The satanic verses

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Salman Rushdie , author of The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses ( English original title The Satanic Verses ) is a novel by the writer Salman Rushdie , which is about Indian-Muslim immigrants in Great Britain and is partly inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Mohammed . The publication of the book by Viking Press on September 26, 1988 sparked a series of protests and acts of violence by Muslims . The Iranian revolutionary leader Khomeini called February 14, 1989 by a fatwa on all Muslims to kill Rushdie. Various private organizations put a bounty on Rushdie, which was raised several times, most recently in February 2016. Under President Khatami in 1998, the Iranian government distanced itself from Khomeini's call for murder.

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The main plot describes the lives of two Muslims from India and begins with the point in time when their fates are linked: both survive together against any rational possibility when they fall from an exploding plane and are henceforth miraculously transformed.

Flashbacks to the earlier life of these two men as well as the memories of a few other people break through the main plot again and again. Interwoven are three subplots, which are told in dream sequences that are interrupted several times and give the entire story a form of nested framework plot with internal plots.

The two main characters

Salahuddin Chamchawala (who calls himself Saladin Chamcha in Great Britain) is an actor from a wealthy Muslim family who was sent to England as a child, identified almost fanatically with the upscale culture of England and rejected his Indian origins. His marriage to an English woman is not particularly happy, but professionally he is quite successful as a voice imitator and protagonist of a television series in which he can only be seen in a mask. His relationship with his tyrannical father is difficult and cools down again just before boarding the plane from Bombay to London. While still on the plane, he notices that he is in danger of falling back into his old Indian self.

Ismail Najmuddin (in the novel almost exclusively named with his stage name Gibril ("Gabriel") Farishta) comes from a poor Muslim family, but then experiences fame and fortune as an actor in Bollywood films, in which he portrays various Hindu gods. He is considered a heartthrob and is very convinced of himself and his happiness in life. Out of love for an English mountaineer of Jewish descent, he made a spontaneous decision to leave his old life behind and fly to London . His dreams begin on the plane, in which he appears as the Archangel Gabriel . He is afraid of these dreams and tries to avoid any sleep, but does not succeed.

The framework story

Saladin and Gibril happened to be on the same plane when it was hijacked by Sikh terrorists and detonated over Britain after 111 days. Clinging to each other, the two survive the crash and are stranded with the old lady Rosa Diamond, who thinks she recognizes her great love in Gibril. Saladin transforms into a goat-like creature, fatally reminiscent of a devil ( Shaitan ). Gibreel, on the other hand, appears radiant and apparently crowned by a halo . In addition, Gibre's disgusting bad breath appears to have spread to Saladin. While police and immigration investigators arrest and abuse Saladin, Gibreel abandons him. He is looked after by Rosa, whom he magically helps in the last weeks of her life to live through erotic fantasies or memories of Argentina , where she lived in the 1940s. At the same time he feels held by her and unable to go his own way.

When the police realize that Saladin is not an illegal immigrant but a prominent television actor, he is passed out and struggling with pneumonia and taken to a hospital where other "transformed" people live. With the help of a nurse, he manages to escape. He calls his wife Pamela, who - believing she is a widow - has since started an affair with Saladin's friend Jumpy Joshi. Jumpy places Saladin in a small hotel owned by his Bangladeshi friends, the married couple Muhammad and Hind Sufyan, whose two daughters are fascinated by Saladin despite his repulsive appearance. From his hiding place he unwittingly influences people's dreams. A kind of "devil cult" emerges among the immigrants, which, with their dissatisfaction, develops into an explosive mixture that ultimately leads to racial unrest . Saladin's unbridled hatred of Gibreel, who betrayed him in the face of immigration, helps him to transform himself back into a normal person. He would like to build on his old life, but this does not work: his wife - pregnant by her lover - wants to get a divorce, he cannot build on his old successes professionally. Now he wants to take revenge on Gibreel.

Meanwhile, Gibril turns to London after Rosa's natural death. In addition to his dreams as Archangel Gabriel, he now has visions while awake in which he appears as an Archangel. He is also being pursued by his former lover Rekha Merchant, who fell to her death with her children from the skyscraper after his hasty departure . Gibreel is found and taken in by Alleluja Cone, who was the reason for his flight. However, the love of the two suffers from Gibril's macho behavior and his pathological jealousy . Gibreel is becoming more and more mad . In contrast to Saladin, he can initially build on his old professional successes. In general, everything seems to be going well, while Saladin is desperate. But then the tide turns. He endangers his relationship with Alleluja and the re-entry as an actor does not succeed as desired. He becomes increasingly entangled in his second self as an archangel.

