollars in aid to the Afghan mujahideen by those two countries. Khomeini issued the fatwa on Feb. 14 1989. The next day came the official announcement of the completion of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, lost in the news cycle of the fatwa.
- To gain the upper hand from Saudi Arabia in the struggle for international leadership of the Muslim world. Each led rivals blocs of international institutions and media networks, and "the Saudi government, it should be remembered, had led the anti-Rushdie campaign for months." Unlike the more conservative Saudi Arabia, however, Iran was ideologically and militantly anti-western and could take a more militant stand outside of international law.
Questions of personal motivation
- Despite claims by Islamic Republic officials that "Rushdie's book did not insult Iran or Iranian leaders" and so they had no selfish personal motivation to attack the book, the book does include an eleven-page sketch of Khomeini's stay in Paris that could well be considered an insult to the Imam. It describes him as having "grown monstrous, lying in the palace forecourt with his mouth yawning open at the gates; as the people march through the gates he swallows them whole." In the words of one observer, "If this is not an insult, Khomeini was far more tolerant than one might suppose",
Attempts to revoke the fatwa
On September 24, 1998, as a precondition to the restoration of diplomatic relations with Britain, the Iranian government, then headed by moderate Muhammad Khatami, gave a public commitment that it would "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie."However, some in Iran have continued to reaffirm the death sentence. In early 2005, Khomeini's fatwa was reaffirmed by Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage
Hajj
The Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is one of the largest pilgrimages in the world, and is the fifth pillar of Islam, a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so...
to Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
. Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
The Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution , often called Revolutionary Guards, is a branch of Iran's military, founded after the Iranian revolution...
have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid. Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it, with Ruhollah Khomeini having died in 1989.
On February 14, 2006, the Iranian state news agency reported that the fatwa will remain in place permanently.
Salman Rushdie reported that he still receives a "sort of Valentine
Valentine's Day
Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496...
's card" from Iran each year on February 14 letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him.
He was also quoted saying, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat."
Social and political fallout
One of the immediate consequences of the fatwa was a worsening of Islamic-Western relations.Heightened tension
Rushdie lamented that the controversy fed the Western stereotype of "the backward, cruel, rigid Muslim, burning books and threatening to kill the blasphemer",while another British writer compared the Ayatollah Khomeini "with a familiar ghost from the past - one of those villainous Muslim clerics, a Faqir of Ipi
Faqir of Ipi
Faqir of Ipi born Mirza Ali Khan was a Pashtun from today's North-Waziristan Pakistan, Federally Administrated Tribal Areas. His followers addressed him as 'Haji Sahib'...
or a mad Mullah
Mohammed Abdullah Hassan
Sayyīd Muhammad `Abd Allāh al-Hasan was a Somali religious and patriotic leader...
, who used to be portrayed, larger than life, in popular histories of the British Empire." Media expressions of this included a banner headline in the popular British newspaper the Daily Mirror referring to Khomeini as "that Mad Mullah".
The Independent newspaper worried that Muslim book burning demonstrations were "following the example of the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
and Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's National Socialists
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
", and that if Rushdie was killed, "it would be the first burning of a heretic
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
in Europe in two centuries." Peregrine Worsthorne of the Sunday Telegraph feared that with Europe's growing Muslim population, "Islamic fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism is a term used to describe religious ideologies seen as advocating a return to the "fundamentals" of Islam: the Quran and the Sunnah. Definitions of the term vary. According to Christine L...
is rapidly growing into a much bigger threat of violence and intolerance than anything emanating from, say, the fascist National Front
British National Front
The National Front is a far right, white-only political party whose major political activities took place during the 1970s and 1980s. Its popularity peaked in the 1979 general election, when it received 191,719 votes ....
; and a threat, moreover, infinitely more difficult to contain since it is virtually impossible to monitor, let alone stamp out ..."
