Salman Rushdie has been knighted

placidcrane61 said:Are those "The Satanic Verses" actually referring to specific parts of the Quran?
And if they are, which parts exactly?

It applies to the entire Quran. I can't recall the exact chapters, or whether they were quoted directly or just parodied. My memory tells me he used parodied versions rather than the actual verses, though I can't be certain. It’s been a long time since I tried reading it.

Given how he structured the novel, Salman Rushdie would have been better off titling it "The Satanic Verses?" because Mahound remains uncertain about the source of the revelation until the end—as do the readers. To me, it always felt more like a parody than some sort of anti-religious pamphlet.

Thanks for such an exhaustive review, Hrobos.
I’ve also spent quite some time attempting to make my way through it, only to eventually throw in the towel for the exact same reasons. It seems my reaction isn't just some isolated, subjective impression.
It really makes me wonder if even the "Queen Mother" herself ever bothered to read it.

Gregory Howard said:Well, I'll go first. If I didn't finish it, at least I tried before putting it down out of sheer boredom. I skimmed through this little novella closely enough to reach several conclusions:

*Salman Rushdie is your textbook postmodernist trickster. He relies on those convoluted time loops, fantasy elements (reminiscent of Hispanic magical realism), and an overall sense of unreality.

*It is true that the novel features a deliberate mockery of Islam (Mahound is a medieval European slur for Muhammad, which he equates to a demon or something similar. The satanic verses are called such because Mahound isn't entirely sure if his revelation from the angel Gabriel is "divine" or "satanic"). However, this isn't propaganda; it’s just pure postmodern playfulness with everything under the sun. In other parts, you see this crazed woman making a pilgrimage to Mecca who, despite being a fanatic, possesses a sort of divine allure (animals and birds follow her).

*The novel follows several narrative threads, and the one concerning Mahound is just one of three or four. It doesn't even take up much space—maybe 20% of the book.

*Even the opening is lackluster—two angels descending via parachutes from an airplane.

Quite simply, the novel was boring. Rushdie himself is an overwrought, suffocating writer, drowning in his own tools of frantic fantasy, even in his best work, "Midnight's Children." I don't believe his primary goal was to offend Muslims. He is merely a novelist by trade living through the decay of the genre—a period where ambitious writers resort to cheap provocations and intellectual games with any topic they can find. This makes their novels increasingly tedious and unconvincing (think Mario Vargas Llosa, Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, Julio Cortázar, ...).

Recommendation: punish extremists and ayatollahs by forcing them to read any work by Rushdie. The only worse punishment would be making them read the German classics (Thomas Mann, Muslil, Hermann Broch...).

If they actually sat down to read it, the whole fatwa would fall apart. As it stands, they just tell them, "Rushdie wrote something terrible." If they actually looked at the pages, they might start asking why there was such a massive uproar over what is essentially a mediocre novel.
At this rate, they'll end up actually killing him, and then it'll just become mandatory reading in British schools...🙂

Just one messy question for you guys:
Who actually wrote the Quran?
If it’s just some human being's work, how on earth did it leave such a massive mark
on all those ancient people back then?
I mean, there were tons of other religions in the Middle East that didn't exactly take off like that.
So, if the Quran isn't a human creation, then whose is it?
And if it belongs to God, then who exactly is this God we're talking about?

placidcrane61 said:Are those "The Satanic Verses" actually referring to specific parts of the Quran?
And if they are, which parts exactly?

أَفَرَأَيْتُمُ اللَّاتَ وَالْعُزَّى
وَمَنَاةَ الثَّالِثَةَ الْأُخْرَى
أَلَكُمُ الذَّكَرُ وَلَهُ الْأُنثَى
تِلْكَ إِذًا قِسْمَةٌ ضِيزَى. سورة النجم - سورة ‏٥٣: ١٩-٢٢
What do you think about Al-Lat, Uzza, and Menat—the third, least respected one? Basically asking: Are they sons for you, while He has daughters?! That would be a totally unfair division. Surah An-Najm - Surah 53:19-22

A ton of early biographies of Muhammad cover this whole episode—like, we're talking Ibn Ishaq's biography of the Prophet Muhammad or even Al-Tabari's history... I could totally pull some snippets from an English translation if you want!

According to them, the story goes like this: These three—Al-Lat, Uzza, and Menat, who were basically the goddesses in the old pantheon, the daughters of the supreme deity—were seen as these elevated intermediaries that people would pray through.

Look, if this whole "Satanic Verses" thing didn't have such legit Islamic sources behind it, the entire Muslim world wouldn't have absolutely lost their minds over Salman Rushdie. It hit them right where it hurts—he wrote a book about something they're desperately trying to sweep under the rug. Your average person might not even know the story exists, but the sheikhs? Oh, they know. And they're terrified that regular folks will find out they've been played, so they tell everyone they follow that they've gotta take out Salman Rushdie.

Regarding those satanic verses—there’s an article written in American that touches upon several points, including...

http://islamu.wordpress.com/2006/12/...na-stabilnost/

shadowjackal88 said:It wasn't Salman Rushdie who cooked up those satanic verses 😉.

rambi didn't invent the Talmud either 😍

placidcrane61 said:Just one messy question for you guys:
Who actually wrote the Quran?
If it’s just some human being's work, how on earth did it leave such a massive mark
on all those ancient people back then?
I mean, there were tons of other religions in the Middle East that didn't exactly take off like that.
So, if the Quran isn't a human creation, then whose is it?
And if it belongs to God, then who exactly is this God we're talking about?

It depends on your worldview. For atheists, it's Muhammad. For various theists, it's some supernatural entity or entities.

If it was merely the work of human hands, how did it leave such a massive impression
on the nations of that era?

? Marx and Engels' "Communist Party Manifesto" left an even deeper impact. In terms of civilization, Newton's "Principia Mathematica" changed the world more than the Bible and the Quran combined.

There were plenty of other religions in the Middle East that didn't see nearly as much success.
If the Quran isn't the work of human hands, then whose is it?
If it belongs to God, then who is this God?

Look above. This is infantile. There are more Chinese people globally than Muslims. So what? Is the Chinese "guardian spirit," some squinting god in the sky, somehow the biggest player among all gods?
The question is flawed.