Speaking of politics as pure cynicism, there is an interesting summary of the Satanic Verses affair of 1989 in Fred Halliday’s indispensable little book 100 Myths About the Middle East. The Rushdie affair is Halliday’s Myth No. 97.
The myth, more accurately speaking, is the notion that Rushdie committed “blasphemy” by any stretch. The Satanic Verses is complex, imaginative and often hilarious. But its tone is not “transgressive” or politically incorrect. The argument that it mocks Islam or Muslims is simply false. Halliday writes, “[T]he story of the ‘Satanic Verses,’ which Rushdie told and which caused such offence, was not some invention of his but is an established mediaeval Islamic narrative as recounted in the writings of the famed historian al-Tabari…. The story is in no way derogatory of Islam and, indeed, contains an important moral lesson.” (I won’t get into that lesson here.)
Khomeini’s murder contract was motivated by power politics, not any genuine concern over religion. Halliday writes: “It was only when, in early 1989, it became clear that political elements in India and Pakistan were making an issue of the book that the Iranians sought to pre-empt the campaign and take up the issue.” Halliday also recounts how “a suprisingly large number of [Western] intellectuals and politicians criticized [Rushdie]” at the time, even as writers and intellectuals in the Middle East made their support for the author abundantly clear.
It’s old news, but confusion on this issue still lingers, infecting contemporary debate on the threat of radical Islamism. In late April, Stanley Fish validated Muslim students’ objections to having Rushdie deliver a commencement address at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. Fish, a literary critic, should know better. Among some lefties and liberals there is still an idea that Rushdie “went too far,” etc. Halliday conclusively demonstrates that this is garbage, stemming from ignorance and misplaced guilt.
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