Originally posted on sciy.org by Debashish Banerji on Wed 01 Jul 2009 09:08 PM PDT
Rushdie's Satanic Verses and Khomeini's Reaction
Occasionally a work of art comes along that reiterates the artist’s place as an integral shaper of society. The novel, The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie, is one such work of art. While a weighty and well-written novel in its own right, The Satanic Verses will likely achieve its lasting reputation from the controversy that surrounded its publication and its author. On February 14, 1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious order, condemning Salman Rushdie and everyone else involved in the production and distribution of the book to death, forced the international community to recognize the importance and influence of literature.
Rushdie’s novel was, like most works of art, one that could be read on several different levels. Herein lay the crux of the controversy that swelled up around its release. While Rushdie asserted repeatedly that The Satanic Verses dealt with migration and transformation, Muslim critics focused on religious aspects of the book. Even these sections, claimed Rushdie, addressed, not abstract religion, but the compromises that are made and the extremism that arises when religion and politics collide. Khomeini gave this argument no credence and maintained his stance up to his own death. For this study, however, the focus will be more on the initial flare-up of the controversy and the months immediately following.
This project will indicate why Salman Rushdie, an Indian-born Englishman and a lapsed Muslim, wrote The Satanic Verses and why he wished to condemn extremist religious governments. It will also indicate the extent to which he was knowledgeable about Islam, theologically, and extremist Muslim governments, personally. Each factor is important to the Rushdie Affair because each sheds light not only on Rushdie’s intentions, but also on the effect his personal background had on the public response.
Exploring Khomeini’s background is similarly key to the study. Consideration of how Khomeini saw himself in relation to Iran and to the rest of the Muslim Community is necessary to understand the fatwa. His background led him to see himself, not only as the leader of Iran, but also as the spiritual protector of Islam, whereupon he took it upon himself to issue an order pertaining to all Muslims around the world. As with Rushdie’s upbringing, a discussion of Khomeini’s background leads to a better understanding of his role in the controversy, his reception of The Satanic Verses, and his intentions in issuing the fatwa.
Finally, an analysis of the international response to the novel, the fatwa, and the controversy is necessary. This study will determine whether there were differences in reaction to the Affair in the “Muslim World†and the non-Muslim west. In so doing, my hope is that patterns will emerge that will allow generalizations about political and social differences between East and West, religious and secular, and the place of art and the artist in society to be made. Khomeini recognized the importance and power of the written word, but failed to separate art from artist. Few governments agreed wholeheartedly with this conclusion; the Rushdie Affair speaks to the compromises and transformation the Rushdie himself wrote about in The Satanic Verses.
This novel deals primarily with migration, transformation, and compromise. In general, the story line is divided among those of the Indian ex-patriots Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, the prophet Mahound and his followers, and the spiritual pilgrimage of the town of Titlipur. While the bulk of the novel (chapters 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9) follows Gibreel and Saladin and their migration from Bombay to London, the other two story lines are interwoven by a surprisingly intricate web of dream-sequences and shared names among characters. The stories concerning Mahound (chapters 2 and 6) and the pilgrimage of the village of Titlipur (chapters 4 and 8) are both described as coming from Gibreel’s dreams. In these dreams, many figures from Islamic history and cosmology are presented, and Gibreel himself becomes the angel Gibreel, the angel who spoke the words of Allah to Mohammed. Both of these story lines deal ostensibly about the transformations and compromises made by individuals attempting to balance religion and society. According to one reviewer however, “the appearance of doubt†is also an important part of these sections. By showing the transformations and compromises, Rushdie is also illuminating the path from ardent faith to doubt. While this may be true, Mahound’s eventual descent into a tyrannical and arbitrary rule and the tragic drowning of the town of Titlipur when their faith failed to part the Arabian Sea to allow them passage to Mecca show that Rushdie is not advocating the loss of religious faith. In the main story, Gibreel and Saladin experience a similarly troubling loss of faith in their status both in India and in England. Doubt is introduced as a shattering of worldviews that then leads to the struggle to transform and adapt to the new reality.
