The Satanic Verses controversy

that Rushdie encountered in his lifetime. Valley of K represents the region of Kashmir in Northern India (Morace). Snooty Buttoo represents Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto (Morace). These depictions of characters and settings show Rushdie’s use of personal encounters to portray his fantasy land. For Rashid and Rushdie, storytelling is both their life and their livelihood (Morace). Rushdie uses whimsical language hidden in the text to teach the reader of the dangers of censorship and what can happen if the world is censored, much like he was. In other words, if literature and the arts are censored, we as a people become censored. Rushdie dealt with a great deal of censorship following the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses. The book’s most negative reviewer, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, saw the book as sacrilege by a “nominally Muslim writer” (Morace). Khomeini also saw criticizing the book as an opportunity to boost his weakening political power as a leader of Islamic fundamentalists (Morace). Rushdie uses this method of storytelling to disclose a “modern toxin”: censorship (Appelbaum 164). He fears that censorship will eventually take away the need for story at all and uses his novel as a way to combat this force: “Haroun […] concerns itself with safeguarding storytelling from powers presently abroad in ourselves and in the world that would leave us, like Rashid, story-less” (Appelbaum 165). Rushdie uses his lessons from his own life to help…

Innocence and Feminity in Salman Rushdie’s, East, West and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi shows the struggles from childhood while growing up in Iran to the subsequent encounters in Europe. Salman Rushdie’s “East, West” on the other hand uses fiction and reality and blends the two in its most controversial perspective. Despite the difference in style and writing language, the two books are documented in certain themes with complementing ideologies. The main objective…

the Gup believed that the freedom of speech should be actively exercised to the fullest extent, having been raised in a different environment than the Chup, “’But but but what is the point of giving persons Freedom of Speech,’ declaimed Butt the Hoopoe, ‘if you then say they must not utilize same? And is not the Power of Speech the greatest Power of all? Then surely it must be exercised to the full?’” (Rushdie 119). Regardless, people tell stories for different reasons, though the fictional…

Are stories even more than what we know; just a fairytale that has no meaning? In the beginning of Salman Rushdie’s novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a question arises from the character of Mr. Sengupta, “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” (Rushdie 20). Throughout the story, there are many thoughts in which we can find the answer to this question. Many people may say that there is no use for stories that aren’t real in reason of they do not help us in our daily lives. What…

In 1988 author Salman Rushdie wrote and published The Satanic Verses, causing outrage in the Islamic community due to the perceived criticism of Allah. Because of this, a fatwa was issued against him by Ruhollah Khomeini and he was forced into hiding, separating him from his his family. During his absence he wrote the book Haroun and the Sea of Stories dedicated to his son Zafar, however by establishing an allegory within the novel, Rushdie transforms a children's fantasy, into a platform to…

Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British writer who has experienced movement from his home to a new place. Rushdie expresses the benefits of migration and how it helps create “hybridity” in a place. Russell Sanders analyzes Rushdie’s essay and has a different opinion. In response to Rushdie’s belief about migration, Sanders’s Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World essay, contradicts the opinion of Rushdie’s essay that migration is bad. Through Sanders’s quotes and information he uses in…

vocals and heavy guitar riffs, many people just to the conclusion that the music is evil and the lyrics contain messages of devil-worshiping. This isn’t not completely a true statement, as there are many bands in the modern metal scene that are considered “Christian bands”. What I mean when I use this term, is basically the message of good and religion is spoken through the lyrics, but it is combined with a metal twist. Many popular bands have emerged in the metal community; bands such as The…

captured whites who remained living with Indians, like John Hunter, married in. In the mid-1800s it was stated that the mixing of races could essentially create an extraordinary hybrid type of people. This racial ideology was put to rest when scientists published that racial mixing would lead to sterile and anemic children. Racial intermarriage was yet again considered a bad thing, as the eugenics movement took place. Race relations were at an all-time low when some colleges and journalist…

Being an exclusive religion at the time, Christianity seemed to have many secrets; it was keeping from the public. “Rumors began to fly… Christians were thought to meet under the cloak of darkness in order to hide their despicable deeds from the world. They engaged in wild sex orgies, they committed communal incest with their ‘brothers and sisters,’ and most sinister of all, they performed acts of infanticide and ritual cannibalism” (Ehrman 438).After hearing of this sick, satanic new ‘cult’…

The coercive substructure of perfection in Paradise Lost The ideal human being, or the standard for which we strive to emulate, has been conceptualized in various works of literature and classical artwork, particularly Roman sculpture. Though the attributes that provide this human the pedestal title of “ideal” may vary discriminately with culture, the idea of having a framework to which the masses could compare themselves and others is not a foreign concept. The ideal human birthed from the…