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The Satanic Verses 191
himself describes the nature of this prism while explaining his intent
in writing the novel:
The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling,
the transformation that comes of new and unexpected
combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies,
songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of
the Pure. (1991: 394)
With this claim in mind, it is understandable that the novel, with
its emphasis on the “mongrelization” of grand narratives, upset many
cultural conservatives and religious fundementalists who felt that their
way of life was under attack. The Satanic Verses is transgressive on many
levels: language and imagery in the novel work together to break sacred
taboos of Islam and the demagogical doctrines of Western politics.
For the Islamic mullahs, as well as some conservative Westerners, even
Rushdie’s most obvious novelistic transgressions are unpardonable.
Rushdie aptly sums up this situation: The Satanic Verses pitted him
“against the granite, heartless certainties of Actually Existing Islam,” as
well as against “some ‘friends’ [in the West].” (1991: 436)
But how are the rejection of totalizing narratives and their
“mongrelization” in The Satanic Verses offensive, or, rather, for whom
are they offensive? A careful look at Rushdie’s literary “transgressions”
and their repercussions in the world will help us realize, first of
all, the dangers of reading fiction literally. For the Islamic believers,
and especially for the Islamic clerics, the number of metaphors—not
a single metaphor—embedded in The Satanic Verses is clearly overwhelming
and offensive. If read literally as Rushdie’s attack on Islam,
these metaphors put into question the very sanctity of the Koran
(the Qur’an). According to this view, the novel, written in bad faith
by a religious “deserter,” is dangerous for the true believer. In 1989
Ayatollah Khomeini’s notorious interpretation of the novel as a
book that “has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition
to Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur’an” brought a death sentence on
the author for questioning and mocking the basic premises of Islam;
in other words, for questioning a totalizing myth of the birth of the
Koran and the sanctity of the Prophet Muhammad (qtd in Pipes
2004: 27). To this accusation, and the many that followed the publication
of The Satanic Verses, Rushdie answers straightforwardly,