Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

194
Salman Rushdie
How does newness come into the world? How is it born?
Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made?
How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What
compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature
must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating
angel, the guillotine? (8)
Thus “mongrelization” and its potential to change the perceived world,
rather than the power of grand narratives to maintain certainty, recurs
in several of Gibreel’s dreams, in the stories of Gibreel’s and Saladin’s
experiences in Britain, in the story of Muhammad, and so on.
Gibreel’s dreams about Muhammad are the primary source of
controversy that made Rushdie so unpopular with the Islamic clerics.
The chapters “Mahound” and “Return to Jahilia” are particularly blasphemous:
even Rushdie’s choice of names—“Mahound” is the old
derogatory name for the Prophet Muhammad, and “Jahilia” (meaning
“ignorance” in Arabic) is the author’s name for the holy city of
Mecca—are enough to raise the ire of Moslem clerics.
As the central doctrine of Islam, the Koran is accepted as the transcription
of the exact words of God, and Muhammad, via the dictation
of the angel Gabriel, is the Prophet who brings God’s message to
people. Rushdie’s title references the “satanic verses,” an extra couplet
that Muhammad supposedly pronounces (after being falsely misled
by Satan) and then, under the guidance of Gabriel, he retracts these
verses (cf Pipes 2004). In The Satanic Verses, Mahound is portrayed as
advancing his own agenda by pronouncing the “satanic verses,” and
not prompted by Satan; therefore the author emphasizes the human
aspect (mistake and self-interest) of writing the Koran, not on its
sacred origin. Gibreel, the angel, not Gibreel the actor who is actually
dreaming it all, is a mere disinterested observer,
[ . . . ] hovering-watching from his highest camera angle,
knows one small detail, just one tiny thing that’s a bit of
a problem here, namely that it was me both times, baba, me
fi r s ta n ds e c o n da l s om e . From my mouth, both the statement
and the repudiation, verses and converses, universes and
reverses, the whole thing, and we all know how my mouth
got worked. (123)