Satanic Verses

(Sir) Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses is one of the 'masterpiece' by apparently a 'Muslim' writer, which was nominated in the Booker Prize in 1988. Rushdie's fourth novel caused havoc and controversies within the Muslims community around the world at that time. This novel, he said is, "inspired in part by the life of Muhammad (P.B.U.H.)", was heavily published during its time and the Penguin Books paid 800,000 bucks in advanced to get his novel published under their company.
The novel is about Gibreel Farishta ( a bollywood superstar) and and emigrant Saladin Chamcha from India changing personalities and what happened to them in Britain and after their return to India (for the summary, you can just search it on the Internet)

Rushdie (he was born as a Muslim but later murtad), was heavily supported by most people in the world although there were rallies and burning books riots happened in Britain. Some countries such as India and South Africa banned the novel due to the on-going protests by the muslims.

I quoted some of the analysis and critics,

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 "Mahound" or "the Messenger" in the novel) in Mecca ("Jahilia"). At its centre is the episode of the Satanic Verses, in which the prophet first proclaims a revelation in favour of the old polytheistic deities, but later renounces this as an error induced by Shaitan.

Timothy Brennan called the work "the most ambitious novel yet published to deal with the immigrant experience in Britain" that captures the immigrants dream-like disorientation and their process of "union-by-hybridization". The book is seen as "fundamentally a study in alienation."

From Wikipedia. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses )


The on-going protest took years and in 1989 eventually Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran issued a fatwa that this Rushdie should be killed and his publishers. As a result, he, Rushdie, has been kept under police protections by the British Government.

Suprisingly, not many people actually read the whole book (including those who's rioting and the one who's supporting Rushdie), Sheikh Ahmad Deedat in his speech " How Rushdie fooled the West" in 1989 pointed out this fact as only 1 in 6000 of his audience have managed to read the book.

During his speech, he quoted a lot of short sentences which offense not only Muslims, but Hindu's Gods, Margaret Thatcher (the Prime Minister of United Kingdom at that time) and the Queen herself. An American actor at that time, called Margaret's policies as f***, and he was banned from setting his foot on the United Kingdom while this Rushdie which everyone in the UK at that time adores him for his so called 'Masterpiece', called Margaret b***h and he got away.

He said in his novel that one of the character dreams of making love with the Queen, and called Sita ( Hindu Goddess) a wh**e whose always craving for s**, and they still let him got away.

WHY?

The press said (most people said) that the Brits can bear with that and what he wrote in his novel were dreams. But sane people can always argue that when he wrote it, he wasn't dreaming at all!

Although he is still alive and safe now, he will recieve proper punishment in the hereafter unless he does perform taubah. Wallahu'alam.

Don't let this fitnahs happen again and to do just that, we need an ummah. A strong ummah that can bear and withstand these fitnahs.

Let us form the ummah together!

Islam will never dissapear from the Earth as long as there's one group who's performing da'wah and protecting the Syiar of Islam.

Wallahu'alam.



Sorry if this post is too harsh for you.

9.13pm 19 Nov 08