When Saladin terrorizes Gibreel on the phone with a disguised voice, Gibreel finally loses control: Saladin continues to fuel his jealousy with modified nursery rhymes ("satanic verses") and thus provokes a mental breakdown in Gibreel, which then sets fire to several parts of the city . Pamela, Jumpy and the Sufyan couple are killed. Saladin tries to save the latter, but fails and is in turn rescued by Gibreel, who had taken care of himself at the last second - despite the knowledge of Saladin's actions.

Gibreel flees to India and tries again to build on his old career. However, he does not succeed in doing this. Instead, he loses his money and threatens to go bankrupt . Saladin also flies to India when he learns of his father's imminent death. On his deathbed he reconciles with him, reconciles himself with his origins and finds his way back to his first love, Zeenat Vakil, known as Zeeny. In a showdown , Gibreel appears at Saladin after he murdered his ex-girlfriend Alleluja and her supposed lover "Whiskey" Sisodia. Desperate over his mental illness, he commits suicide in front of Saladin's eyes.

The dreams

The imam

Gibreel dreams of a Shiite , extremely misogynous Imam who is in exile in London , although he despises this city, and who is working towards the revolution and his return home. Gibreel initially observes him in his apartment. Later the Archangel brings the Imam under compulsion to native king palace , as this is being stormed. The imam succeeds in defeating his archenemy Aisha .

The girl

Gibreel dreams of an Indian girl who is also called Aisha and has been chosen as a prophetess by the Archangel Gabriel . Aisha appears to be the reincarnation of a seer who died a hundred years ago . The whole village follows her on foot on the Hajj to Mecca , as she has promised the people that the Arabian Sea will part before them.

Mishal Said is terminally ill and seeks rescue from death during the pilgrimage . Her husband, the Zamindar Mirza, drives his Mercedes next to and behind the pilgrims. He doesn't believe in the seer and worries about his wife. It stirs up doubts among people, albeit largely unsuccessfully. Once in Bombay, most of the villagers follow Aisha into the sea, where they drown; but there are also reports that they miraculously survived.

the Prophet

The history of Muhammad and the city of Mecca is retold. Mohammed is called Mahound, Mecca is called Jahilia (Arabic for “doubters” or “ignorant”), the new faith is explicitly called “submission” (Arabic for “ Islam ”).

In the struggle for the faith of the people in the city, the tactical concessions of the prophet and the later war are described. The " satanic verses " which give the novel its name and their use for Mahound's politics within the city of Jahilia are particularly mentioned in this context.

It is stated several times that Mahound's visions are purposeful exactly when Mahaound's words or decisions are criticized by his followers, and that these visions are invariably in the spirit of Mahound. Mahound's meager, businesslike listing of do's and don'ts is described.

Among other things, an episode with Mahound's Persian scribe Salman is told, who, due to his doubts, changes the words of the prophet on his own, which Mahound only notices after massive manipulations .

The struggle for the “right” faith is also brought into connection with the economic survival of the city of Jahilia.

In this vision there are two aishas: one is the historically guaranteed last wife of the prophet, then a young woman who works in a brothel in Jamilia. The women who continue to work there even after Mahound's ban on prostitution took all the names of his wives for the pleasure of their customers . They pay for this sacrilege with their life.

Explanations

Islam

“Satanic Verses” is the name given to certain allegedly deleted Quranic verses. According to a tradition received from at-Tabarī , Mohammed continued after sura 53 verse 19 f., Which deals with the goddesses al-Lat , Uzza and Manat of pre-Islamic Mecca, due to the whispering of Satan: “These are the sublime cranes. One can hope for her intercession. "

The new , purified or corrected version displaced these goddesses, because even as (subordinate) venerable beings they could not be reconciled with the monotheism requirement .