Islamic critics condemned the book initially because they claimed that it focused on Islamic fanaticism rather than the more positive aspects of the religion. This claim was justified by Rushdie himself when, in an interview, he said, “one of my major themes is religion and fanaticism. I have talked about the Islamic religion because that is what I know the most about.†Because he had studied this religion and its history at Cambridge, Rushdie used his knowledge to explore the broader theme of religion and fanaticism. Having become accustomed to the separation of Church and State in Britain, Rushdie’s return to India and Pakistan, where there is little separation between these two institutions, shocked him. The politicization of Islam was the impetus behind the novel, not a denunciation of the religion itself. This, of course, was little solace to Muslims who felt slighted and attacked.
Unfortunately for Rushdie, few Muslim leaders or commentators read The Satanic Verses in full oras a metaphor. All too often, it was read, “excerpted, out of context, and…in translation.†Even worse, many critics followed the advice of Indian Parliamentary MP Syed Shahabuddin who did not intend to read the book at all because he did “not have to wade through a filthy drain to know what filth is.†In these cases, hearsay and rumor fueled the indignation over the book. These rumors were, however, powerful enough to spark riots, in both the Muslim world and the non-Muslim west.
For those who read the book, or, at least, significant sections of it, indignation stemmed from the tone of the novel as well as the story it presented. Many were offended that Rushdie wrote about the holy figures of Islam as humans. This was in response to the fundamentalist hagiographies, which treated these figures as divine and, therefore, not subject to human failings and faults. A prime example is when Rushdie has Hagar refer to Abraham, who has just abandoned her and her baby in the desert, as a “bastard.†Considering this event historically rather than mythologically, this would be an understandable response from a woman, and mother, who had been left to die. However, it is important to remember that this is more likely a Western view, coming from a society where religion and history can be seen as complementary but separate. To Islamic fundamentalists, on the other hand, especially where shari’a law is practiced, the Quran is seen as a direct communication from God and anything that contradicts it, or is even outside of it, is blasphemous.
This ultra-Orthodox conception of the Quran was most important in relation to the character of Mahound (a medieval term for the devil meaning “False Prophetâ€). Most Islamic critics saw this character as a thinly disguised representation of the Prophet Mohammed and his hometown, Jahiliyya (“ignorance, darknessâ€), as Mecca, the holiest city in Islam. In fact, Mahound shares many biographical details with Mohammed. However, the more humanistic details of Mohammed’s life had been suppressed by the Islamic clergy and only became known to Rushdie during his studies in England. He encountered works of history examining Mohammed’s life as a businessman, general, and statesman, as well as his role as prophet and religious leader. This more nuanced picture of Mohammed was de-emphasized in relation to the idealized portrait of holy man throughout the Islamic community. Because these texts were unavailable to the majority of Muslims in the Muslim World, it is understandable that many would believe that their contents were denigrating to Mohammed and figments either of Rushdie’s imagination or of part of a Western plot against Islam.
One theme that Muslims critics saw running through the novel concerned reservations that the Quran represented the directly quoted word of God passed through Mohammed. This idea is reflected in both the title of the novel and in Mahound’s dealings with the angel Gibreel in the dream sequences. The title refers to apocryphal Quranic verses later attributed to Satan’s guile rather than Allah’s inspiration. These verses, stricken from subsequent versions of the Quran, allowed for the worship of the three most popular female deities in the old, polytheistic Mecca, anathema to a monotheistic religion, especially given the Mohammedan conception of the place of women in Islam. In The Satanic Verses, Rushdie, somewhat ambiguously, gives the origin of these verses as the desire of Mahound to attract more followers, not Satan. The presence of the apocryphal texts was not as important as the implication behind them. To Muslims, a literal reading indicates that Mohammed’s teachings were not so much a communication from God as the directives of a temporal religious leader. In a literal reading, it is easy to see that a text considered the direct word of God cannot be said to have been made more palatable to the believers by the man to whom the words were given. Ignoring Rushdie’s intended meaning, ideas of appeasement, compromise, and the occurrence of spiritual experiences in those who had lost religious faith, fundamentalists read or heard about these sections in a literal, and therefore blasphemous, way.
