Religious Atheism In The Prophet's Hair By Sallman Rushdie

The Prophets Hair by Salman Rushdie In Salman Rushdie’s short story, The Prophet’s Hair, the author explores several different aspects of life in Kashmir, including morality, religion and the gap between rich and poor. I also believe the author is exploring his own religious background and his atheism. The main structure of the story concerns the theft of a religious artifact and the power it has on others and the chaos it begins to cause to those who possess it. This ties into the morality of the story and perhaps the theft of the artifact from a religious temple. Although the character who possesses the prophet’s hair doesn’t actually steal the artifact, he comes across it accidently while preparing to start his day as a money lender. One of the first examples of morality is at the beginning of the story. The character, Atta, whom we find out later in the tale is the son of Hashim the money lender, is on the streets of Srinagar looking to hire a thief. This leads to Atta being attacked, robbed of …show more content…
He begins to show signs of being swollen and distended (page 654, para 39-40) Hashim also has bouts of truth telling, including that his marriage has been “the worst of his afflictions.” Believing this to be a sign from the prophet that he should abandon his more liberal views on religion, he begins to enforce a strict, fundamental religious belief on his family and in particular his daughter whom he sees through his clouded view as being lasciviousness because she goes around in public without a face covering. However, and going back to the morality of the tale, this newly found religious fervor and worship may be usurped by the fact that Hashim is still a money lender and on day two of ownership of the artifact threatens to cut the hand off of a debtor who even has the nerve to bring up that money lending is against the Qur’ans