This episode in the history of Islam is told in the novel - along with many others that are supposed to suggest that Mohammed was a skilled politician, divine inspiration or not ("How convenient to be a prophet"). The novel describes, among other things, that Mohammed discussed the right faith with his followers and withdrew to a mountain in the event of disagreements. There he found out, and this coincides with the Koranic information, in the dream of the Archangel Gabriel the will of Allah . Fortunately, the archangel always took the view that Mohammed already had. In addition, the words of Gabriel and Muhammad, respectively, which he dictated as illiterate to his Persian follower and writer who doubted the prophet, were increasingly falsified.

According to Rushdie, he took the title of his novel Satanic Verses from at-Tabarī. The publicist Daniel Pipes was only able to prove the term "satanic verses" in the work The Life of Mohammed by orientalist William Muir , published in 1861 . In his comical portrayal of the revelation of the Koran, in which the self-revealing angel Gabriel (or Gibril Farishta, who has to play his role) remains passive, Rushdie allows the interpretation that not only the immediately discarded satanic verses, but the whole Quran comes from Satan.

The following figures and terms show a similarity with personalities or realities of Quranic / Islamic history:

  • Mahound: in the novel, a businessman who climbs his hot mountain in the hijas. (Page 128) It is in this city that Mahound, a businessman who has become a prophet, founds one of the world's great religions. (Page 130) After the revocation of the Satanic Verses, the Prophet Mahound returns home, where a kind of punishment awaits him [...] the prophet's seventy-year-old wife sits under a stone-barred window, upright, with her back to the wall, dead. The grande (Mayor / Council Chairman) of Jahilia orders persecutions that Hind - his wife, probably based on Abū Sufyān ibn Harb's wife Hind bint Utbah - do not go far enough. The name of the new religion is SUBMISSION. (Page 169). ( Arabic إسلام islām  'submission (to God ) / total surrender (to God)')
  • Jahilia: in the novel, a city built entirely of sand . (Page 128) According to the Koranic understanding, Jahilia means the time of ignorance before the appearance of the Prophet. Jahilia is here obviously equated with the city of Mecca .
  • Schark: in the novel (page 130) the name of the tribe of businessmen from the city of Jahlilia. A double allusion: the city called "ignorance"; the tribe Schark, Schirk means idolater who worships several gods at the same time. In addition, this is an allusion to the Kaaba and its pre-Islamic meaning, which is depicted in the novel as the black temple of 360 deities. This tribe of Shark or Shirk, who obviously has control over the city of Jahilia, would be the Quraish tribe in the real history of the city of Mecca , from which the Prophet Mohammed came.
  • Abu Simbel: The grande of Jahilia (page 131) conspicuously coincides with Muhammad's uncle Abu Talib . Head of the ruling council of the city, wealthy beyond measure, owner of the lucrative temples at the city gates [...] what could shake the certainty of such a man? And yet a crisis is approaching for Abu Simbel too. A name torments him, and you can guess what it is: Mahound Mahound Mahound.
  • Beheshti: in the novel (page 130) a despised water carrier who fetches the vital, dangerous liquid and ascends to Mahound's general and executor after the murder of Mahound's uncle by Hind. Behesti was indeed a figure hated by the opposition and the “water carrier” of Khomeini during the Islamic revolution in Iran.
  • Imam : In the novel, Rushdie writes about him as the bearded, turbaned imam. Who is he? An exile, a man in exile. (Page 273) […] Exile is a dream of a glorious return. [...] For the man in exile, paranoia is a precondition for survival. (Page 275) The Imam is a tremendous repose. He is living stone (page 279). He is the necromancer and the story is his trick. (Page 280). The imam drinks water constantly, a glass every five minutes to keep himself clean; before he sips the water, it is cleaned of all impurities with the help of an American filter device. The young men with whom he surrounds himself are familiar with his famous monograph on water, its purity, which the Imam believes communicates to the drinker ... (page 278) - a direct allusion to Khomeini's treatise on the nature of water . This reveals Rushdie's precise knowledge of Khomeini's daily life in exile in Paris ; the parallels to Ruhollah Khomeini are obvious.
  • Bilal X: In the novel, Rushdie writes about Bilal X: a fable he [Imam] heard from one of his favorites, the American convert who was once a successful singer and is now known as Bilal X. (Page 276) […] Burn the books and trust the book, tear up the papers and hear the word as the angel Gibril revealed to the herald Mahound… he puts it in Bilal's mouth. (Page 281) Bilal X, who has more than just the same name as Bilāl ibn Rabāh , has obvious parallels to Cat Stevens .

