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To Die For: the Satanic Verses This Side of September 11 - a Review Essay Volume 33 Number 4 Article 1 June 2005 To Die For: The Satanic Verses This Side of September 11 - A Review Essay Barbara J. Hampton Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/pro_rege Recommended Citation Hampton, Barbara J. (2005) "To Die For: The Satanic Verses This Side of September 11 - A Review Essay," Pro Rege: Vol. 33: No. 4, 1 - 9. Available at: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/pro_rege/vol33/iss4/1 This Feature Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University Publications at Digital Collections @ Dordt. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pro Rege by an authorized administrator of Digital Collections @ Dordt. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To Die For: The Satanic Verses This Side of September 11– A Review Essay culture and to our many Muslim neighbors, should attempt to explore with Rushdie the con- dition and beliefs of so many people caught up in the dislocations of cultural change. Was his liter- ary satire of an oppressive Islam prophetic? Was his caricature of Muhammad wrong? Or were his sophisticated word plays, provocative images, and intriguing postmodern pastiches about some- thing else altogether? As an important postcolo- nialist voice, Rushdie is a writer to whom people pay attention. Indeed, The Satanic Verses attract- ed much attention. Many people died protesting by Barbara J. Hampton his book. But books, mere words on pages, are not worth dying for, are they? First, however, we must have the history les- son. Salman Rushdie, a naturalized British The year 1989 is one of those momentous years Indian, grew up comfortably in Bombay, that history teachers love. Like 1492 and 1776, it Cambridge, and London. Though as an adult was a pivotal year politically and culturally. Rushdie moves with ease in elite British circles, However, the din of crashing walls and ripping his geographical roots are in India and, secondar- curtains may well have drowned out a slightly ily, Pakistan; though he is admittedly a secular quieter event, the publication on February 14 of man, his religious roots are in South Asian Islam. an Iranian fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the He had won the prestigious Booker Prize for his author of The Satanic Verses, because he had earlier satiric novel about India, Midnight’s “dared to insult Muslim sanctities.”1 Children, which was followed by Shame, his Ayatollah Khomeini’s decree urging zealous scathing exploration of Pakistan’s political situa- Muslims to kill Rushdie presaged more recent tion. global upheavals. Sixteen years after the fatwa, The next natural target for Rushdie’s razor- on this side of September 11, Christians who sharp probe was either England or Islam. He desire to live as world citizens and as ambassa- managed to dissect both in The Satanic Verses. dors of the Gospel, both to a decadent western Although initially praised in western reviews, the book was banned in India, denounced in the Barbara J. Hampton is adjunct instructor at The Muslim world where people died in the resulting College of Wooster, in Wooster, Ohio. Ms. Hampton melees, and burned before television cameras by attended Trinity Christian College and Calvin College, Muslim immigrants in Bradford, England. The completed her B. A. at the University of Michigan, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa forced Rushdie into completed her M. A. at the University of Wisconsin at hiding and generated a heated debate about Madison. Her current research focuses on Islam, which she is fieldtesting with Christian and Muslim British cultural values, freedom of speech, multi- student friends. culturalism, and religious rights and privileges. Pro Rege—June 2005 1 No surprise, then, that after September 11, the hard-working immigrant, married to a British Rushdie proclaimed in a New York Times editori- woman of the highest breeding. He achieves suc- al that President Bush was wrong to exonerate the cess as an impersonator of any sound that adver- Muslim faith for the Trade Tower attacks. “Yes,” tisers need—notably in radio, not television indeed, he thundered, “This is about Islam, a self- where his ethnicity would be apparent. Not par- exculpatory, paranoiac Islam, a jumbled, half- ticularly happy with the identity he has tried so examined cluster of customs, opinions and preju- hard to achieve, he is nevertheless horrified to dices.” He argued, “If terrorism is to be defeated, have become the devil his adopted society has the world of Islam must take on board the secu- labeled him. Ultimately he is able to sluff off that larist-humanist principles on which the modern is identity, though he uses his language skills to based.”2 