The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie 

The book is The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. It was originally published in 1988 by Viking, a Penguin group. I read the 2008 Random House paperback edition. I read it in February of 2024.  

The title refers to a set of heretical verses in the Quran that were apparently removed for various reasons. The verses indicate that there are three other deities that can be included in worship along with Allah. Islam is staunchly monotheistic so a reference to any other legitimate deities is anathema.  

I read this book because it’s highly controversial for being critical of Islam. Not only critical, but sticking a thumb right into the eye of Muhamad and the Muslim faith.  

When Rushdie first published it it was banned in several Muslim countries. There were outcries from Muslims for it to be banned and removed from publication. There were demonstrations and protests in the streets.  

A year after it was published the Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme Muslim leader of Iran issued a fatwa on Rushdie, which is essentially a death curse calling for his assassination. The charge was to kill Rushdie without delay upon sight. As a result Rushdie spent a decade in hiding. As a result, the U.K. broke diplomatic relations with Iran in 1989.  

A book that has garnered so much notoriety was very intriguing to me. Also, I am interested in criticizing and attacking Islam for the false religion it is. So I just had to see what Rushdie wrote against Islam.  

It’s clear that Rushdie does not like Islam but he is an atheist. He’s against all religion but he grew up in the Indian world of Islam so that is what he’s most personally speaking against.  

In this book Rushdie is saying a lot about belief and doubt. He has a lot of passages where he writes about a character losing their faith in God. He’s talking about abandoning belief and that being okay. He’s saying that you don’t need God to be a good person or to be happy or satisfied in life. He writes about it like it’s some big revelation.  

One of the main characters finally lets go of his belief.  

“he realized he was talking to thin air, that there was nobody there at all, and then he felt more foolish than ever in his life, and he began to plead into the emptiness, ya Allah, just be there, damn it, just be. But he felt nothing, nothing nothing, and then one day he found that he no longer needed there to be anything to feel…And to prove to himself the non-existence of God, he now stood in the dining-hall of the city’s most famous hotel, with pigs falling out of his face…’Don’t you get it?’ he shouted after her, spewing sausage fragments from the corners of his mouth. ‘No thunderbolt. That’s the point.'” (p30-31) 

So Rushdie is saying that because there was no thunderbolt striking him down because he disobeyed a Muslim rule, that means Allah is not real. This is the most sophomoric, first-year philosophy student half-assed argument that can be made against the existence of God. I’m not sure about Islam but the promise of condemnation in Christian theology would come after death by an eternity spent in hell. Not a thunderbolt.  

Now we have seen instant death for sin in the Bible in such cases as when Uzzah touches the Ark of the Covenant in 2 Samuel 6:7-8 or when Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit in Acts 5. But this is not the norm. If one dies in their sin, they could’ve had a very comfortable, financially and even morally successful life, and then go to hell when they die. Their reward is on this earth and condemnation comes for eternity when they die.  

So to bring this up as an argument against the existence of God, is laughably shortsighted and thoughtless.  

I’ve found that most arguments against God are based entirely on straw men arguments. They attack things that Christians don’t even believe. Or they’re just so ignorant of biblical explanations for things.  

For example, I heard someone say that if we’re supposed to be made in God’s image, why do we have so much pain and death and diseases? This argumentation obviously has no idea about the Fall in the Garden. So many people just have not heard a real biblical explanation of Christianity and the gospel.  

We take too much for granted. We think because we’re in the Christian west, especially Bible-belt America, that everyone has heard the gospel and we would just be another Bible thumper if we tell them about Jesus. But in my experience, it’s more often the case that they have no idea what Christians actually believe. This should be an encouragement for us to speak boldly about Christ and salvation.  

The most fascinating parts of Rushdie’s book were the historical bits about Muhamad and the origins of Islam. He almost makes it a historical novel retelling how Islam got started. This is what pissed off the Muslims so bad. He takes the satanic verses and completely legitimizes them.  

In Rushdie’s narrative of Muhamad’s story he’s saying that the prophet’s revelation from the angel Gabriel was completely fraudulent. All the ideas and messages just came from himself. And that the inclusion of the three other deities (the satanic verses) were Muhamad’s attempt to gain a political position in his village because the other politicians and powerful people believed in those gods. But then when they reneged on their deal, he claimed it was really Satan speaking to him saying those deities were legitimate.  

