A Fatwa Was Issued For This Author In Late 80s

[Octavis Uberstine]

TheSatanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Verses (apocryphal verses of the Quran), and came to include a larger debate about censorship and religious violence. It included numerous killings, attempted killings (including against Rushdie himself), and bombings by perpetrators who supported Islam.[1]

The affair had a notable impact on geopolitics when, in 1989, Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. The Iranian government has changed its support for the fatwa several times, including in 1998 when Mohammad Khatami said the regime no longer supported it.[2] However, a fatwa cannot be revoked in Shia Islamic tradition.[3] In 2017, a statement was published on the official website of the current supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, stating that "the decree is as Imam Khomeini (ra) issued"[4] and in February 2019, the Khamenei.ir Twitter account stated that Khomeini's verdict was "solid and irrevocable".[5]

Even before the publication of The Satanic Verses, the books of Salman Rushdie had stoked controversy. Rushdie saw his role as a writer "as including the function of antagonist to the state".[11] His second book Midnight's Children angered Indira Gandhi because it seemed to suggest "that Mrs. Gandhi was responsible for the death of her husband through neglect".[12] His 1983 roman clef 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".[12]

Positions Rushdie took as a committed leftist prior to the publication of his book were the source of some controversy. He defended many of those who would later attack him during the controversy. Rushdie forcefully denounced the Shah's government and supported the Islamic Revolution of Iran, at least in its early stages. He condemned the US bombing raid on Tripoli in 1986 but found himself threatened by Libya's leader Muammar al-Gaddafi three years later.[13] He wrote a book bitterly critical of US foreign policy in general and its war in Nicaragua in particular, for example calling the United States government, "the bandit posing as sheriff".[14] After the Ayatollah's fatwa however, he was accused by the Iranian government of being "an inferior CIA agent".[15] 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.[citation needed]

The title The Satanic Verses immediately sparked vehement protest against Rushdie's book. The title refers to a legend of Muhammad; a few verses were supposedly spoken by him as part of the Qur'an which praised the pagan goddesses of Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat. The verses were then withdrawn on the grounds that the devil had sent them to deceive Muhammad into thinking they came from God. These "Satanic Verses" are said to have been revealed between verses 20 and 21 in Surah An-Najm of the Qur'an,[16] and feature in accounts by Al-Tabari and Ibn Ishaq. The verses also appear in other accounts of the prophet's life. Verse 23 in Surah An-Najm implies that the Satanic Verses were fabricated by the forefathers of idolaters.

The utterance and withdrawal of the so-called Satanic Verses forms an important sub-plot in the novel, which recounts several episodes in the life of Muhammad. The phrase Arab historians and later Muslims used to describe the incident of the withdrawn verses was not "Satanic verses", but the gharaniq verses; the phrase "Satanic verses" was unknown to Muslims, and was coined by Orientalist Western academics specialising in the study of cultures considered eastern. The story itself is not found in the six Sahih of the Sunni or the Shiite sources, so much so that Muraghi, in his commentary, says: "These traditions are undoubtedly a fabrication of the heretics and foreign hands, and have not been found in any of the authentic books".[17][18] According to Daniel Pipes,[19] when attention was drawn to a book with this title, "Muslims found [it] incredibly sacrilegious", and took it to imply that the book's author claimed that verses of the Qur'an were "the work of the Devil".[20]

According to McRoy (2007), other controversial elements included the use of the name Mahound, said to be a derogatory term for Muhammad used by the English during the Crusades; the use of the term Jahilia, denoting the "time of ignorance" before Islam, for the holy city of Mecca; the use of the name of the Angel Gibreel (Gabriel) for a film star, of the name of Saladin, the well known Muslim military leader during the Crusades, for a devil, and the name of Ayesha, the wife of Muhammad, for a fanatical Indian girl who leads her village on a fatal pilgrimage. Moreover, the brothel of the city of Jahiliyyah was staffed by prostitutes with the same names as Muhammad's wives,[21] who are viewed by Muslims as "the Mothers of all Believers".[22]

Other issues many Muslims have found offensive include Abraham being called a "bastard" for casting Hagar and Ishmael in the desert;[23] and a character named Salman the Persian who serves as one of the Prophet's scribes, an apparent reference to the story, controversial among Muslims, of a Meccan convert by the name of Abd Allah ibn Sa'd, who left Islam after the Prophet failed to notice small changes he had made in the dictation of the Qur'an.[citation needed]

Daniel Pipes identified other more general issues in the book likely to have angered pious Muslims: A complaint in the book by one of the character's companions: "rules about every damn thing, if a man farts, let him turn his face to the wind, a rule about which hand to use for the purpose of cleaning one's behind ...", which was said to mix up "Islamic law with its opposite and with the author's whimsy";[21] the prophet of Rushdie's novel, as he lies dying, being visited in a dream by the Goddess Al-Lat, on the grounds that this suggested either that she exists or that the prophet thought she did; the angel Gibreel's vision of the Supreme Being in another dream as "not abstract in the least. He saw, sitting on the bed, a man of about the same age as himself", balding, wearing glasses and "seeming to suffer from dandruff".[24] A complaint by one of the characters about communal violence in India: "Fact is, religious faith, which encodes the highest aspirations of human race, is now, in our country, the servant of lowest instincts, and God is the creature of evil".[24]

The Guardian newspaper published on 14 September 2012 a series of recollections of various British people involved in the controversy. Lisa Appignanesi, ex-president of English PEN, observed "Intransigence is never so great as when it feels it has a god on its side." One of the lawyers involved, Geoffrey Robertson QC, rehearsed the arguments and replies made when 13 Muslim barristers had lodged a formal indictment against Rushdie for the crime of blasphemous libel: it was said that God was described in the book as "the Destroyer of Man", yet he is described as such in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation, especially of men who are unbelievers or enemies of the Jews; that the book contained criticisms of the prophet Abraham, yet the Islamic, Christian and Jewish traditions themselves see Abraham as not without fault and deserving of criticism; that Rushdie referred to Mohammed as "Mahound", a conjurer, a magician and a false prophet, yet these remarks are made by a drunken apostate, a character with whom neither reader nor author has any sympathy; that the book insults the wives of the Prophet by having whores use their names, yet the wives are explicitly said to be chaste and the adoption of their names by whores is to symbolise the corruption of the city then being described (perhaps symbolising Mecca in its pre-Islamic state); that the book vilified the companions of the Prophet, calling them "bums from Persia" and "clowns", yet the character saying this is a hack poet hired to write propaganda against the Prophet and does not reflect the author's beliefs; that the book criticised Islam for having too many rules and seeking to control every aspect of life, yet while characters in the book do make such remarks these cannot constitute blasphemy since they do not vilify God or the Prophet.[25]

Before the publication of The Satanic Verses, the publisher received "warnings from the publisher's editorial consultant" that the book might be controversial.[12] Later, Rushdie would reflect upon the time that the book was about to be published. Speaking to an interviewer, he said, "I expected a few mullahs would be offended, call me names, and then I could defend myself in public... I honestly never expected anything like this".[12]

The Satanic Verses was published by Viking Penguin on 26 September 1988 in the UK, and on 22 February 1989 in the US.[12] Upon its publication the book garnered considerable critical acclaim in the United Kingdom. On 8 November 1988, the work received the Whitbread Award for novel of the year,[12] worth 20,000.[26] 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.[21]

After the book was first published in the United Kingdom (in September 1988), there were protests by Muslims that predominantly took place in India and the UK. When the book was published in February 1989 in the United States, it received renewed attention, and worldwide protests began to take a more violent form.[citation needed]

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