London – In 2007, when Great Britain announced the name of author Salman Rushdie to receive the title of British Royal Knight, protests were held in many Islamic countries for his most famous book – Removal of the title from Parliament in Pakistan.
Sir Salman Rushdie, as it is called in England, finally reached those who thought the book The Satanic Verses to be blasphemous this Friday (12).
The 75-year-old writer’s stabbing during a conference in New York has once again brought to light the religious intolerance that has led to bloody attacks in recent years.
Salman Rushdie’s book gets ‘fatwa’
The Satanic Verses book was published in 1988. A year later, Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie, an Indian-born British citizen.
He lived for more than 10 years in hiding and under protection, without any contact with his family. He resurfaced in the 1990s after Iran said the fatwa was repealed, and he lives in New York today.
During the royal tribute, Sher Afghan Khan Niazi, Pakistan’s Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, described the author, who was born into a Muslim family and claimed to be an atheist, as “blasphemous”.
And the tribute on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth’s 81st birthday, which represents “religious hatred”, hurt Muslim sentiments around the world, she said.
Young protesters even burned pictures of the Queen and Salman Rushdie in several countries. Those who protested then are no longer so young, but new generations have inherited intolerance towards the author.
It was a young 24-year-old man who bought a ticket to enter the Institute’s auditorium. chautauqua, In New York and shoot Rushdie.
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On the 30th anniversary of The Satanic Verses, in 2018, teacher Myriam Renaud,
The Faculty of Contemporary World Religions at Union Institute & University in the United Kingdom published an article on the academic portal The Conversation analyzing the cause of the controversy.
“The Satanic Verses” goes to the heart of Muslim religious beliefs when Rushdie is seen in dream sequences defiant and sometimes mocking some of his most sensitive principles.
The teacher is the prophet of the Muslims by the angel Gabriel – Gabriel, who recited the words of God to him for 22 years. He explains that they believe that Muhammad was visited.
In response, Muhammad repeated his words to his followers. These words were written down over time and became verses and suras of the Qur’an.
“Rushdie’s novel addresses these core beliefs.
One of the main characters, Gibreel Farishta, has a series of dreams in which her namesake is the angel Gibreel.
In these dreams, Gibreel encounters another central character in ways that reflect the traditional Islamic narrative of the angel’s encounter with Muhammad.
Renaud notes that Rushdie chose a provocative name for Mohammed.
“The Prophet’s version of the novel is called Mahound—an alternative name for Mohammed, sometimes used by Christians who viewed him as a demon in the Middle Ages,” he notes.
He explains that Rushdie’s Mahound puts his own words in the mouth of the angel Gibreel, and issues decrees to his followers that aptly reinforce their self-serving purpose.
In the book, Mahound’s fictional scribe Salman the Persian, though he denies the authenticity of his master’s recitations, records them as if they were from God.
One of the sensitive points of the book is about machismo.
According to the professor, in Rushdie’s book, Salman attributes to Mahound’s sexist views some genuine passages in the Qur’an that make men “responsible for women” and give them the right to attack wives they “fear arrogance”.
“Through Mahound, Rushdie seems to cast doubt on the divine nature of the Qur’an.”
The author of the book advocated challenging religious texts
For many Muslims, Rushdie’s fictional retelling of the genesis of major events in Islam suggests that the source of revealed truths is the Prophet rather than God. He claims to be Mohammed himself, he explains.
He remembers in Rushdie’s defense that some scholars had argued that his “disrespectful sarcasm” was intended to explore whether it was possible to separate fact from fiction.
And he cites a 2015 interview in which Rushdie argued that religious texts should be open to challenge.
“Why can’t we discuss Islam?
“It is possible to respect the individual, to protect his ideas from intolerance while skeptical of them, and even to criticize them fiercely.”
However, as the teacher admitted, this view contradicts the view of those who see the Qur’an as the literal word of Allah.
And it was this vision that prompted the young Hadi Matar to fulfill the fatwa living among Muslims who were dissatisfied with the author, which was officially suspended after Khomeini’s death, but whose works have already been published in more than 40 languages. .
In one of his most recent Twitter posts, he introduced his new book, Victory City, which will be released in February 2023.
Here’s the US cover! #VictoryCity Release date: February 9, 2023. @random house @PRHDigital @penguinrandom pic.twitter.com/t4tKQ8Bjdw
— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) August 9, 2022
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source: Noticias
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