Migration and Hybridity

Almost all characters in the novel have a migration background . They are regularly described as devils by the autochthonous British, and several of them, like Saladin, have even taken on real devilish forms in the hospital scene. At the same time, the immigrants also demonize the country in which they live, when Hind dismisses London as the city of unbelieving demons or Saladin sees London as Gehenna and Muspelheim . The figures of dreams, the Imam in his exile, Mahound on the Hejra and Aischa, who promised to bring an entire village population from India to Arabia, are also migrants. They all play through different ways of dealing with hybrid identities . Rushdie later described this hybridity in an essay as a “great opportunity that mass migration offers the world”, as an opportunity to overcome the “absolutism of the pure”. Against this background, Rushdie differentiates himself from the post-colonialist theorist Frantz Fanon , who believed that intellectuals must necessarily choose between identifying with their country of origin or with the country from which they were colonized. Rushdie lets his protagonist Farishta reason about Fanon, rejecting the need for such a choice.

Allusions to other works

The Satanic Verses draw upon, quote, or allude to other works in a variety of ways. In an interview, Rushdie himself named Mikhail Afanassjewitsch Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (1940) - just as the devil walks through modern Moscow in this novel, so, no less destructively, an angel walks through London in the Satanic Verses . He also referred to the Metamorphoses of Ovid , in which the characters can also retain no fixed identity. There are also references to John Milton's Paradise Lost from 1667, to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell from 1790/93 and to Henry Rider Haggards She : According to Peter Paul Schnierers, the fascinatingly demonic ruler of this bestseller from 1887 is the model for the various Aisha figures of the Satanic Verses . He also deals with William Shakespeare's Othello from 1602/03 - the “Moor of Venice” also has a migrant background, and his pathological jealousy, like that of Gibreel Farishta, is increased into criminality by the intrigue of a third party. Because of this rich intertextuality , The Satanic Verses are considered an example of postmodern literature .

Effects

Edition in Persian (before 2001)

The novel received the Whitbread Prize in November 1988 . A few days after the book was published, its importation into India was banned.

On January 14, 1989, the book was symbolically burned at a demonstration by Muslims in Bradford . At a demonstration on the 27th of the same month in London's Hyde Park , Muslims petitioned the Penguin publishing group, of which Viking is a member. On February 14, 1989, the Iranian Ayatollah and revolutionary leader Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa that included a bounty for killing the author. The London-based non-governmental organization Article 19 founded the Rushdie Defense Committee , which issued a call for the protection of freedom of expression on March 2, 1989, signed by more than 1,000 authors worldwide . On March 7, 1989, Iran broke off diplomatic relations with Great Britain. After Khomeini's death in June 1989, British Muslim leader Kalim Siddiqui said the fatwa against Rushdie was still in force. In Rushdie's first publication after the fatwa on February 4, 1990 in The Independent newspaper , he denied the charge of blasphemy and stated that he was not a Muslim. Iran and Britain resumed diplomatic relations on September 28th. The fatwa was also a death sentence for everyone who was involved in its publication and who knew the contents of the book, which was against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran.

In Germany, Artikel 19 Verlag was founded to publish the book in German. When the English publisher did not want to publish the novel in paperback , a consortium of publishers in the USA did so.

Attacks were carried out on several translators of the book. The Italian translator Ettore Capriolo was stabbed to death on July 3, 1991 in his apartment in Milan and the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was stabbed to death on July 11, 1991 in the building of his office at the University of Tsukuba . The Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard , was seriously injured by gunfire.

In February 2016, the announced Independent that forty state Iranian media on the anniversary of the fatwa the bounty for the death of Rushdie by 600,000 dollars - to a total of now almost 4 million dollar - had increased.

