Has anyone read this book? It is WACKED, but gives some insight into where we're at today as far as the global conflict against Islam goes. ...In its basic form the story reports that Muhammad longed to convert the people of Mecca (who were, after all, his kinsmen and neighbors) to Islam. As he was reciting S?ra Al-Najm (Q.53), considered a revelation by the angel Gabriel, Satan tempted him to utter the following lines after verses 19 and 20 ("Have you thought of All?t and al-'Uzz? and Man?t the third, the other"): These are the exalted Gharaniq, whose intercession is hoped for. All?t, al-'Uzz? and Man?t were three goddesses worshiped by the Meccans. "Gharaniq" is a hapax legomenon, a word found only in this one place. Commentators say that it means Numidian cranes, which fly at a great height. The subtext to this allegation is that Muhammad was backing away from his otherwise uncompromising monotheism by saying that these goddesses were real and their intercession effective. The Meccans were overjoyed to hear this and joined Muhammad in ritual prostration (suj?d) at the end of the S?ra. The Muslim refugees who had fled to Abyssinia heard of the end of persecution and started to return home. Islamic tradition holds that Gabriel chastised Muhammad for adulterating the revelation, at which point 22:52 is revealed to comfort the prophet, stating that he is no different from those prophets who came before him who were also tempted by Satan and promises that God would ensure the integrity of His revelation by abrogating what the Devil casts in. Verses 53:21-26 were given, in which the goddesses are belittled. Muhammed took back his words and the persecution by the Meccans resumed... ..."The novel consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism, interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The frame narrative, like many other stories by Rushdie, involves Indian expatriates in contemporary England. The two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are both actors of Indian Muslim background. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar who specializes in playing Hindu deities. Chamcha is an emigrant who has broken with his past Indian identity and works as a voice over specialist in England. At the beginning of the novel, both are trapped in a hijacked plane during a flight from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English Channel, but the two are magically saved and float down to the English coast unharmed. In a miraculous transformation, Farishta takes on the personality of the archangel Gibreel; and Chamcha, that of a satyr which evolves thunderously into a devil. Farishta's transformation can be read on a realistic level as the delusional symptom of the protagonist's developing schizophrenia. Both characters struggle to piece their broken lives back together. Farishta seeks and finds his lost love, the English mountaineer Allie Cone, but their relationship is overshadowed by his mental illness. Chamcha, having miraculously regained his human shape, now bears a revengeful hatred towards Farishta for having forsaken him after their common fall from the hijacked plane. Chamcha takes revenge on him by fostering Farishta's pathological jealousy and thus destroying his relationship with Allie. In another moment of crisis, Farishta realizes what Chamcha has done, but forgives him and even saves his life. Both later return to India. Farishta, still suffering from his illness, kills Allie in another outbreak of jealousy and then commits suicide. Chamcha, who has found not only forgiveness from Farishta but also reconciliation with his estranged father and his own Indian identity, decides to remain in India. Embedded in this story is a series of half-magic dream vision narratives, ascribed to the disturbed mind of Gibreel Farishta. They are linked together by many thematic details as well as by the common motif of divine revelation, religious faith and fanaticism, and doubt. One of these sequences contains most of the elements that have been criticized as offensive to Muslims. It is a transformed re-narration of the life of the prophet Muhammad (called the "Messenger" [and "Mahound"] in the novel) in Mecca ("Jahilia" in the novel). At its centre is the episode of the "Satanic Verses", in which the "Messenger" first pronounces a revelation in favor of the polytheistic deities of pre-Islamic Mecca in order to placate and win over the population, but later renounces this revelation as an error induced by Satan. The narrative also presents two fictional opponents of the "Messenger": a demonic heathen priestess, Hind, and an irreverent skeptic and satirical poet, Baal. When the "Messenger" returns to the city in triumph, Baal organises an underground brothel where the prostitutes take on the identities of the "Messenger"'s wives. Also, one of the "Messenger"'s companions claims that he, doubting the "Messenger"'s authenticity, has subtly altered portions of the Qur'an as the "Messenger" narrated it to him. The second sequence tells the story of Ayesha, an Indian peasant girl who claims to be receiving revelations from the Archangel Gibreel. She entices all her village community to embark on a foot pilgrimage to Mecca. Some of the pilgrims lose faith in Ayesha along the way in disbelief that the Arabian sea would indeed part before them. All followers disappear underwater, possibly drowned, in the attempt to walk across the Arabian Sea at Ayesha's bidding. Interestingly, all the disbelieving pilgrims, left behind on the shore, testified in vafor of parting of the sea. Only one man testified against it among the disbelievers. He was the one who watched his wife, who has cancer diagnosed by Ayesha through her visions, go in the water. It is unclear whether he lied or not about what happened. A third dream sequence presents the figure of a fanatic expatriate religious leader, the "Imam", set again in a late-20th-century setting. This figure is a transparent allusion to the life of Ayatollah Khomeini in his Parisian exile, but it is also linked through various recurrent narrative motifs to the figure of the "Messenger"... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_(novel)
Why do you think "true" muslims wish him dead! You can NEVER question islam, especially deeds and actions of their pedophile prophet...if you do, "true" muslims will put a "hit" on you. Islam IS what it IS...it means to "submitt and surrender to allah"...or else!!