Expanding this idea, Gibreel implies that the words Mahound recorded were not provided by any divine authority, but by Mahound himself. When he says “and we all know how my mouth got workedâ€, Gibreel is accusing Mahound of forcing the words out of him. Read literally, this means that the Quran, the basis of Islam, was not divinely inspired, but crafted by man. Read in this fashion, this is blasphemy of the highest order and it is difficult to imagine that Rushdie, who was raised as a Muslim, did not anticipate that this would cause an uproar. In fact, later in the novel, one of Mahound’s earliest followers, curiously named Salman, begins altering the text of the Book while serving as Mahound’s scribe. Eventually Salman is caught, but his faith has been shaken when his “poor words could not be distinguished from the Revelation by God’s own Messenger.†This questions the authenticity of the Word received by Mahound and the Word transmitted by him to the faithful. To many Muslims, these “satanic-minded comments about Islam†show the “total moral degradation†to which Rushdie as an artist and The Satanic Verses as a work of art had sunk. Because he was attacked as an artist, the biography of Salman Rushdie and his intentions in writing the novel are important to a discussion of the Rushdie Affair. So much of this controversy is consumed by examination of the public response, particularly from Iran, that the response Rushdie was aiming for is often missed.
Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, India on June 19, 1947, two months before India gained its independence from Britain. His first two critically acclaimed books, Midnight’s Children about Indian independence, and Shame about the formation of Pakistan, stressed the importance of this event on his life. Throughout his early career, problems of identity inhabited his novels. Whether caused by questions of national or religious identity many of these problems were based loosely on situations Rushdie had found himself in throughout his life. Growing up as a Muslim in the predominantly Hindu Bombay, he graduated from Cambridge in England, moved back to Pakistan to be with his family, and, finally, returned to London. In each of these settings, Rushdie was an outcast, first religiously, then ethnically, and finally, culturally. This final move back to England is important because it indicates that, despite racial and cultural differences, Rushdie identified with England and Western ideals more closely than those of his former homeland or Pakistan. This should not be surprising, since he spent a large portion of his formative years in the West, first in preparatory school at Rugby and then at Cambridge.
Of these ideals, those of religious and artistic freedom are the most apparent in the Rushdie Affair. First and foremost, the secular nature of English government and English scholarship made a lasting impression on him. It is easy to imagine the shock of growing up under a religiously ordered governmental and social structure and then moving into a much more secular, but not necessarily amoral, one. No matter the extent of the initial unrest or confusion with this idea, in time Rushdie came to see this as the norm and the highly politicized version of Islam he encountered upon his return to Pakistan as the aberration. These problems of identity were to plague him throughout the controversy. His status as an Indian ex-patriot and a lapsed Muslim made him seem all the more treacherous to his critics, as though he were betraying his heritage by writing The Satanic Verses.
The separation of the religious and the political was also important to Rushdie’s scholarship. At Cambridge, he read history, which was a defining period in the development of the ideas and attitudes that shaped The Satanic Verses. While conducting research for a paper on the prophet Mohammed, Rushdie came across a vast array of primary and secondary writings available in Christian England that had not been available in the Indian Islamic Community. Among these works were more humanist interpretations of Mohammed’s life; celebrating his success as a businessman, general, and statesman as well as a spiritual leader. More importantly, he came across reference to the “satanic verses†reportedly spoken by Mohammed but no longer present in the modern Quran. The material uncovered here became the framework for the story line concerning Mahound in The Satanic Verses.
