The Satanic Verses

BossArky

I have just finished the Satanic Verses by Salman Rushie after approx 2.5 weeks reading. My main reason for reading was to discover the reasons behind the death sentence put on his head for writing this book. There is much info on the net re the background of the book and notes explaining various obscure references (similar in a way to Ulysses).

What did any of you think of it?

I would give it a 7/10. I found it easy to read, but a bit long and sometimes I would forget certain characters as they dissappeared and reappeared after hundreds of pages.

To sum up... interesting...i.e. now I can pretend how cultured I am by saying "oh I just read the Satanic Verses"...but really... just some good descriptive writings targeted at an Indian audience.

Thats my point of view.

Deer

Did you have any knowledge of islam before you read this book Bossarky? I'm dipping in and out of it at the moment and I've had to google what had been causing so much offence. I'm finding because I have no knowledge I'm getting annoyed while I'm reading the book as I don't know what he's alluding to. I think I would have enjoyed the book better if I had not had this over my head to discover what caused all the controversy.

I found the first third (?) of the book excellent. It is when the dreams start that I've been getting confused. I found the descent mind blowing.

How do you feel about the portrayal of women in Salman Rushdies books in general? I always find them incredably ballsy, brisk, a tad irritating, complete bullys and totally in control of their lives. They don't in general seem to have a lot of respect for their men folk - that's just my opinion. Has anyone read any more of his books?

I'll update as I finish the book.

BossArky

Hi Deer, no my knowledge of Islam was pretty much the same as any Irish person (apologies for the broad generalisation as I am sure that some people out there know an awful lot about it).

I found this website link below to be helpful. I read a chapter in the book, and then checked back to this link below to ensure that I had understood what was going on in that chapter. It also helped to clear up some of the obscure references.

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/

I still have to read the summary for the last chapters.

As I aluded to in my original post I get the feeling that The Satanic Verses is to Indians/Muslims/Islam as Ulysses is to Irish people/Dubliners.

Recently I visited a French friend of mine in El Salvador. His Honduranian girlfriend was thinking about reading Ulysses but said that she had heard that there were lots of things which she may have found difficult to understand. I could not agree more. Imagine her trying to understand the Irish historical references, in-jokes, slang, bits of Irish, etc.

For such an apparently great book I feel that Ulysses lacks in this department as it is relatively inaccessible to people who are non immediately clued into Irish culture. In the same way, parts of the Satanic verses went straight over my head.

I did however enjoy reading the parts where the two central characters, Gibreel and Saladin are wandering around London. I live in London, actually I live in east London amongst the kind of communities which I guess was the type of audience which Rushie may have had in mind when writing. i.e. the immigrants from Indian / Banghladesh, etc.

I would be interested to hear others opinion of the book. Does anyone else think it comes across as the Ulysses of the Indians/Muslims/Islam? Rushdie makes no bones of his admiration for Joyce and can quote verbatim chunks of the Ulysses text.


To answer your other question:

Yes, I have previously read Midnights Childen - enjoyed bits of it but again I feel that chunks flew over my head as I didn't stop to google every in-joke / reference.

Good point re the women in Rushdie's book's - now that I stop and think I cannot find a single weak women in either Midnights Children or The Satanic Verses.

InFront

I havent read it. My understanding of The Satanic Verses is that the suggestion that Muhammad p. somehow interfered with the Quran, but I havent read this literary interpretation of those. I would be interested to know if it changed your view on Islam at all? Or if any Muslims have read this book? However as a piece of fiction Im not sure how much weight such a change of view would carry.

Its interesting that you should suggest that this might be the Ulysses of the Muslim and Arabic communities however, since it is illegal, unacceptable to the broad Muslim community, and still the duty of all Muslims to obey a fatwa issued against its author and publishers.

all insults that Joyce would probably have been proud of!

sceptre

As InFront said, Joyce probably would have loved the idea that someone might have wanted to kill him because of something he'd written. I could go for some of that myself.

I love Rushdie's writing as a rule. He's got this knack of flowing prose and attention to detail that's more than a little lacking in many modern writers. Not just his novels - some of his critical essays are among the best I've ever read or probably ever will. Midnight's Children is one of my favourite books for this reason. He can cast a scene in a few sentences that puts the reader there, managing to avoid the common problem of causing the reader to reimagine the setting halfway down the page. Attention to detail gets me every time, it's the only reason I've tolerated Arthur Miller for years. Even Haroun & The Sea Of Stories, written for children as it is, manages to do what I'd have assumed Rushdie was unable to do before I read it - write in a nice simple style suitable for children.