On the Muslim side, the Iranian government saw the book as part of a British conspiracy against Islam. It broke diplomatic relations with UK on March 7, 1989 giving the explanation that "in the past two centuries Britain has been in the frontline of plots and treachery against Islam and Muslims", It accused the British of sponsoring Rushdie's book to use it as a political and cultural tact on earlier military plots that no longer worked. It also saw itself as the victor of the controversy, with the European Community countries capitulating under Iranian pressure. "When Europeans saw that their economic interests in Muslim countries could be damaged, they began to correct their position on the issue of the insulting book. Every official started to condemn the book in one way or another. When they realized that Iran's reaction, its breaking of diplomatic relations with London, could also include them, they quickly sent back their ambassadors to Tehran to prevent further Iranian reaction".
Book sales
Danielle Steel
Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel , better known as Danielle Steel, is an American romantic novelist and author of mainstream dramas....
, selling more than 750,000 copies of the book by May 1989. B. Dalton, a bookstore chain that decided not to stock the book for security reasons, changed its mind when it found the book "was selling so fast that even as we tried to stop it, it was flying off the shelves." Rushdie earned about $2 million within the first year of the book's publication, and the book is Viking's all-time best seller.
Intimidation
However, the campaign and fatwa have had more "lasting importance", in intimidating individual "Muslim freethinkers and non-Muslim critics of Islam." Belgium-based writer Koenraad Elst has compiled a long list of civilians killed or imprisoned, death threats made, fines levied, products withdrawn, for actions following the fatwa that were deemed blasphemous to Islam or insulting to Muslims.Rushdie
The author of the book himself was not killed or injured as many militants wished, but visibly frustrated by a life locked in 24-hour armed guard - alternately defiant against his would-be killers and attempting overtures of reconciliation against the death threat. A week after the death threat, and after his unsuccessful apology to the Iranian government, Rushdie described succumbing to `a curious lethargy, the soporific torpor that overcomes ... while under attack`; then, a couple of weeks after that, wrote a poem vowing `not to shut up` but 'to sing on, in spite of attacks.' But in June, following the death of Khomeini, he asked his supporters "to tone down their criticism of Iran."His wife, Marianne Wiggins
Marianne Wiggins
Marianne Wiggins is an American author. She is noted for the unusual characters and storylines in her novels. She has won the Whiting Writers' Award, an NEA award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize.- Biography :...
, reported that in the first few months following the fatwa the couple moved 56 times, once every three days. In late July Rushdie separated from Wiggins, "the tension of being at the center of an international controversy, and the irritations of spending all hours of the day together in seclusion", being too much for their "shaky" relationship.
Late the next year Rushdie declared, "I want to reclaim my life", and in December signed a declaration "affirming his Islamic faith and calling for Viking-Penguin, the publisher of The Satanic Verses, neither to issue the book in paperback nor to allow it to be translated." This also failed to move supporters of the fatwa and by mid 2005 Rushdie was condemning Islamic fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism is a term used to describe religious ideologies seen as advocating a return to the "fundamentals" of Islam: the Quran and the Sunnah. Definitions of the term vary. According to Christine L...
as a
... project of tyranny and unreason which wishes to freeze a certain view of Islamic culture in time and silence the progressive voices in the Muslim world calling for a free and prosperous future. ... along comes 9/11, and now many people say that, in hindsight, the fatwa was the prologue and this is the main event.
Muslim
The passionate international rage of Muslims towards the book surprised many Western readers because the book was written in English, not Arabic, UrduUrdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
or other languages for which the majority of mother tongue speakers are Muslims; it was never published or even sold in the countries where most Muslims lived; and was a work of fiction—a demanding, densely written novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
unlikely to appeal to the average reader.
Some of the explanations for the unprecedented rage unleashed against the book were that:
- Rushdie was living in the West and ought to be setting a good example for Islam and not siding "with the Orientalists."
