Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)

Abstract

The Satanic Verses, Rushdie’s first novel to depict English society from an immigrant’s point of view, has received a distorted reception from the moment that it was banned in India on October 5, 1988, nine days after it was first published. What has become known as the “Rushdie affair” uncannily lived out much of what happened to its two protagonists in the book, including the demonization of Rushdie and the rioting. The ensuing worldwide controversy pitted Western liberal defenders of unlimited free speech against fundamentalist Muslims demanding that the book be banned because it was blasphemous. As Andrzej Gasiorek rightly remarks, “One could hardly find a better example of Orientalism at work” — or Occidentalism, he might have added (171). One of the consequences of critics’ focus on the novel’s treatment of the founding of Islam and the lives of some of its more absolutist followers has been to draw disproportionate attention to its four alternating even-numbered chapters in which Gibreel dreams about the life of Muhammed (derogatively named Mahound in the novel), the Imam (modeled on then Iranian President Khamene’i), and Ayesha (modeled on Naseem Fatima), a follower of the Islamic faith who does and does not work a miracle.