The Satanic Verses

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Harold Bloom (2003). Introduction to Bloom's Modern Critical Views: Salman Rushdie. Chelsea House Publishers. The intricate obsessive re-telling of the early history of Islam is the main reason I had to give this up : it’s deadly boring for a non-religious reader. You don’t know if this or that name or incident is suppose to be a caricature of history or an ironical comment or a plain historical fact. Reading The Satanic Verses turns into an exercise in frustration – who is supposed to be an angel? What’s an angel anyway? Is it the Devil who is telling me this whole shaggy god story anyway? Did I care once? The Prophet Muhammed is called 'Mahound', an alternative name for Muhammed sometimes used during the Middle Ages by Christians who considered him a devil. So before you read this novel, I beg that you give a conscious effort to be open-minded and at least try to suppress the inevitable biases that you will have. A full cup will spill all that’s poured into it, be an empty cup. Only then can one learn to fully appreciate this novel. But the threat against him had not evaporated. Despite the reassurances from the Khatami government, the fatwa remained in place, upheld by Iran’s supreme leader. An Iranian religious foundation increased the bounty on Rushdie’s head, and more than half of the members of the country’s parliament, the majlis, signed a statement saying the writer deserved to die.

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true." Yes Iago too was once a man. What twists of fate made him evil incarnate? He sets out his prime motif: The question that’s asked here remains as large as ever it was: which is, the nature of evil, how it’s born, why it grows, how it takes unilateral possession of a many-sided human soul. Who is the folklore hero Arjan Vailly mentioned in ‘Animal’ song? Toronto man claims to be his great-grandson If I see one comment about how I shouldn't like this book as a Muslim, or people complementing me for standing up to my faith or some nonsense like that, I AM GOING TO LOOSE IT!!!

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From a readability standpoint, Salman Rushdie's writing is very disjointed, wordy, and scattered in thought. There were many times when I was lost and felt like giving up. The writing style was tedious because almost all of it mimics conversation. For many Muslims, Rushdie, in his fictional retelling of the birth of Islam’s key events, implies that, rather than God, the Prophet Muhammed is himself the source of revealed truths. Despite a conciliatory statement by Iran in 1998, and Rushdie's declaration that he would stop living in hiding, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported in 2006 that the fatwa would remain in place permanently since fatawa can only be rescinded by the person who first issued them, and Khomeini had since died. [22] Violence, assassinations, and attempted murders [ edit ] Neena Gupta says women of her generation ‘didn’t have a need for sex’, were taught to satisfy their husbands like ‘it was a job’

Death to all those that oppose *freedom! Well not death, nah, not that, just shut up already and go and moan to your friends and family like everyone else would. One man's freedom is another man's murder; this is a word that changes its meaning according to the philosophy of those spouting it. In addition, Rushdie’s Mahound puts his own words into the angel Gibreel’s mouth and delivers edicts to his followers that conveniently bolster his self-serving purposes. Even though, in the book, Mahound’s fictional scribe, Salman the Persian, rejects the authenticity of his master’s recitations, he records them as if they were God’s. What didn’t help is the fact that I’m also reading Joseph Anton, Rushdie’s biography. The personal relationship between him and his farther is detailed quite extensively throughout and much of Rushdie’s emotions regarding the matter are paralleled here in different forms. I became confused with events that had happened in Rushdie’s life and those that had happened in the fictional account here because they are so strikingly similar. This meant that a confusing novel became even more confusing.Salman Rushdie is one of our greatest authors but in The Satanic Verses he was barking up the wrongest possible tree. Rushdie expressed relief at the assurances offered by Khatami’s government, and said he had no regrets over his book, even after spending a decade in hiding. If you believe that Gabriel spoke Allah's divine words to Mohammad, I bet you don't also think that Mohammad received false words from Satan, do you?