- Translations of the book's title and some of the text into UrduUrduUrdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
, ArabicArabic languageArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
and PersianPersian languagePersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, made the book sound more offensive than it was. The phrase "verses" was translated as "ayat", a term used only for verses of the Qur'an, leading Muslims to believe Rushdie's book called the Qur'an itself satanic, rather than two excised verses. - The view of many Muslims was that "Rushdie has portrayed the prophet of Islam as a brothel keeper." "Rushdie accuses the prophet, particularly Muhammad of being like prostitutes." "all who pray are sons of whores" "The Prophet's wives are portrayed as women of the street, his homes as a public brothel and his companions as bandits." The book, in fact, portrays prostitutes who "had each assumed the identity of one of Mahound's wives."
- Belief that fictional elements of the novel were not flights of imagination but lies. Complaints included that it was "neither a critical appraisal nor a piece of historical research", that the novel failed to rely on "scientific and logical arguments", its "lack of scientific, accurate or objective methods of research", "unfounded lies", not being "serious or scientific", "a total distortion of historical facts", being "not at all an objective or scientific opinion.".
- Unfamiliarity with the concept of free speech. The belief among many Muslims in or from the Middle East is that every country "has ... laws that prohibits any publications or utterances that tend to ridicule or defame Islam." It followed that permission to publish a book that ridiculed or defamed Islam showed an anti-Islamic bias in those countries that permit publication. Although not enforced, and abolished completely in 2008, the United Kingdom had laws prohibiting blasphemy against the Christian religion.Blasphemy law in the United KingdomThis article describes the blasphemy law in the United Kingdom.-England and Wales:The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. See the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006....
- The view of many Muslims that Britain, America and other Western countries are engaged in a war against IslamWar on IslamWar against Islam, War on Islam or Attack on Islam, is a coined term to describe a perceived campaign to harm, weaken or even annihilate the societal system of Islam, using military, economic, social and cultural means...
and what might on the surface appear to be the product of the imagination of an individual iconoclast author was actually a conspiracy on a national or transnational scale. Then Iranian president Akbar Hashemi RafsanjaniAkbar Hashemi RafsanjaniAyatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is an influential Iranian politician and writer, who was the fourth President of Iran. He was a member of the Assembly of Experts until his resignation in 2011...
, for example, explained the alleged historical roots of the Rushdie book in a broadcast on Radio Tehran:
Whoever is familiar with the history of colonialism and the Islamic world knows that whenever they wanted to get a foothold in a place, the first thing they did in order to clear their paths -- whether overtly or covertly -- was to undermine the people's genuine Islamic morals.
and claimed an unnamed British foreign secretary once told the British parliament, "So long as the Qur'an is revered by Muslims, we will not be able to consolidate a foothold among the Muslims."
- Campaign by the international Islamist group Jamaat-e-IslamiJamaat-e-IslamiThis article is about Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. For other organizations of similar name see Jamaat-e-Islami The Jamaat-e-Islami , is a Pro-Muslim political party in Pakistan...
in retaliation for Rushdie's satire of them in an earlier book ShameShame (novel)Shame is Salman Rushdie's third novel, published in 1983. Like most of Rushdie's work, this book was written in the style of magic realism. On the face of it, Shame is a novel about Pakistan and about the people who ruled Pakistan. One of the main aims of the novel is to portray the lives of...
. In Britain the group was represented by the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs." - Among second generation Muslims immigrants in UK and elsewhere, a decline in interest in universalist "white Left" anti-racist/anti-imperialist politics, and rise in identity politicsIdentity politicsIdentity politics are political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance...
with its focus on the "defense of values and beliefs" of Muslim identity.
Western mainstream
Despite passionate intensity of Muslim feeling on the issue no Western government banned the Satanic Verses. This is primarily because most Western governments explicitly or implicitly allow for freedom of expression, which includes forbidding censorship in the vast majority of cases. Western attitudes regarding freedom of expression differ from those in the Arab world because:- Westerners are less likely to be shocked by ridicule of religious figures. "Taboo and sacrilege are virtually dead in the West. Blasphemy is an old story and can no longer shock." Examples of movies and books that aroused little or no protest in the west despite their blasphemy: Joseph HellerJoseph HellerJoseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US servicemen during World War II...
