The Satanic Verses [Paperback]

When I found The Satanic Verses in the book store, I thought, If this is a war of ideas, a war for the mind, then my own little personal protest will be to read what my enemy does not want anyone to read. It had not occurred to me before, because the fervor of the fatwa led me to believe Salman Rushdie's book was some sort of religious tract or angry political protest against Muslim fundamentalism, not a novel of brilliant imagination, sensual metaphor and lyrical poetry.

It is a story of India and Britain, and the inevitable clashes between, brought on by their long, and turbulent history together. It is a story about personal identity, racial identity and religious identity. It is a story of damnation and redemption, love and betrayal, betrayal and forgiveness. But most of all, it is a story about people. Deep, colorful and live, full of passion, humor and questions for the Almighty. It is, in short, a human story, so well crafted, that anyone, even someone like me who has little experience with India or Islam, can relate to its message.

Perhaps this accessibility is just what worried the Ayatollah Khomeni. By issuing his death sentence upon Salman Rushdie's head, he drew widespread attention and sympathy for a talented writer who might otherwise have gone unnoticed outside his own circle of interest. Khomeni also demonstrated what power mere words could hold over those who rule by the absolutism of ideas.

"What does a poet write? Verses. What jingle-jangles in Gibreel's brain? Verses. What broke his heart? Verses and again verses."

Rushdie's criticism for the religion of Islam/Submission, as spread by the Prophet Mohammed/Mahound, is sharp, angry and completely unapologetic. He even goes so far as to suggest that Mahound invented a lot of the "rules" of this religion for the sake of convenience, or compromise, in businesslike fashion,
for the more successful spread and maintenance of power of the Idea and its officials.

Throughout the story, Rushdie asks the question, Where are the words, or verses, attributed to God/Allah really coming from?

"All around him, he thinks as he half-dreams, half-wakes, are people hearing voices, being seduced by words. But not his; never his original material. - Then whose? Who is whispering in their ears, enabling them to move mountains, halt clocks, diagnose disease? He can't work it out."

No wonder Khomeni was afraid.

One amusing thing is that Rushdie was clearly aware of the danger he was creating for himself by writing and publishing his opinions.

"'And now Mahound is coming in triumph; so I shall lose my life after all. And his power has grown too great for me to unmake him now.' Baal asked: 'Why are you sure he will kill you?' Salman the Persian answered: 'It's his Word against mine'."

I did not, however, get the sense that Rushdie was arguing against belief in God or even Allah. The book has too much life-affirming optimism for such a stance. His argument is against God's misuse for the purpose of controlling or subjugating people; that submission is not for normal human beings. Normal
human beings wrestle with God, have doubts, questions, even anger. "What kind of idea are you?" He asks repeatedly throughout the book. "How do you behave when you are weak?" - Bend, compromise, in order to survive? "How do you behave when you are strong?" Hard, unyielding, pure? or Forgiving and merciful?

But even while all these heavy questions are being considered and discussed, Rushdie never loses his sense of humor.

"Gibreel's vision of the Supreme Being was not abstract in the least. He saw, sitting on the bed, a man of about the same age as himself, of medium height, fairly heavily built, with salt-and-pepper beard cropped close to the jaw. What struck him most was that the apparition was balding, seemed to suffer from dandruff and wore glasses."

With his lightning-fast wit and willingness to satire even himself, he reminds us all that, Hey, this is a book, a novel, and its first purpose is to entertain. The Ayatollahs, Imams and religious dictators need to lighten up.