Although a sub-plot, Mahound’s story is indicative of Rushdie’s westernized, outsider views of the Islamic governments and institutions he had met more recently. In fact, the treatment of the topic of “the satanic verses†spells out Rushdie’s conviction that even religious authorities have secular concerns that can compromise their theology. Just as Mahound compromised to pacify those who still wished to worship the Jahiliyyan goddesses, so too did Rushdie’s Orthodox supervisors at the Pakistani television service who canceled a play he was planning to produce because it included the words “pork†and “sexâ€. According to Rushdie, he used those words in a derogatory manner and to glorify the principles of Islam. However, the producers did not want to run the risk of Muslims misinterpreting their use and being offended. Here the Islamic supervisors were not willing to risk alienating even one Muslim, although the theology behind Rushdie’s use of the terms was not offensive. In this same way, the character of Mahound is depicted as compromising his theological stance for fear of alienating any of his followers, or potential followers.
Rushdie’s emphasis on artistic freedoms, as well as religious freedoms, can be seen in various interviews given following the release of The Satanic Verses. However, his role in this controversy was not entirely that of a persecuted artist. It is difficult to imagine that an author who had grown up a Muslim, studied Islamic history and theology in college, and whose two prior books had been denounced by Islamic clerics would not understand perfectly well how blasphemous his book would appear to Muslims. Of course, this does not mean that the intent behind the book was blasphemous; a more nuanced reading reveals that the attack was not on Islam, but on radical theocracies. Realizing that the name of Mahound’s hometown, Jahiliyya referred not, as the first glance would indicate, to the birthplace of Mohammed, but rather to the birthplace of extremism, involves a much more sophisticated reading. As it turned out, however, most Muslim critics were either unwilling, or unable, to look beyond the more superficial interpretation. Unfortunately, for Rushdie, this group was larger and more vocal upon release of The Satanic Verses than he expected. Although he actively instigated some of the controversy by writing the novel, Rushdie could not have anticipated the violent turn this reaction would take. It is difficult to imagine that he anticipated becoming a martyr for this cause. The other major figure in this controversy did not shy away from advocating martyrdom, and so it is to him that we shall now turn.
The most powerful figure in the Iranian government at the time of the Rushdie Affair was the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini came from a long line of Seyyeds, “men claiming descent from the Prophet Mohammed himself.†This was significant for the direction of the future Iranian State because it influenced Khomeini to pursue religious studies and fostered in him a messianic attitude. He believed that his life story coincided with that of the mystical Twelfth Imam, the spiritual successor to the Prophet and the first leaders of Islam. For this reason, he considered the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran to be a holy event predicating the return of Islamic society to its medieval world leadership. This is important to the Rushdie Affair because it illustrates how seriously Khomeini was tied to Islam as a civil authority as well as a moral authority. In his mind, when he determined that Rushdie was attacking Islam, Khomeini believed that the attack was directed at an organic community that he was born to defend rather than simply an abstract moral code.
Following the 1979 Revolution, Khomeini and his followers established a government based on shari’a, traditional Islamic, law and invoked the concept of velayat-e-faqih for the new nation. The faqih was considered a guardian specifically appointed to make decisions for a minor or a safih (imbecile). Khomeini, however, expanded this concept by appointing himself faqih of the entire state rather than simply an individual. Of course, in reality this was merely a ruse to justify his authoritarian rule. Iran under Khomeini was the embodiment of the kind of extremist religious government about which Rushdie was writing. The government’s legitimacy was wrapped in the cloak of religion. Khomeini saw his regime as chosen by God to lead Iran to the head of the Muslim World, and the Muslim World to the forefront of human society. In this he bore an uncanny resemblance to the character Hind who spent her old age issuing proclamations that “sang (Jahiliyya’s) undimmed magnificence and…(insisted) on the status of Jahiliyyans as custodians of the divine.†Hind’s family also owned the most prosperous temples (“shall I call them mosques?â€) in Jahiliyya and she used this religious authority to justify her political power. She even induces Mahound to alter his message so that her own power is not reduced.