's God Knows, which turned "Biblical stories into pornographic fare"; Even The Protocols of the Elders of ZionThe Protocols of the Elders of ZionThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fraudulent, antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for achieving global domination. It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the twentieth century...
, a book that was not only offensive and untrue but arguably very dangerous, having inspired killing of Jews in Russia and contributed to Nazi ideology, was "freely available in the west". On the other hand in 1977, Denis Lemon, the editor of Gay NewsGay NewsGay News was a pioneering fortnightly newspaper in the United Kingdom founded in June 1972 in a collaboration between former members of the Gay Liberation Front and members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality...
, was found guilty of Blasphemy in England. His newspaper had published James KirkupJames KirkupJames Falconer Kirkup, FRSL was a prolific English poet, translator and travel writer. He was brought up in South Shields, and educated at South Shields Secondary School and Durham University. He wrote over 30 books, including autobiographies, novels and plays...
's poem The Love that Dares to Speak its NameThe Love that Dares to Speak its NameThe Love that Dares to Speak its Name is a controversial poem by James Kirkup.It is written from the viewpoint of a Roman centurion who is graphically described having sex with Jesus after his crucifixion, and also claims that Jesus had had sex with numerous disciples, guards, and even Pontius...
, which allegedly vilified ChristChristChrist is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
and his life.
- The idea widely accepted among writers that provocation in literature is not a right but is a duty, an important calling: "it is perhaps in the nature of modern art to be offensive ... in this century if we are not willing to risk giving offense, we have no claim to the title of artists." Rushdie himself said: "I had spent my entire life as a writer in opposition, and indeed conceived the writer's role as including the function of antagonist to the state."
The last point also explains why one of the few groups to speak out in Muslim countries against Khomeini and for Rushdie's right to publish his book were other writers. Nobel prize winners Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...
of Nigeria and Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie...
of Egypt, both attacked Khomeini, and both received death threats as a result.
Some writers did criticise Rushdie. British author Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, fighter pilot and screenwriter.Born in Wales to Norwegian parents, he served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, in which he became a flying ace and intelligence agent, rising to the rank of Wing Commander...
called Rushdie's book sensationalist and Rushdie "a dangerous opportunist".
Western religious figures
Most religious figures in the United States and United Kingdom shared the aversion to blasphemy of pious Muslims (if not as intensely) and did not defend Rushdie like their secular compatriots. The Archbishop of CanterburyArchbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...
, Robert Runcie
Robert Runcie
Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie, Baron Runcie, PC, MC was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1980 to 1991.-Early life:...
, demanded that the government expand the Blasphemy Act
Blasphemy law in the United Kingdom
This article describes the blasphemy law in the United Kingdom.-England and Wales:The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. See the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006....
to cover other religions, including Islam.
Michael Walzer wrote that the response revealed an evolution of the meaning of blasphemy; it moved away from a crime against God and toward something more temporal.
Today we are concerned for our pain and sometimes, for other people's. Blasphemy has become an offense against the faithful -- in much the same way as pornography is an offense against the innocent and the virtuous. Given this meaning, blasphemy is an ecumenical crime and so it is not surprising ... that Christians and Jews should join Muslims in calling Salman Rushdie's [book] a blasphemous book.
Former United States president Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
, while condemning the threats and fatwa
Fatwa
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar. The person who issues a fatwā...
against Rushdie, stated, "we have tended to promote him and his book with little acknowledgment that it is a direct insult to those millions of Moslems whose sacred beliefs have been violated and are suffering in restrained silence the added embarrassment of the Ayatollah's irresponsibility." He also held that Rushdie must have been aware of the response his book would evoke: "The author, a well-versed analyst of Moslem beliefs, must have anticipated a horrified reaction throughout the Islamic world." He saw a need to be
"sensitive to the concern and anger" of Muslims and thought severing diplomatic relations with Iran would be an "overreaction." Some rabbis, such as Immanuel Jakobovits
Immanuel Jakobovits
Immanuel Jakobovits, Baron Jakobovits, Kt was the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1967 to 1991. His successor is the present Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks.-Biography:...
