Okay. So you have now officially Godwined the thread.
But for the record:
Quote:
The Satanic Verses is a fantasy about two actors from India traveling on an airplane. After a terrorist bomb blows up the airplane, they fall to Earth and survive. The controversial parts of the book center on just two chapters.
One of the Indian actors apparently is losing his mind. He dreams about God revealing his will to the Prophet Muhammad, who passes on the sacred words to humanity through the Koran, the holy book of Islam. But the novel refers to Muhammad by an insulting name used by Christians in the Middle Ages. As part of the dream sequence, a scribe called "Salman" writes down God's commands that are coming from the lips of Muhammad. The scribe, however, decides to play a trick by changing some of the divine words. Since Muslims hold the Koran as the revealed word of God, they deplored Rushdie for ridiculing it.
The title of the book refers to an old legend retold by Rushdie. According to the legend, some of the Koran's original verses originated with Satan, and Muhammad later deleted them. By repeating this legend, Rushdie offended Muslims by associating the holy Koran with the work of Satan.
One part of the novel probably outraged Muslims the most. It describes people mocking and imitating Muhammad's 12 wives. Muslims revere Muhammad's wives as the "mothers of all believers."
|
You may already have known this (it's generally understood in Britain but Salman Rushdie is a naturalised Brit, so we may have paid more attention to the details
nearly 20 years ago when it was published). I'm willing to accept it upset people. It didn't kill them though.