This is strikingly similar to Khomeini’s rise to power. After the Revolution, Khomeini believed that drastic measures were required to shore up his power and to extend his influence. These measures included the foundation of what has been called the two pillars of the Khomeini government, “repression at home and export of revolution abroad.†The domestic order he created at the time of The Satanic Verses’ publication “saw a return to censorship, closure of non-government newspapers, and more extensive attacks on political rallies and gatherings than during the shah’s time, while election rigging and fraud prevented the election to parliament or high office of any opposition candidate.â€. This is indicative of the control that Khomeini wished to exert over both the actions and thoughts of those beneath him. To Khomeini, his was the only correct interpretation of Islam and any questioning of that interpretation was heresy. With this background and these conditions, it is easy to see how Rushdie’s book could be deemed blasphemous, regardless of the author’s intended meaning.
As can be seen, Khomeini’s attitude towards the separation of religious and political authority is, in almost every way, the opposite of Rushdie’s. While Rushdie believed in the separation of these two institutions, Khomeini saw them as, not only inseparable, but with one subordinate to the other. Quranic shari’a law amounted to both religious and political law for Khomeini. Whereas Rushdie was educated in, and eventually returned to, a fundamentally secular society, Khomeini initiated a religious authoritarianism. Considering the pervasiveness of religion in both the government and society, it is not difficult to understand why Khomeini would have been offended by Rushdie’s novel. If one understands the extent of power he exerted on his subjects’ lives, it is not difficult to imagine why there was very little opposition to the fatwa in Iran.
Khomeini’s commitment to exporting Islamic revolution to the rest of the world also figured prominently in the Rushdie Affair. He sought to export Islam not only to use international concerns to divert attention from the tightening of controls on domestic issues, but also because he saw himself as the “’Imam of the Islamic Community of the World.’†Khomeini’s inherent messianism led him to act as though he were the protector of all of Islam, much in the same way the Pope is the leader of the Catholic Community. This belief in pan-Islamic leadership is also apparent in his reaction to The Satanic Verses. The fatwa he issuedwas intended for “all the intrepid Muslims in the world.†Further, it was an active “call (for) all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly†rather than a more passive sanctioning of the action. This indicates that Khomeini believed (or, at least wished to project the belief) that he had the authority to issue this order and demand action from all Muslims, even those outside Iran.
Khomeini did not, however, perceive Rushdie’s book to be merely non-Orthodox and he did not react to it simply as a concerned Muslim. Because of his family history and the fact that he considered himself a direct descendant of Mohammed, the Ayatollah Khomeini reacted to the publication of The Satanic Verses as a father would towards an attack on one of his children. Khomeini saw himself as not simply a faithful Muslim cleric, but as one chosen by God to lead Islam back to world leadership. He believed that the Islamic community was his to protect and, regardless of Rushdie’s claims, The Satanic Verses was an attack against that community.
Whether or not Khomeini had thoroughly read The Satanic Verses is less important to a study of the Rushdie Affair than the fact that his reaction was presaged by events in that novel. Had he read it, he might have found suspicious the narrative concerning the exiled Imam, who is trying to mount a religious revolution from his exile in London, and his concern about agents of the Shah of Iran. As mentioned earlier, Khomeini considered himself the embodiment of the mythical Twelfth Imam and his revolution successfully overthrew the government of the Shah. While Rushdie claimed that the novel referenced the Islamic government in Pakistan, the similarities between the actions of this character and Khomeini’s leading up to the 1979 Revolution are striking. Regardless of whether Rushdie intended this particular comparison, it indicates that Khomeini’s government was typical of the extremist religious governments about which Rushdie was writing.