, chief rabbi
Chief Rabbi
Chief Rabbi is a title given in several countries to the recognized religious leader of that country's Jewish community, or to a rabbinic leader appointed by the local secular authorities...
of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, opposed the book's publishing.
1988
- September 26, 1988: The novel is published in the UK.
- Khushwant SinghKhushwant SinghKhushwant Singh is a prominent Indian novelist and journalist. Singh's weekly column, "With Malice towards One and All", carried by several Indian newspapers, is among the most widely-read columns in the country....
, while reviewing the book in Illustrated Weekly, proposed a ban on "Satanic Verses", apprehending the reaction it may evoke among people. - October 5, 1988: India bans the novel's importation, after Indian parliamentarian and editor of the monthly magazine "Muslim India" Syed Shahabuddin petitioned the government of Rajiv GandhiRajiv GandhiRajiv Ratna Gandhi was the sixth Prime Minister of India . He took office after his mother's assassination on 31 October 1984; he himself was assassinated on 21 May 1991. He became the youngest Prime Minister of India when he took office at the age of 40.Rajiv Gandhi was the elder son of Indira...
to ban the book. In 1993 Syed Shahabuddin tried unsuccessfully to ban another book (Ram SwarupRam SwarupRam Swarup , , born Ram Swarup Agarwal, was an independent Hindu thinker and prolific author. His works took a critical stance against Christianity, Islam and Communism. His work has influenced other Indian writers.- Life :He graduated in Economics at Delhi University in 1941...
's "Hindu View of Christianity and Islam"). - October 1988: Death threats against Rushdie compel him to cancel trips and sometimes take a bodyguard. Letter writing campaign to Viking Press in America brings "tens of thousands of menacing letters."
- October 20, 1988: Union of Muslim Organisations of the UK writes the British government pressing for a ban of The Satanic Verse on grounds of blasphemy.
- 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 Saudi ArabiaSaudi ArabiaThe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, EgyptEgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, SomaliaSomaliaSomalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
, BangladeshBangladeshBangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
, SudanSudanSudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
, Malaysia, IndonesiaIndonesiaIndonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, and QatarQatarQatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally Dawlat Qaṭar, is a sovereign Arab state, located in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its...
. - December 2, 1988: First book burning of The Satanic Verses in UK. 7000 Muslims attend rally burning the book in Bolton. Little press coverage.
1989
- January 14, 1989: A copy of the book burned in Bradford. Extensive media coverage and debate. Some support from non-Muslims.
- January 1989: Islamic Defense Council demands that Penguin BooksPenguin BooksPenguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
apologise, withdraw the novel, destroy any extant copies, and never reprint it. - February 12, 1989: Six people are killed and 100 injured when 10,000 attack the American Cultural Center in Islamabad, Pakistan protesting against Rushdie and his book.
- February 13, 1989: One person is killed and over 100 injured in anti-Rushdie riots in Srinagar, Jammu and KashmirJammu and KashmirJammu and Kashmir is the northernmost state of India. It is situated mostly in the Himalayan mountains. Jammu and Kashmir shares a border with the states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south and internationally with the People's Republic of China to the north and east and the...
. - February 14, 1989: Ayatollah Ruhollah KhomeiniRuhollah KhomeiniGrand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran...
of IranIranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
issues a fatwa calling on all Muslims to execute all those involved in the publication of the novel; the 15 KhordadKhordadKhordad is the 3rd month of the Iranian civil calendar of 1925.khordad has 31 days and begins on May and ends on June. Khordad is the 3rd month of spring....
Foundation, an Iranian religious foundation or bonyadBonyadBonyads are charitable trusts in Iran that play a significant role in Iran's non-petroleum economy, controlling an estimated 20% of Iran's GDP. Exempt from taxes, they have been called "bloated", and "a major weakness of Iran’s economy", and criticized for reaping "huge subsidies from government",...