Bone, did you in fact read the book? I have, and did enjoy it, as I have enjoyed the two other Rushdie novels I've read (The Moor's Last Sigh, Midnight's Children). I don't know if you meant it this way, but the book appears to be an attack on Islam. Rushdie says himself that the book is about his sense of dislocation between the eastern and western worlds, and uses Islam in his 'magic realism'. In other books he mixes in Hinduism as well. BTW, Rushie comes from an Indian Muslim family.
Yes, I read it many years ago, 1988 or 89. Totally forgot about having a copy. The wife enjoyed it more than I did, but then again I'm more of a history, historical fiction, paleoarchaeology, paleoanthropology, or Clive Cussler fan. When we picked the volume up I expected it to be a little more BLACK and WHITE in it's slander of Islam. I simply was looking for what set the Ayatollah off. You have to remember this was before the 1st Gulf War and our (military member) general knowledge of the Muslim mind was pretty shallow then. We had no idea that simply typing words would result in a death edict. Take Care Ben
What you're talking about was my draw as well, I had already been living in the Middle East but wanted to see for myself what would generate a fatwa on a novel. Same reason I went to see The Last Temptation of Christ, for the fame of the criticism. An interesting, if long, fictionalized historical book involving archaeology and religion is The Source by James Mitchner, if you haven't read it already.
I think it would make an interesting movie. That is if all the people, actors, director, production crew, etc., wouldn't be targeted for death afterwards. Crazy...
I can understand why they wanted to kill him the book was bloody awful LOL found it very heavy going. De Orc :kewl:
Do a google on the film The Message starring Anthony Quinn. I saw it during high school, it was quite the controversy.
Interesting, I was a sophomore in high-school then, but believe me this movie would never have been shown in the (PIX Theater) little town which was home, Centerville, Texas Population 833. Islam was a LONG WAYS OFF then... I just went back there last month for a funeral and not much has changed either. Joining the service after college in 1982 opened my eyes to lots of bogeymen which really weren't that far off anymore. Bad things were happening to my brothers in arms in the middle east. The depiction of Mohammed, or lack of depiction is probably why the uproar didn't go further than it did. Such is the mind of the Radical Islamic Muslim, easily angered by perceived slights against their so called prophet. Insanely angered to the point of deadly violence against innocent unsuspecting people. Small towns all over America are still pretty much in denial as to the danger posed by these mad religious zealots. The situation the USA finds itself in now is indeed precarious, open borders and immigration laws being virtually shelved have resulted in groups of these crazies which have positioned themselves in these small rural communities awaiting 'instruction for destruction' or any type of public depiction of Mohammed... Take Care Ben P.S. Spent over 2 years in Saudi Arabia (off and on) from 1991-2001. I was injured in an accident (1995) outside of Riyadh when the suburban a group of us were in was run off the road by three or four of those white BMW's. I remember one of them had a 'Double Number' license plate.
You are refering to the 1983 terrorist bombing of US military personnel in Beirut? I was living in Egypt then, also during the assassination of President Anwar Sadat by fundamentalists in 1981. These events were terrible and left deep impressions on me about the extent to which radical Islamists were willing to go to push their interpretations of the Quran(they were events that led from a series of actions, I understood this later). They were, however, discrete events occurring over the course of years I spent in the region. It is difficult for me to feel threatened by Islam having spent part of my life living around muslims, people are just people and basically want the same sort of things out of life. By far the worst experiences I've had in the world were in countries where Islam was not a factor. But I do understand where you are coming from, US servicemen have been the target of many 'peace time' terrorist plots on the peninsula for many years. I'm sorry for what happened to you. I haven't ever been the target of that particular sort of aggression and don't know how it would change me.