In The Satanic Verses, the Imam intended his revolution to counter the corrosive impact of Western ideas on his homeland. This, in itself, is not a serious condemnation, as Western culture, like all cultures, contains both virtues and vices. A closer reading, however, shows that Rushdie thought that, while extremist governments fought against Western influence in the surface, they were really fighting against “History itself.†The attitude these governments adopt is a reaction to Western ideas of history as progressive, which in turn suggests that the present is imperfect. Extremist governments saw “History (as) a deviation from the Path, (and) knowledge as a delusion, because the sum of knowledge was complete on the day Allah finished his revelation to Mahound.†The entire sub-plot concerning Mahound and the attendant controversy can be seen to turn upon this sentence. If the word “History†gets replaced with “Secularismâ€, it is easy to see extremist’s rejection of Western-style government and Rushdie’s rejection of the view of those Islamic governments. The extremist governments saw secular progress as a chimera because the only progress that any society or individual could accomplish was progress towards a more perfect adherence to the Quran. On the other hand, Rushdie used this attitude towards history to say that it supports extremism and discourages critical thinking. His own experience showed that the Prophet Mohammed and Islam as an institution had a history that offered rewarding study. Extremist governments ignored this history and promoted a static society that only offered rewards to those at the top.
Augmenting this idea, the next section depicts the struggle between the Imam and the angel Gibreel. As with Mahound, this story line occurs in a dream-state. In the dream, Gibreel is overpowered by the Imam and compelled to fight for him. A closer reading of this battle reveals that the Imam was using religious authority to justify his political power. Gibreel argues, “(w)hy insist on archangels…(t)hose days…are goneâ€, suggesting not only that religious backing was not with the Imam, but also that history had passed the point where the supernatural was necessary to lead and maintain political order. This was a condemnation of religious government in general, but it also rejected the ideology reflected in Khomeini’s government. A close reading of these few paragraphs is vital for moving from a superficial interpretation of the novel as a condemnation of Islam, to a more nuanced interpretation as a condemnation of extremist Islamic government.
For the most part, the Muslim political world wished to hedge its bets on this issue by banning the novel and simply commenting no further. Their populations agreed with the simplistic interpretation of the novel, if not with Khomeini’s order. In fact, only radical political Islamic groups, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Saudi Arabian Hajj, supported Khomeini’s decision, and the only Islamic government to support the fatwa publicly was Libya’s. However, voices of opposition did exist in Muslim countries. One obvious source of opposition came from Sunni Iraq, which had just ended a long and costly war with Shiite Iran. Saddam Hussein’s government declared that Khomeini’s fatwa damaged the reputation of Islam more than Rushdie’s book did. Alternatively, countries such as Turkey, that had an established (if embattled) secular government, rejected the religious nature of the order. For the Turkish government, which had aspirations of joining the European Community, the uncomfortable bridge between Western, secular government and Islamic culture was maintained by declaring, but not enforcing, a ban on the book. The fact that the novel was not
widely read and that much of the criticism came from hearsay made the contentious nature of it easy to condemn, but the public, and violent, nature of Khomeini’s fatwa made its contentious nature difficult to support.
Reaction in the West was no less inconsistent. While the European Community ratified sanctions against Iran, several governments and religious authorities condemned The Satanic Verses. A few governments, including Canada’s, even banned its importation. The United States embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan issued a statement saying that it did not support anything offensive to Islam and President Bush condemned both sides of the Rushdie Affair, but made no official statement on the issue. In the United States, the official rhetoric focused less on interpreting the novel and more on placating Islamic groups. This indicates that many Western governments, like most Islamic governments, simply did not wish to be burdened by this issue. Like the Grandee of Jahiliyya, Abu Simbel, in the novel, they were willing to “bend…sway… calculate the odds… (and) manipulate (to) survive.â€
Although there are lessons to be learned from the Rushdie Affair, answers to the questions of who was right and who was wrong are more problematic. Each of the two personalities involved in this controversy was justified in some respects. Rushdie was exercising his rights to free speech and condemning extremist governments. He was well within these rights and, according to his intentions, only the officials of those governments should have been upset. Khomeini, on the other hand, acted in accordance with what he thought to be his duties. It is impossible to know precisely how much he believed that he was a direct descendant of Mohammed and fated to lead the Muslim people, but it is important that he publicly conformed to that persona. Regardless of the authenticity of his beliefs, Khomeini adhered to them in public. To see each of these two men and their involvement in the Rushdie Affair sympathetically, however, is to see only half of the story, as neither was blameless for the controversy that followed.