, offers a reward of $US1 million or 200 million rials for the murder of Rushdie. - February 16, 1989: Various armed Islamist groups, such as Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp and Hezbollah of Lebanon, express their enthusiasm to "carry out the Imam's decree." Rushdie enters the protection program of the British government.
- February 17, 1989: Iranian leader Ali KhameneiAli KhameneiAyatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
says Rushdie could be pardoned if he apologizes. - 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".
- February 19, 1989: Khomeini issues edict saying no apology or contrition by Rushdie could lift his death sentence.
- February 22, 1989: The novel is published in the U.S.A.; major bookstore chains Barnes and Noble and WaldenbooksWaldenbooksWaldenbooks , operated by the Walden Book Company, Inc., was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain and a subsidiary of Borders Group. The chain also ran a video game and software chain under the name Waldensoftware as well as a children's edutainment chain under Walden Kids...
, 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, MaharashtraMaharashtraMaharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...
, India starts to cause considerable property damage and police open fire. - February 28, 1989: Two bookstores in Berkeley, CaliforniaBerkeley, CaliforniaBerkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, USA, are firebombed for selling the novel. - February 28, 1989: 1989 firebombing of the Riverdale Press1989 firebombing of the Riverdale PressThe 1989 firebombing of the Riverdale Press was an attack in which two firebombs were thrown at the offices of a weekly newspaper, the Riverdale Press, in the Riverdale community of the Bronx, New York City on Feb. 28, 1989...
: The offices of the Riverdale PressRiverdale PressFounded in 1950 by David A. Stein, The Riverdale Press is a weekly newspaper that covers the Northwest Bronx neighborhoods of Riverdale, Kingsbridge, Kingsbridge Heights and Van Cortlandt Village. It is one of a handful of weeklies to win a Pulitzer Prize....
, a weekly newspaper in the BronxThe BronxThe Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
, is destroyed by firebombs. A caller to 911 says the bombing was in retaliation for an editorial defending the right to read the novel and criticizing the chain stores that stopped selling it. - March 7, 1989: Iran breaks diplomatic relations with Britain.
- March 1989: The Organisation 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 StevensCat StevensYusuf Islam , commonly known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, philanthropist, and prominent convert to Islam....
) indicates his 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 denied giving support to the fatwa. For more on this topic see Cat Stevens' comments about Salman RushdieCat Stevens' comments about Salman RushdieFollowing Ayatollah Khomeini's February 14, 1989 death threat fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, convert to Islam and recording artist Yusuf Islam, previously known as Cat Stevens, made statements that were interpreted as endorsing the killing of Rushdie... - May 27, 1989: 15,000 to 20,000 Muslims gather in Parliament Square in London burning Rushdie in effigy and calling for the novel's banning.
- June 3, 1989: Khomeini dies.
- July 31, 1989: The BBC broadcasts Tony HarrisonTony HarrisonTony Harrison is an English poet and playwright. He is noted for controversial works such as the poem V and Fram, as well as his versions of ancient Greek tragedies, including the Oresteia and Hecuba...
's poem The Blasphemers' Banquet in which Harrison defends Rushdie by likening him to MolièreMolièreJean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
, VoltaireVoltaireFrançois-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
, Omar KhayyamOmar KhayyámOmar Khayyám was aPersian polymath: philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, climatology and theology....
and Byron.
1990
- 1990: Rushdie apologised to Muslims.
- 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.
- Dec. 24, 1990: Rushdie signs a declaration affirming his Islamic faith and calls for Viking-Penguin, the publisher of The Satanic Verses, neither to issue the book in paperback nor to allow it to be translated.
1991
- July 1991: Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel's Japanese translator, is stabbed to death; and Ettore Capriolo, its Italian translator, is seriously wounded.