He had written his famous novel, after whisper a few satanic verses of his own, ones that all, to excoriate Islam and Britain for failing to insinuate to Gibreel that Cone has been unfaithful live up to his secularist-humanist vision of a mod- to him. During his journey around London as the ern religion and a tolerant country. angel of judgment, Gibreel rescues Chamcha, his In a nutshell, the plot line of the long, complex, unknown tormenter, from the fire that spreads disjointed Satanic Verses follows the fortunes of through parts of the racially tense city. Yes, who two Anglo-Indians: Gibreel Farishta, an emotion- is good? Who is bad? Can they be distinguished? ally unstable though wildly popular Indian film Hardly. These confused, changing characters star, and Saladin Chamcha, a wealthy radio embody the metamorphosis that occurs in the impersonator English-wanna-be. The two of them novel at many levels, most importantly as the survive a terrorist attack on their plane, falling dilemma of the immigrant. 29,000 feet to be born again (Rushdie’s language) Five of the nine chapters are set in Bombay or on the shores of England, Farishta as the London and trace the changing fortunes of these archangel Gabriel and Chamcha as the devil, two immigrant characters. In the aftermath of the horns-and-tail-and-all. As they wander around furor over his book, Rushdie himself declared in London in their new physical forms, they wreak an essay entitled “In Good Faith” that The havoc on a variety of individuals and communi- Satanic Verses is “if anything,…a migrant’s-eye ties. Finally, having been restored to their original view of the world. It is written from the very physical forms, they return to India, Farishta to experience of uprooting, disjuncture and meta- complete disintegration and suicide, and morphosis that is the migrant condition, and from Chamcha, the nastier of the two by far, to rap- which, I believe, can be derived a metaphor for all prochement with his estranged family and to hap- humanity.” Migrants are, he believes, uniquely piness with an old lover. situated to probe the evils of stubborn racism in Which of the two, however, is an angel and host countries and “to [celebrate] hybridity which the devil? The Satanic Verses is deliberate- …[and] impurity, intermingling…[to rejoice] in ly blurring the good-guy/bad-guy distinction as mongrelization and [fear] the absolutism of the well as the larger notion of good and evil just as Pure.”3 it melds the profane and the sacred. Gibreel If that had been the total of the book, it prob- Farishta was a womanizing movie star in India, ably would have taken its rightful place in the playing all manner of Hindu gods in movie after canon of postcolonial literature out of the view popular movie. He caused the death of his lover of England’s general reading public and Iran’s even as he pursued the elusive Alleluia Cone all watchdogs. It is the four interspersed chapters the way to England. Nevertheless, he cannot that have so disturbed the Muslim world. Two leave behind his psychic demons. Thus, when he of those are set in Jahilia, the pre-Islamic city is reborn as an angel (the literal meaning of his of Mecca (jahilia means ignorance in Arabic), name), he is positioned to act in the dream and two explore the story of a young Indian girl sequences as the angel of Revelation and the who leads a village of people to their deaths as whisperer of Satanic verses. she seeks to go on a pilgrimage directly On the other hand, Chamcha, his name a slangy through the Arabian Sea to Mecca. Here version of the Hindi S.O.B., is the very model of Rushdie specifically confronts the absolutism 2 Pro Rege—June 2005 of the Pure in the form of totalitarian Islam. transmission of revealed words.”8 The verses in Rushdie gets to Jahilia from London, not just their original form would have allowed the new by postmodern leaps of magical realism but by believers to compromise with the polytheistic way of the hallucinations of Gibreel Farishta. In paganism of Jahilia by permitting them to seek them he is the angel (or is it the devil?) who the intercession of the three primary goddesses in reveals the contents of the Qur’an (or is it a rule the Meccan pantheon. This compromise would book?) to Muhammad (or is it Mahound?). And have guaranteed the new community’s social here is the salt-into-the-wounds rub: Rushdie’s acceptance by the Quayresh tribe. However, in a characterizations subvert the Muslim understand- new vision Gabriel (historically)/Gibreel (literar- ing of how the Prophet Muhammad received the ily) retracts them. Gibreel says, “Being God’s revelation of the Qur’an. For devout Muslims, the postman is no fun, yaar. Butbutbut: God isn’t in Qur’an is the very uncreated word of God, this picture.
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