Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

192
Salman Rushdie
To put it as simply as possible: I am not a Muslim. It feels
bizarre, and wholly inappropriate, to be described as some
sort of heretic after having lived my life as a secular, pluralist,
eclectic man [ . . . ] I do not accept the charge of blasphemy,
because, as somebody says in The Satanic Verses, ‘where there is
no belief, there is no blasphemy.’ (1991: 405)
This early clarification and the numerous subsequent interviews and
apologies to Muslims—but not to the theocratic state of the “Actually
Existing Islam”—made Rushdie’s intent in writing the novel clearer to
people who believe literature requires, and provides at the same time,
freedom of mind, a transcendence which is “that flight of the human
spirit outside the confines of its material, physical existence [ . . . ]”
(1991: 421).
On the other hand, The Satanic Verses offends many Westerners by
implicitly critiquing capitalism and the racism of Thatcher’s British
society. From a post-colonial perspective, Rushdie rejects the claim of
the West to be a metropolitan center, a righteous illuminator of backward
nations and savior of indigenous cultures. The political demagogy
of the West is a form of fundamentalism, one just as dangerous
as religious fundamentalism. That is why, as Rushdie points out,
Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to
make the world in their own images; they fight for the same
territory. And the novel is one way of denying the official,
politicians’ version of truth. (1991:14)
Thus, Rushdie makes it clear—not only in The Satanic Verses, but also in
the rest of his works—that postmodern and post-colonial questioning
of dominant social discourses inevitably clashes with the enshrined
doctrines of society, regardless of there being “Western” or “Eastern.”
The Satanic Verses implodes such doctrines, addressing the anxiety of
living in a world that incessantly outgrows the wildest fictional reality.
As Finney points out, the novel “can be seen as a bricolage of conflicting
discourses framed by the controlling discourse of fiction.”
In the opening scene of The Satanic Verses, two colorful and memorable
characters, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, fall from the
jumbo jet Bostan. While the reader is completely aware of this leap of
imagination, the fall and the ensuing surrealistic events turn the novel into