1993-1994
- July 2, 1993: Thirty-seven Turkish intellectuals and locals participating in the Pir Sultan AbdalPir Sultan AbdalPir Sultan Abdal was a legendary Turkish Alevi poet, whose direct and clear language as well as the richness of his imagination and the beauty of his verses led him to become loved among the Turkish people. Pir Sultan Abdal reflected the social, cultural and religious life of the people; he was a...
Literary Festival, die when the conference hotel in Sivas, TurkeySivas massacreThe Sivas massacre refers to the events of July 2, 1993 which resulted in the deaths of 37 people, mostly Alevi intellectuals, and two hotel employees. Two people from the mob were also dead...
, is burnt down by a mob of radical islamistsIslamismIslamism also , lit., "Political Islam" is set of ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system. Islamism is a controversial term, and definitions of it sometimes vary...
. Participating in the conference was Aziz NesinAziz NesinAziz Nesin was a famous Turkish writer and humorist of Crimean Tatar origin and author of more than 100 books.-Pseudonyms:...
, the Turkish translator of Satanic Verse, who the mob demanded be handed over for summary execution. The mob set the hotel alight when Nesin was not turned over. Nesin escaped the fire and survived. - August 11, 1993: Rushdie makes a rare public appearance at U2U2U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
's concert in Wembley Stadium on their Zoo TV TourZoo TV TourThe Zoo TV Tour was a worldwide concert tour by rock band U2. Staged in support of their 1991 album Achtung Baby, the tour visited arenas and stadiums from 1992 through 1993...
in London. BonoBonoPaul David Hewson , most commonly known by his stage name Bono , is an Irish singer, musician, and humanitarian best known for being the main vocalist of the Dublin-based rock band U2. Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his...
, donned as stage character/devil Mr. MacPhisto, placed a call to Rushdie only to find himself face to face with Rushdie on stage. Rushdie told Bono that "real devils don't wear horns." - October 1993: The novel's Norwegian publisher, William NygaardWilliam NygaardWilliam Nygaard is a retired Norwegian publisher who graduated with a degree in economics in 1967. He is also chairman of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.-Business career:...
, is shot and seriously injured. - 1993: The 15 Khordad Foundation in Iran raises the reward for Rushdie's murder to $300,000.
- 9 June 1994: Rushdie takes part in an episode recording of the BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's satirical news quiz Have I Got News for YouHave I Got News for YouHave I Got News for You is a British television panel show produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC. It is based loosely on the BBC Radio 4 show The News Quiz, and has been broadcast since 1990, currently the BBC's longest-ever running television panel show...
, which is broadcast the following evening. Rushdie later claimed that his son was more impressed at this than anything else he had ever done. According to comedian Paul MertonPaul MertonPaul Merton is a British comedian, writer, actor and television presenter. Known for his improvisation skill, his humour is rooted in deadpan, surreal and sometimes dark comedy...
, one of the program's regular participants, Rushdie was only given permission to appear by the police on account of his protection officers being fans of the show. To ensure Rushdie's safety, his appearance was given zero pre-publicity. Official listings advertised a return appearance for The Tub of Lard (a famous substitute 'guest' for Roy HattersleyRoy HattersleyRoy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron Hattersley is a British Labour politician, author and journalist from Sheffield. He served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.-Early life:...
in a previous edition of the show).
1995-1996
- August 26, 1995: Interview with Rushdie published where Rushdie tells interviewer Anne McElvoy of The Times that his attempt to appease extremists by affirming his Islamic faith and calling for the withdrawal of Satanic Verses was "biggest mistake of my life."
1997-1998
- 1997: The bounty is doubled, to $600,000.
- 1998: Iranian government publicly declares that it will "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie." 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 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 stated,
"The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has no intention, nor is it going to take any action whatsoever, to threaten the life of the author of 'The Satanic Verses' or anybody associated with his work, nor will it encourage or assist anybody to do so".
1999
- 1999: An Iranian foundation places a $2.8 million bounty on Rushdie's life.
