Satanic Verses
In the religion of Islam, The Satanic Verses refer to a short passage of text purported to have existed in an early draft of the Koran. Islamic scholars today disagree as to whether these verses ever actually existed, or if their history is a fable.
Translated from arabic, the satanic verses are these are exalted females whose intercession is to be desired in the 53rd sura of the Koran, Surat-annajm ("The Star"). The females referred to were the goddesses Lat, Manat, and Uzza, who were popular goddesses in pre-Islamic Arabia. According to legend, Mohammed originally accepted these verses as part of the Koran, until a visit from the angel Jabril revealed that the verses were actually a deception planted in Mohammed's head from Satan and they were not the authentic word of Allah.
The events surrounding the Satanic Verses were documented by the four earliest biographers of Mohammed; Ibn Ishaq, Wakidi, Ibn Sa'd, and Tabari. Additionally, the Hadith and the Koran both contain passages that can be interpreted as referring to these events.
In a completely separate definition, The Satanic Verses is a novel by Salman Rushdie, inspired thematically in part by the historical incident that Mohammed experienced. It caused much controversy upon publication in 1989, as many Muslims considered it to contain blasphemous references.
Shortly after, a fatwa was placed on the author by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini promising his execution. Rushdie was condemned not for insulting Islam per se, but rather for the crime of apostasy, or attempting to leave the faith, as Rushdie communicates in the novel that he now believes Islam is a sham.
The book, like many others of Rushdie's, concerns Indians living in England, and Indians imbued with English culture returning to India. It opens with a terrorist attack by supporters of a Sikh homeland on a plane above the English Channel (based upon real events). The two protagonists miraculously survive the fall about the explosion; indeed, feel they are reborn: Gibreel Farishta grows angelic wings and Saladin Chamcha later, to his dismay finds himself growing horns on his head.
The controversy arose over Rushdie's potrayal of Prophet Mohammad as a fallible human character and more so, the interpretation of the Satanic Verses as evidence that the Quran was not infallibly divine.
External Links
- http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/
- http://www.flightpath.com/stories/1992/04/10/satanicVersesAndLastTempta.html : This is a very good account of the actual reasons for the controversy surrounding this book. It also discusses a similar attack on a film by the name The Last Temptation of Christ.