This is controversial in two ways. At worst the satanic verses are a claim that Muhamad just made everything up for self-serving purposes. At best the verses are showing that Muhamad was tricked by Satan in his revelations (so what else could he have been tricked about). So either way, it doesn’t look good for Muhamad. That’s why the verses were removed entirely. There was no good way to spin them as a “misinterpretation” or anything like that. 

As a Christian, I’m not sure what I believe is true. I believe that some men can make things up and lie about being a prophet of God and just straight up deceive people. But I also believe that Satan comes as an angel of light (1 Cor. 11:14).   

Muhamad could’ve actually encountered a demon and truly believed what he saw. I feel the same way about Mormonism. Joseph Smith said the angel Moroni visited him and gave him the golden plates of the Book of Mormon. Could he have been led astray by a demon? It’s possible. But I don’t know how sincere they actually were in their own belief.  

The self-serving angle could mean that they did just make it all up to their own advantage. Or maybe the demon was deceiving them to believe that they deserved the benefits? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter much. Either way they’re false gods and gospels.  

Rushdie is a good writer. Not great, but good. He has too much going on for my taste. He doesn’t make it clear how much we should be investing into a character when they’re introduced to the story. And there are way too many characters for how short the book is. There wasn’t enough story to go around. Felt cramped. But at the same time, I didn’t really have an interest in reading more about a lot of the characters.  

The two main characters were interesting. They’re two actors who are on a plain that gets hijacked by terrorists. While they’re on the plain, one of the actors, Gibreel starts having nightmares where he is playing the character of the angel Gabriel that visited Muhamad. It’s in these dreams that Rushdie places his historical narrative of Muhamad being visited by the actor playing Gabriel. So it’s not clear if it’s a supernatural time travel scenario or if it’s all just the dream of the actor.  

The plain eventually blows up and the actors into the ocean but miraculously they live and are unharmed. Then one of them starts turning into an actual angel and the other starts turning into a devil. That was the part I enjoyed the most. I wish Rushdie stayed on that concept for the whole book.  

The names got a little confusing, mainly because they all had nicknames as well. But that was an intentional theme, Indian people westernizing their names to assimilate to culture. There’s an element of being embarrassed about your exotic cultural roots. That part was interesting. I gathered these themes were something personal for Salman Rushdie.   

Overall this was a good book but I don’t think I’ll be reading Rushdie again. This was a very bookish kind of book. I can tell that Salman Rushdie enjoys being a humanist intellectual. Not really my style. It felt overwritten. Too long. I enjoyed the historical Muslim narrative and the two actors from the plain. The book would’ve been better if it was only that. I would not recommend this book to the average reader. It’s too disjointed.  

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Notable Quotables 

“””” 

To get his mind off the subject of love and desire, he studied, becoming an omnivorous autodidact, devouring the metamorphic myths of Greece and Rome, the avatars of Jupiter, the boy who became a flower, the spider-woman, Circe, everything; and the theosophy of Annie Besant, and unified field theory, and the incident of the Satanic verses in the early career of the Prophet, and the politics of Muhammad’s harem after his return to Mecca in triumph; (p24) 

“””” 

The anger with God carried him through another day, but then it faded, and in its place there came a terrible emptiness, an isolation, as he realized he was talking to thin air, that there was nobody there at all, and then he felt more foolish than ever in his life, and he began to plead into the emptiness, ya Allah, just be there, damn it, just be. But he felt nothing, nothing nothing, and then one day he found that he no longer needed there to be anything to feel. On that day of metamorphosis the illness changed and his recovery began. And to prove to himself the non-existence of God, he now stood in the dining-hall of the city’s most famous hotel, with pigs falling out of his face. 

He looked up from his plate to find a woman watching him. Her hair was so fair that it was almost white, and her skin possessed the colour and translucency of mountain ice. She laughed at him and turned away. 

‘Don’t you get it?’ he shouted after her, spewing sausage fragments from the corners of his mouth. ‘No thunderbolt. That’s the point.’ 