Rushdie must be held responsible for the contentiousness of his novel. Having studied Islam, he should have been fully aware of the storm that could have erupted. Stylistically, by making the references to Islam so apparent and the references to extremism so convoluted, Rushdie should have realized how less sophisticated readers could have interpreted his novel. This is not to say that Rushdie should have watered down his message or pandered to the unsophisticated (“(i)t isn’t right for the artist to become the servant of the stateâ€) , but that he was responsible for that message. On the other side, judging by his self-image, Khomeini might not be expected to anticipate the intense reaction to his fatwa. Nevertheless, the facts of his reign undermine whatever moral authority he might have had. The accuracy of Rushdie’s depiction of extremist governments shows in the coincidences between his fictional world and the reality of Khomeini’s Iran.
In the end however, the fault for the Rushdie Affair lay more with Khomeini and the Islamic critics. Had they been either willing or able to look beyond the more superficial interpretation of the novel, they could have seen that the real target was not Islam but authoritarian religious government. Through his travels, Rushdie had witnessed firsthand the dangers of basing a political order strictly on religious laws. Doing so led to a “terrifying singularity†in which the whims and beliefs of a single individual or group were forcibly imposed on all. In these particular governments, it is easy to imagine resistance to an interpretation that condemned their way of governing. In the case of The Satanic Verses, the reaction can be equated to an all too familiar censorship of social commentary.
Most Muslim critics refused to see condemnation of extremist governments as the true message, indicating the gulf that can exist between, not only levels of interpretation, but also between authorial intent and public reception. The United States and Western Europe have had self-consciously democratic and secular societies that have supported free speech. The secular nature of these societies can inure people to opposing viewpoints, as the right of free speech of the individual is valued above the indignation of a particular group. Often the right of the artist to express his/her opinions on religious and political matters is taken to be equally fundamental to society as the rights of those incensed by the expression of these opinions. In the Muslim World, on the other hand, in general, religion and politics are seen as more closely intertwined than in the West. This was especially true in Iran, where there was no distinction between the two therefore, what was offensive to one element was offensive to both. This meant that staying within the canons of Islam was more important than individual expression. For that reason, notwithstanding Rushdie’s intent, Muslim critics who were unable to interpret the novel more subtly received The Satanic Verses as profane and sacrilegious.
In many senses, both The Satanic Verses and the Rushdie Affair revolved around compromise. Rushdie stated explicitly that compromise was a major theme in his novel. Compromise was also a major theme in the Rushdie Affair. The compromises made by Western and Islamic governments, as well as the failure to compromise of the Fundamentalist Islamic states’, shows how prescient Rushdie was in his description of these governments. He believed that the secular governments might prevaricate, but would eventually be able to adapt to new situations, but that the religious governments would doggedly maintain their positions for fear of losing their authority. This is exactly what happened during the Rushdie Affair. In an attempt to seem powerful, Khomeini fell in line with Rushdie’s predicted reactions, not realizing that it made him appear predictable and weak to those who were able to look past the superficial interpretation of the novel. The Affair shows the power of the artist, whose intent can transcend public reception. Even in misinterpreting Rushdie’s novel, the Islamic extremist governments acted as The Satanic Verses foretold.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Ashraf, Syed Ali. “Nihilistic, negative, satanic.†Impact International (London). 28 October-10 November 1988.
“Iran leaders unite to attack West.†Independent (London). 23 February 1989.
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