Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

The Satanic Verses and the Demonic Text 251their lives: rioters were shot in Bombay, the novel’s translators, or just Muslimsconsidered too moderate in their opinions, were assassinated. The incidenthad major consequences on the commercial and diplomatic relationsbetween Iran and several Western countries. Perhaps more importantly, thecultural relationship between Islam and the secular West was aggravated. Extremefundamentalism became more confirmed than ever as the dominantWestern perception of Islam.From the Western perspective, the burning of Rushdie’s books and theeffort to silence him with violence were offences towards fundamental humanrights. 9 From the viewpoint of many Muslims, The Satanic Verses was adirect assault on Islam, abuse of the Koran, the Prophet, and everythingthey considered holy. Rushdie’s novel was clearly able to hit a very sensitivespot in cultural relationships. The different ways to articulate ‘right’ and‘wrong,’ or differences in how ‘human rights,’ or the right way of livingshould be understood, were sharply thematised. This is hardly a coincidence,as The Satanic Verses is openly addressing and discussing these questions inits pages. As Salman Rushdie himself characterises it,If The Satanic Verses is anything, it is the migrant’s-eye view of the world.It is written from the very experience of uprooting, disjuncture and metamorphosis(slow or rapid, painful or pleasurable) that is the migrant condition,and from which, I believe, can be derived a metaphor for all humanity.[…]Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the opinionthat intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruintheir own. I am of the opposite opinion. The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity,impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new andunexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies,songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of thePure. 10The most central structuring principle, and an essential aspect of thisnovel’s demonic thematics, is hybridity. The mixture of different cultures,the Indian, the British, the Arabic, is manifest in its cast of characters andmilieu. The opposition and mingling of the religious with the secular is anotherimportant area where hybridisation takes place. This opposition andthe systematic breaking of the limit between the sacred and the secular isalso the most notable transgressive feature of the text, and the borderlinewhere the Western and Muslim sensibilities concerning the status of writingcollided. The title of the novel also points towards the ambiguous role thatreligiosity plays in Rushdie’s text.9 The article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; see e.g. The RushdieLetters: Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Write. Ed. Steve MacDonald & Article 19. (Mac-Donald 1993.)10Rushdie, “In Good Faith”; Rushdie 1991, 394.