Salman Rushdie was seen by some as a famous novelist with great skill at what he does and seen by others as a blasphemous heretic. Rushdie was born in June 1947 in Bombay, India as the only son out of four children. His family originates from Kashmir, so his first language was Urdu-Hindi, though he also speaks English and the Bombay language Merethi. Many of his family members died when he was very young, the worst of which was the death of his father in 1957. He grew up in a very commercial environment where people were put to work in their teenage years.
He wrote his first book Midnight Children while he attended a cathedral school in Bombay, and he found his calling as a novelist. He then went on to attend Cambridge University. At Cambridge he studied history and wrote a great paper on Muhammed which forms the basis of much of the Muhammed account in his famous but blasphemous book The Satanic Verses. This book, which I will tell you about later on, is a book that bashed the Islamic regime in Iran, and it is the reason a fatwa (or death sentence) was placed on him.
After finishing college, he spent an unsuccessful two years in Karcchi, Pakistan. Rushdie returned to London and found himself engaged to a British woman named Clarissa. His son Zafer was then born in June 1979, but Salman and Clarissa divorced in 1987. He then married Marianne Wigging, an American novelist living in London, in January 1988. After he returned to England in 1970, he worked for about a decade as an advertising copywriter. Some of the novels he wrote while in London are listed below:
Grimus – a 1976 novel that was a science fiction and got poor reviews and sold very few copies; Midnight’s Children – won the Books Prize in 1981 and sold half a million copies; Shame – was about Pakistan, was published in 1981 and won wide acclaim; The Jaguar Smile – chronicled Rushdie’s brief trip to Nicaragua in July of 1986. Then in September of 1988 he published the one book that could have killed him and ruined his entire life, The Satanic Verses. This book was seen as blasphemous in the eyes of some Muslims.
This book bashed the way the Ayatollah Khomeini ran the country of Iran, but some Muslims viewed it as bashing the Muslim faith itself. Protests about The Satanic Verses began even before the book’s official publication on September 26, 1988. Two magazines, India Today and Sunday Review, published reviews of the book, extracts from the book and interviews with the author which infuriated many Muslim readers. The Review even stated that “The Satanic Verses is bound to trigger an avalanche of protests from the ramparts.
After the members of the Indian Parliament read these extracts, they were very angry with what he said. Under the ruling of the Indian Customs Act his book was banned in India, but it did not stop its publication in England. Copies of the book were given to some curious Muslim readers even though the book was banned. So unless the book was pulled from stores everywhere, they would still somehow circulate into India. Protests broke out, and Rushdie was starting to be sent death threat letters from random people.
The Satanic Verses also won a different kind of “award” from India’s Prime Minister, Indira Ghandi, on October 28, 1989, as she said that it was “the most offensive, filthy and abusive book ever written by a hostile enemy of Islam. ” And it is true that some parts were abusive. One part of the book tells how abusive and inhumane the army was in India, as they grabbed one Muslim and started removing parts of his anatomy for no reason at all. This was right before many religious organizations stepped in to fight against The Satanic Verses.
The Union of Muslim Religious Organizations hosted a crisis meeting to find a verdict right for Rushdie’s crime. They thought to suggest to the Indian Parliament that Rushdie be criminally prosecuted on the charge of blasphemy and that his book be pulled from the hands of any Muslim who owned it. Rushdie’s life had been turned into a living hell. He took an unlisted phone number, and when he was to leave his home, he was accompanied by ten bodyguards equipped with weaponry and bulletproof Kevlar vesting. Rallies started to protest this book’s publication in the forms of book burnings and other radical acts like that.
The biggest riot that took place was in London on January 29, 1989. Eight thousand fundamentalist Muslims marched for one day and one night in protest of the book. This rally ended with a basic landfill of books being burned in front of the homes of many people living in India. A man named Heinrich Heire stated that “when you start burning books you end by burning men, too. ” The biggest sign of a radical burning was the burning of a Christian crucifix with copies of The Satanic Verses strapped to the cross. This angered the Christians and set off a bit of rivalry between the Muslims and the Christian church.
In a reply to these attacks, Rushdie published a statement telling about his credentials as a good Muslim. In this statement he said that the prophet Mohammed was “one of the great geniuses of world history. ” He also said that The Satanic Verses is not an anti-religious, anti-army or anti-government type of book, and that it is only his attempt to show how difficult moving to a different country with different lifestyles can be. Book burnings kept up, but these were merely an introduction to the violence that began in Islamabad on February 12, 1989.
Ten thousand protesters marched to the American Embassy shouting “American dogs” because the Americans did not help with the controversy. They went on to burn the Embassy, along with the American Culture Center. Hundreds of Muslim protesters were either killed or badly injured by police in the riot. The American Embassy did not get taken over by the Muslim rioters because the people in the Embassy had always been prepared for an attack like this. The rioters also attacked and set an American Express office in flames so that copies of The Satanic Verses would not be transported to America.
Khomeini The Ayatollah of Iran Steps In The one final thing that changed Rushdie’s life forever was the fatwa (or death sentence) placed on him. This death sentence stated that wherever Rushdie might be, whoever might see him could and must kill him, and that anyone that resisted killing him would be prosecuted. When this law was passed, he was three hours behind time in London at a book party with his wife. On February 15, 1989, he received a call from the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) World Service telling him what had happened.
Police commanders decided to provide him with “grade one” protection, which was the type of protection the President of the United States would get, except for the adding of a “SWAT” team to surround him outside. His last public appearance was at the memorial service of his friend Bruce Chetwin. He then went into hiding by way of a car that directly picked him up from the memorial. To make the task of killing Rushdie more attractive, the head of an Iranian charity organization offered 1,000,000 dollars to the man or woman who kills Rushdie.
All government organizations and private and religious organizations set out to kill Rushdie to get the money at the same time. This was a very bad idea. All that ended up happening is that all of the many organizations were fighting to the death in a ruthless battle to see who gets the money. So all because of a book, brother was fighting to kill brother, and people who had the same values as each other were all dying in an effort to take one man’s life. Rushdie was an acclaimed novelist who wrote amazing books about all different subjects.
Many people in the middle east took the writing in The Satanic Verses too far. There were about 1000 casualties just because people were trying to kill one man because he wrote a novel that can be considered blasphemous in the eyes of some. I guess that the moral of this story is don’t make such a big deal out of one novel. The Here and The Now In 1998 the fatwa was withdrawn, and Rushdie came out of hiding. All his life his only intention was to become an acclaimed writer. He never had a war in mind because of a book that can be seen as blasphemous in the eyes of some people.
Right now he lives in a penthouse in New York with “grade two” protection, which is everything that grade one has but without a SWAT team in the picture. He still needs this because even though the fatwa was lifted, there are still some crazy people willing to kill Rushdie for honor. He lives in fear of the chance of death wherever he goes, all because of one book that was meant to be a book talking about the troubles of moving to a different country. Rushdie is a man of peace and strong Muslim faith and meant no harm by his writing. I pray for his life, and the lives of others with the courage to say and write what they believe.