Salman Rushdie stabbed: What’s controversial about Satanic Verses?

Salman Rushdie, who has been embroiled in many controversies because of his hard-hitting books, is an Indian-born author who mostly specializes in works surrounding magical realism and historic fiction. He also focuses on issues surrounding the migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, centered around the Indian subcontinent.

Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses," one of the most divisive works in recent literary history, was released thirty years ago and almost instantly sparked violent, irate protests all around the world.

Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, urging Muslims to execute the author a year later in 1989. Rushdie, who was at the time a British citizen residing in the U.K. but was born to a Muslim family in India, was compelled to go into hiding for the better part of a decade.

Rushdie challenges and occasionally seems to mock some of Islam's most delicate principles in the book "Satanic Verses," which strikes at the core of Muslim religious beliefs.

Muslims believe that the angel Gibreel, or Gabriel in English, visited the Prophet Muhammad and read him God's messages over a 22-year period. The statements were then repeated by Muhammad to his adherents. The Quran's verses and chapters were eventually transcribed from these spoken utterances.

Rushdie’s novel takes up these core beliefs. One of the main characters, Gibreel Farishta, has a series of dreams in which he becomes his namesake, the angel Gibreel. In these dreams, Gibreel encounters another central character in ways that echo Islam’s traditional account of the angel’s encounters with Muhammed.

Rushdie chooses a provocative name for Muhammed. The novel’s version of the Prophet is called Mahound – an alternative name for Muhammed sometimes used during the Middle Ages by Christians who considered him a devil.

In addition, Rushdie’s Mahound puts his own words into the angel Gibreel’s mouth and delivers edicts to his followers that conveniently bolster his self-serving purposes. Even though, in the book, Mahound’s fictional scribe, Salman the Persian, rejects the authenticity of his master’s recitations, he records them as if they were God’s.

Through Mahound, Rushdie appears to cast doubt on the divine nature of the Quran.

For many Muslims, Rushdie's fictional portrayal of the crucial moments in the history of Islam suggests that the Prophet Muhammad, rather than God, is the source of revealed truths.

Rushdie has claimed that religious writings should be subject to criticism ever since the release of "The Satanic Verses." Why are we unable to discuss Islam? Rushdie stated in an interview from 2015. It is possible to have fierce criticism for someone else's opinions while still having respect for them and protecting them from intolerance.

Even after 30 years, threats against his life persist. Although huge protests have ceased, the ideas and problems explored in his work continue to be hotly debated.

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