- February 14, 1999: on the tenth anniversary of the ruling against Rushdie, more than half of the deputies in (Iranian) Parliament sign a statement declaring, `The verdict on Rushdie, the blasphemer, is death, both today and tomorrow, and to burn in hell for all eternity.`
2000-2004
- February 14, 2000: Ayatollah Hassan Saneii, the head of the 15th of Khordad Foundation, reiterates that the death sentence remains valid and the foundation's $2.8 million reward will be paid with interest to Rushdie's assassins. Persians take this news with some skepticism as the foundation is "widely known" to be bankrupt.
- January 2002: South Africa lifts its ban on the Satanic Verses.
- February 16, 2003: Iran's Revolutionary Guards reiterate the call for the assassination of Rushdie. As reported by the Sunday HeraldSunday HeraldThe Sunday Herald is a Scottish Sunday newspaper launched on 7 February 1999. The ABC audited circulation in April 2011 showed sales of 31,123.From the start it has combined a centre-left stance with support for Scottish devolution...
, "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."
2005-2007
- 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.
- June 15, 2007: Rushdie receives knighthood for services to literature sparking an outcry from Islamic groups. Several groups invoking the Satanic Verses controversy renew calls for his death.
- June 29, 2007: Bombs2007 London car bombsOn 29 June 2007, in London, two car bombs were discovered and disabled before they could be detonated. The first device was left near the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket at around 01:30, and the second was in Cockspur Street, in the same area of the city....
planted in central London may have been linked to the Knighthood of Salman Rushdie.
See also
- Censorship in South AsiaCensorship in South AsiaCensorship in South Asia can apply to books, movies, the Internet and other media. Censorship occurs on religious, moral and political grounds, which is controversial in itself as the latter especially is seen as contrary to the tenets of democracy, in terms of freedom of speech and the right to...
- Censorship by organized religion
- Freedom of speechFreedom of speechFreedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
- Freedom of speech versus blasphemyFreedom of speech versus blasphemyTension often exists between political freedom, particularly freedom of speech, and certain examples of art, literature, speech or other acts considered by some to be sacrilegious or blasphemous...
- Submission – short film about mistreatment of women in Islam
- Sudanese teddy bear blasphemy caseSudanese teddy bear blasphemy caseThe Sudanese teddy bear blasphemy case concerns the arrest, trial, conviction, imprisonment and subsequent release of British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons working at Unity High School in Sudan in 2007.-Arrest:...
- Richard Webster (author)Richard Webster (author)Richard Webster was a British cultural historian, and the author of five published books, dealing with subjects such as the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, and the investigation of sexual abuse in Britain...
- International GuerillasInternational Guerillas (film)International Guerillas is an action film from Pakistan, originally released in the context of the Satanic Verses controversy, which portrays Salman Rushdie as its main villain...
, 1990 Pakistani action film depicting Salman Rushdie as its main villain - Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversyJyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversyThe Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy began after 12 editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005...
External links
- Rushdie Affair in Oxford Islamic Studies Online
- ISBN 0-312-27082-8
- Notes on Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses
- The Rusdhie's Affair Legacy by Koenraad ElstKoenraad ElstKoenraad Elst is a Belgian writer and orientalist .He was an editor of the New Right Flemish nationalist journal Teksten, Kommentaren en Studies from 1992 to 1995, focusing on criticism of Islam, various other conservative and Flemish separatist publications such as Nucleus, t Pallieterke,...
- Satanic Verses and Last Temptations - discusses criticism of The Satanic Verses as well as of the film The Last Temptation of Christ
- Swords to sell a god by Ram SwarupRam SwarupRam Swarup , , born Ram Swarup Agarwal, was an independent Hindu thinker and prolific author. His works took a critical stance against Christianity, Islam and Communism. His work has influenced other Indian writers.- Life :He graduated in Economics at Delhi University in 1941...
- Healthy Blasphemy: Dissenting Discourses in Rushdie and Bulgakov - discusses the role of the artist in Rushdie's and Bulgakov's works
- RUSHDIE: Haunted by his unholy ghosts
- Salman Rushdie interviewed by Shikha Dalmia Reason, August September 2005