After reading Satanic Verses though (and it's a few years ago), my first thought was "they put out a fatwa on him for that?" Characters disappear and reappear, occasionally for no particular reason, the style's more stilted than his output has been before or since and the book suffers from far too many run-on sentences. Don't get me wrong, the book's flawed, very flawed, but it's still better than anything you'll ever see me produce. I wouldn't start reading Rushdie with this one and I wouldn't even recommend it strongly unless someone has read everything else he's written and hasn't heard of its existence. It's got something, sure, it's got that pickiness over detail, it has a style that at times is reminiscent of the Koran, obviously deliberate, and it sometimes has that particular descriptive prose that is Rushdie's trademark (and there are sections that remind me of Ulysses as well, though I suspect that's because of the occasional run-on text). It's not a "bad book", I think it's just not a very good Rushdie book.

BossArky

*** Potential spoiler below ***

Spoiler 1

I did not want to mention the part about Muhammad (known as Mahound in the book), as it may have ruined the story for someone who is reading it. What happens in the book is that Mahound is travelling around and being proclaimed as a prophet. His scribe writes down all that he says for future reference. However, after a while the scribe gets bored taking verbatim notes and decides to alter little sections of what Mahound says. He does this for a while and Mahound does not notice, even when the scribe is reading the notes back to him. This encourages the scribe to change Mahounds words even more, until eventually he is writing the prophecies and Mahound does not notice that they are nothing like what he has been quoting.

The above is one reference to the Satanic Verses which apparently Satan is supposed to have somehow slipped into the Koran.

Spoiler 2

In the book there is also the mention of another type of Satanic verses. This is when Saladin uses his vocal impresonation skills to ring Gibreel and Allie Cone and quote silly rhymes down the phone to them.


Regards asking any muslims if they have read the book: I mentioned it to a muslm colleague of mine... he had not read it and didn't even understand the real world reference to the Satanic Verses in the Koran. I was suprised, as this is a person who would not marry someone they loved due to religious/family pressure.

When I said Satanic Verses could be a Ulysses of the Muslims... I meant that it has a lot of in-jokes, references, etc which people outside that culture/mindset may not understand.

toomevara

One of the key tenets of islam is that the Qu'ran is the unmediated word of God as delivered to the prophet Muhammed in series of revelations over a period of years. It is primarily an oral tradition and was originally transmitted by recitation. indeed for most muslims the real power of the Qur'an comes not through reading but reciting as much of its power is said to reside in the sublime/ divine sound and indeed a good recitation does have an etereal, otherworldly sound to it.

Muhammed is regarded as having been unlettered by muslims and the various suras of the Qur'an were written down over the years in a very haphazard manner by the original muslims. After the prophets death they were collated and collected from various sources (for example the shoulder blades of camels seem to have been a popular repository for verses)and the Qur'an as we know it was created, thugh there were subtly different versions initially, in the main the Qur'an as we have it now remains essentially unchanged.

This fideliity of transmission is crucial to the muslim faith as the Qur'an is regarded as the verbatim word of god, without external interpolation. This is crucial and any suggestion otherwise is regarded with great hostility by muslims.

The essential rock of the muslim faith is that there is one God and that muhammed was his messenger. End of story. That is islam in a nutshell, indeed technically you need believe nothing else to be a muslim. This 'oneness' or unity, is the sine qua non of Islam, and Muhammed incurred the wrath of the polytheistic meccans who worshippped many Gods at the Kaaba in mecca. The Meccans refused to relinquish their many other Gods and persecuted Muhammed and the early muslims harshly. Indeed the very survival of the nascent religion and its prophet was threatened, and it is at this point that muhammed is said to have interpolated a verse which accepted the worship of three female deities along with Allah. Muslims believe that this was at the instigation of satan (often called the whisperer in Islam) hence the term 'satanic verses'. Muhammed later recanted these verses. Whether you believe they were put in as a political expediency or from Satan, of course depends on your perspective.

The suggestion in Rushdie's book that Mahound did not, for whatever reason faithfully transmit the revelation of God was regarded as a direct attack on the Qur'an itself. That's basically what the ruckus was all about...although unfortunately in my experience most muslims never bothered to read the book and find out for themselves.