The Rushdie affair

In the United Kingdom, and far beyond into the global political arena, the "Rushdie affair" was a literary and political catastrophe, illustrating the conflict between one writer's right to the freedom of expression and the offence it caused to a series of global Muslim communities. The catastrophe unfolded just weeks after the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses: a publication ban had been issued by a number of governments, particularly those governing predominantly Muslim populations. The already widely celebrated Cambridge-educated Indian novelist, Salman Rushdie, had agreed to publish his novel The Satanic Verses on the Penguin/Viking imprint. The event might be seen as similar to the treatment of H. G. Well's A Short History of the World, which in 1938, had been scorned by Muslims for its fraudulent and unjust depiction of the prophet Muhammad. That is to say, the case has a direct bearing on the balance to be struck between the freedom of expression and the Islamic faith.

For the Rushdie controversy, it seems important to ask this: what is it that the Islamic faith actually required of Rushdie's novel as it related to Muslims and Islam, and how did the author register an insult/offence toward Islam. After all, it was only a novel. Yet, it is only after asking this question that we might understand the troublesome requirements that Islam demands of persons expressing themselves on issues relating to Muslims and Islam.

The novel was, to be clear, an insult to the prophet Muhammad who in Islam is believed to receive the words of God and —acting as an uninterrupted messenger —deliver the word of Islam to the people through the work of the Qur'an. In the Satanic Verses, the character intended to symbolically represent the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, is named Mahound, which can be translated as a 'false prophet'. He is depicted as a corrupt businessman-styled prophet. The prophet is stripped of his divine nature, as is the revelation from God. The prophet, summoned as Mahound, persistently and jokingly presents fictions as credible religious laws. The title of the novel is derived from the idea that the verses in the Qur'an, were written based upon the prophet's understanding, not of God's word, but of the devil's words; thus, the Qur'an is a work of the devil, littered with the 'satanic verses'. There are many readings and interpretations of the text but we can claim with almost complete certainty that the registered insult to Islam was a direct result of its problematic references to Muhammad, not to Islam or God per se.

Since its publication and into the early months of 1989, in reaction to the anti-Islamic sentiment illustrated by the novel's portrayal of the debauched prophet Muhammad, a variety of reactions were expressed at the "harm" it had done. The reaction of some countries (both Muslim and non-Muslim) was to enforce an immediate ban: India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Africa and Venezuela all took this step. British Muslim demands for a ban effectively required that the book be removed from circulation in the marketplace and the remaining copies pulped.

Despite the infamous book burnings in Bradford, the demand to ban the text was refused by the British government. The attempted legal prosecution of Rushdie under the Public Order and Race Relations Act and the entirely "anachronistic" English common law of blasphemy were entirely unsuited to the affair and ultimately, the cases for prosecution failed.