She came back to stand in front of him. ‘You’re alive,’ she told him. ‘You got your life back. That’s the point.’ (p30-31) 

“””” 

When he saw the walnut-tree in which his father had claimed that his soul was kept, his hands began to shake. He hid behind the neutrality of facts. ‘In Kashmir,’ he told Zeeny, your birth-tree is a financial investment of a sort. When a child comes of age, the grown walnut is comparable to a matured insurance policy; it’s a valuable tree, it can be sold, to pay for weddings, or a start in life. The adult chops down his childhood to help his grown-up self. The unsentimentality is appealing, don’t you think?’ (p65-66) 

“””” 

In these visions he was always present, not as himself but as his namesake, and I don’t mean interpreting a role, Spoono, I am him, he is me, I am the bloody archangel, Gibreel himself, large as bloody life. (p84) 

“””” 

Question: What is the opposite of faith? 

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief. Doubt. (p94) 

“””” 

She asked him, can this be God’s will? He replied, it is. And left, the bastard. From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. He moves in mysterious ways: men say. (p97) 

“””” 

They say in Jahilia that this valley is the navel of the earth; that the planet, when it was being made, went spinning round this point. Adam came here and saw a miracle: four emerald pillars bearing aloft a giant glowing ruby, and beneath this canopy a huge white stone, also glowing with its own light, like a vision of his soul. He built strong walls around the vision to bind it forever to the earth. This was the first House. It was rebuilt many times once by Ibrahim, after Hagar’s and Ismail’s angel-assisted survival and gradually the countless touchings of the white stone by the pilgrims of the centuries darkened its colour to black. (p101) 

“””” 

He always was an ambitious fellow. Ambitious, but also solitary. You don’t rise to the top by climbing up a hill all by yourself. Unless, maybe, you meet an angel there … yes, that’s it. (p104) 

“””” 

‘If our great God could find it in his heart to concede he used that word, concede that three, only three of the three hundred and sixty idols in the house are worthy of worship .. 

*There is no god but God!’ 

‘He asks for Allah’s approval of Lat, Uzza and Manat. In return, he gives his guarantee that we will be tolerated, even officially recognized; as a mark of which, I am to be elected to the council of Jahilia. That’s the offer.’ 

‘How long have we been reciting the creed you brought us? There is no god but God. What are we if we abandon it now? This weakens us, renders us absurd. We cease to be dangerous. Nobody will ever take us senously again.’ 

‘It is not suggested that Allah accept the three as his equals. Not even Lat. Only that they be given some sort of intermediary, lesser status.’ ‘Like devils,’ Bilal bursts out. 

‘No,’ Salman the Persian gets the point. ‘Like archangels. The Grandee’s a clever man.’ (p108-109) 

“””” 

Mahound’s anguish is awful. He asks: is it possible that they are angels? Lat, Manat, Uzza… can I call them angelic? Gibreel, have you got sisters? Are these the daughters of God? And he castigates himself, O my vanity, I am an arrogant man, is this weakness, is it just a dream of power? Must I betray myself for a seat on the council? (p113) 

“””” 

Mahound, reaching up to my vocal cords and the voice comes. 

Not my voice I’d never know such words I’m no classy speaker never was never will be but this isn’t my voice it’s a Voice. 

Mahound’s eyes open wide, he’s seeing some kind of vision, staring at it, oh, that’s right, Gibreel remembers, me. He’s seeing me. My lips moving, being moved by. What, whom? Don’t know, can’t say. Nevertheless, here they are, coming out of my mouth, up my throat, past my teeth: the Words. 

Being God’s postman is no fun, yaar. Butbutbut: God isn’t in this picture. 

God knows whose postman I’ve been. (p114) 

“””” 

‘The last time, it was Shaitan.’ This is what he has heard in his listening, that he has been tricked, that the Devil came to him in the guise of the archangel, so that the verses he memorized, the ones he recited in the poetry tent, were not the real thing but its diabolic opposite, not godly, but satanic. He returns to the city as quickly as he can, to expunge the foul verses that reek of brimstone and sulphur, to strike them from the record for ever and ever, so that they will survive in just one or two unreliable collections of old traditions and orthodox interpreters will try and unwrite their story, but Gibreel, hovering-watching from his highest camera angle, knows one small detail, just one tiny thing that’s a bit of a problem here, namely that it was me both times, baba, me first and second also me. From my mouth, both the statement and the repudiation, verses and converses, universes and reverses, the whole thing, and we all know how my mouth got worked. (p126) 

“””” 

The location of the cancer had proved to Mishal the cruelty of God, because only a vicious deity would place death in the breast of a woman whose only dream was to suckle new life. (p239) 