Original edition

German-language editions

Current paperback edition
  • Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (Original title: The Satanic Verses ). Penguin, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-328-10216-8 .

literature

  • Bernd Hirsch: History and Stories. On the relationship between historicity, historiography and narrativity in Salman Rushdie's novels. Winter, Heidelberg 2001, ISBN 3-8253-1248-8 (also dissertation at Heidelberg University 1999).
  • Dieter Riemenschneider: The Satanic Verses in: Walter Jens (Hrsg.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon . Kindler. Reinbek near Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-89836-214-0 .
  • Peter Priskil : Salman Rushdie - Portrait of a Poet . Ahriman, Freiburg im Breisgau 1990, ISBN 978-3-922774-28-0 .
  • Gereon Vogel: Blasphemy - The Rushdie Affair from a religious studies perspective . Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1998, ISBN 3-631-32892-3 (also dissertation at the University of Bochum 1997).

Remarks

  1. ↑ A Rushdie Chronicle. In: taz. May 26, 1989, accessed March 9, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Thomas Erdbrink: Iran's Hard-Line Press Adds to Bounty on Salman Rushdie. In: New York Times. February 22, 2016, accessed March 9, 2020 .
  3. ↑ at-Tabarī : Annalen I , pp. 1192–1196, u. a., cf. Rudi Paret's Koran edition, commentary, p. 461.
  4. ↑ tilka l-garaniqu l-'ula wa-inna safa'atahunna la-turtaga
  5. ^ Daniel Pipes: The Rushdie Affair. The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West . Transaction Publishers, 2003, p. 115.
  6. ↑ Peter Paul Schnierer: De-demonization and demonization. Studies on the representation and functional history of the diabolical in English literature since the Renaissance. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-092896-9 , pp. 211 ff. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  7. ↑ Numbers based on Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses . Rowohlt, 2007.
  8. ^ The Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition. Brill, suffering. Volume 4, p. 171.
  9. ↑ From the arab. Root slm are the words integrity , entirely , healing , peace derived.
  10. ↑ Peter Paul Schnierer: De-demonization and demonization. Studies on the representation and functional history of the diabolical in English literature since the Renaissance. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2011 ISBN 978-3-11-092896-9 pp. 211 ff. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  11. ↑ Peter Nick: Being different without fear: experiences of difference and identity constructions in a multicultural society. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2003, p. 140.
  12. ^ Nico Israel: Outlandish. Writing Between Exile and Diaspora. Stanford University Press, Stanford 2000 p. 219.
  13. ↑ Peter Paul Schnierer: De-demonization and demonization. Studies on the representation and functional history of the diabolical in English literature since the Renaissance. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-092896-9 , pp. 212–220 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  14. ↑ Roger Y. Clark: Stranger Gods: Salman Rushdie's Other Worlds. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal-Kingston / London / Ithaca 2001, pp. 130 f.
  15. ↑ Clara Eisinger: To Be Born Is to Die. A Critical Overview of The Satanic Verses and Global Modernism . In: Christopher K. Brooks (Ed.): Beyond Postmodernism. Onto the Postcontemporary . Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2013, p. 5.
  16. ↑ Reading 'Satanic Verses' legally . The Times of India . January 25, 2012. Retrieved May 30, 2012.
  17. ↑ a b 'The Satanic Verses': the story of a prize-winning novel that sparked controversy . The Independent . February 14, 1996. Retrieved May 30, 2012.
  18. ↑ Larry McMurtry, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., David Lodge, Derek Walcott, John Banville and others: Help Salman Rushdie! , New York Review of Books , Letter to the Editor, April 12, 1990
  19. ^ Rushdie in hiding after Ayatollah's death threat . The Guardian . February 15, 1989. Retrieved May 30, 2012.
  20. ↑ Sales Update: Paperback 'Satanic Verses' . Chicago Tribune . April 15, 1992. Retrieved May 30, 2012.
  21. ↑ Steven R. Weisman: Japanese Translator of Rushdie Book Found Slain . The New York Times . July 13, 1991. Retrieved May 30, 2012.
  22. ^ Norwegian publishers offer reward to solve William Nygaard case . The Guardian. November 26, 2010. Retrieved May 30, 2012.
  23. ↑ Daniel Steinvorth: Four million for a killer. In: NZZ - Neue Zürcher Zeitung. February 24, 2016, accessed February 26, 2016 .
  24. ↑ Today in the feature sections: "Power and Powerlessness of Images". In: Spiegel Online . February 22, 2016. Retrieved February 23, 2016 .
  25. ^ Samuel Osborne: Iranian state media has put a $ 600,000 bounty on Salman Rushdie's head. In: independent.co.uk. February 21, 2016, accessed February 23, 2016 .

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