“””” 

At first the Sarpanch had wanted the carpenter Isa to construct litters that could be pulled by oxen and on which the old and infirm could ride, but that idea had been knocked on the head by his own wife, who told him, ‘You don’t listen, Sarpanch sahibji! Didn’t the angel say we must walk? Well then, that is what we must do.’ (p243-244) 

“””” 

An iceberg is water striving to be land; a mountain, especially a Himalaya, especially Everest, is land’s attempt to metamorphose into sky; it is grounded flight, the earth mutated nearly into air, and become, in the true sense, exalted. (p313) 

“””” 

This notion of separation of functions, light versus dark, evil versus good, may be straightforward enough in Islam O, children of Adam, let not the Devil seduce you, as he expelled your parents from the garden, pulling off from them their clothing that he might show them their shame but go back a bit and you see that it’s a pretty recent fabrication. Amos, eighth century B C, asks: “Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?” Also Jahweh, quoted by Deutero-Isaiah two hundred years later, remarks: “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.” It isn’t until the Book of Chronicles, merely fourth century B.C, that the word shaitan is used to mean a being, and not only an attribute of God.’ (p334) 

“””” 

No! He floated over parkland and cried out, frightening the birds. No more of these England-induced ambiguities, these Biblical-Satanic confusions! Clarity, clarity, at all costs clarity! This Shaitan was no fallen angel. Forget those son-of-themorning fictions; this was no good boy gone bad, but pure evil. Truth was, he wasn’t an angel at all! ‘He was of the djinn, so he transgressed.’ Quran 18:50, there it was as plain as the day. How much more straightforward this version was! How much more practical, down-to-earth, comprehensible! Iblis/Shaitan standing for the darkness, Gibreel for the light. Out, out with these sentimentalities: joining, locking together, love. Seek and destroy: that was all. (p364) 

“””” 

‘Have you heard of Lat, and Manat, and Uzza, the Third, the Other? They are the Exalted Birds .. But Khalid interrupted her, saying, ‘Uzza, those are the Devil’s verses, and you the Devil’s daughter, a creature not to be worshipped, but denied.’ So he drew his sword and cut her down. (p385) 

“””” 

When the news got around Jahilia that the whores of The Curtain had each assumed the identity of one of Mahound’s wives, the clandestine excitement of the city’s males was intense; yet, so afraid were they of discovery, both because they would surely lose their lives if Mahound or his lieutenants ever found out that they had been involved in such irreverences, (p393) 

“””” 

many days a line of men curled around the innermost courtyard of the brothel, rotating about its centrally positioned Fountain of Love much as pilgrims rotated for other reasons around the ancient Black Stone. (p394) 

“””” 

He told Baal about a quarrel between Mahound and Ayesha, recounting the rumour as if it were incontrovertible fact. 

God’s own permission to fuck as many women as he liked. So there: what could poor Ayesha say against the verses of God? You know what she did say? This: “Your God certainly jumps to it when you need “him to fix things up for you.” Well! If it hadn’t been Ayesha, who knows what he’d have done, but none of the others would have dared in the first place.’ (p398-399) 

“””” 

I mean, these days, character isn’t destiny any more. Economics is destiny. Ideology is destiny. Bombs are destiny. What does a famine, a gas chamber, a grenade care how you lived your life? (p447) 

“””” 

‘Then tell me why your God is so anxious to destroy the innocent,’ Osman raged. ‘What’s he afraid of? Is he so unconfident that he needs us to die to prove our love?’ 

By the end of the sixth week she had forced the marchers to leave, four more bodies where they fell: (p535) 

“””” 

Anyone in the vicinity of a dying man was utterly at his mercy. Punches delivered from a deathbed left bruises that never faded. (p535 

“””” 

Then all of a sudden Changez Chamchawala left his face; he was still alive, but he had gone somewhere else, had turned inwards to look at whatever there was to see. He is teaching me how to die, Salahuddin thought. He does not avert his eyes, but looks death right in the face. At no point in his dying did Changez Chamchawala speak the name of God. 

The last thing he had seen in his father’s face, just before the medical staff’s final, useless effort, was the dawning of a terror so profound that it chilled Salahuddin to the bone. What had he seen? What was it that waited for him, for all of us, that brought such fear to a brave man’s eyes? (p545)