The Satanic Verses controversy

[mmv]

Salam to All,
Prophet (saw),uttered Satanic Verses, or its just an imagination Salman Rushdie?

[anajmi]

The prophet (saw) didn't utter Satanic Verses. The author of that book is Salman Rushdie. He is the one who uttered the Satanic Verses.

[truebohra]

SR is the Reformist among larger Muslim community just like Engineer, Asgar in DB community.
.

[feelgud]

“And We did not send before you (Muhammad – sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) any Messenger or Prophet, but when he recited Shaytaan threw in his recitations, so Allaah abrogates what Shaytaan throws, then He establishes His verses, and Allaah is All-Knowing, All-Wise. So that He (Allaah) may make what Shaytaan throws a trial for those who have a sickness in their hearts and those whose hearts are hard. And verily the wrong doers are in an opposition far off. And that those who have been given knowledge may know that it (this Qur'ân) is the truth from your Lord, and that they may believe therein, and their hearts may submit to it with humility. And verily, Allâh is the Guide of those who believe, to the Straight Path.” [Al-Hajj (22):52-54]

[truebohra]

The Reformist :
Rushdie advocates the application of higher criticism, pioneered during the late 19th century. Rushdie calls for a reform in Islam[57] in a guest opinion piece printed in The Washington Post and The Times in mid-August 2005. Excerpts from his speech:
What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air. (...) It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it. (...) Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie

DO WE SEE ANY SIMILIARITY

[Muslim First]

SR is the Reformist among larger Muslim community just like Engineer, Asgar in DB community

.

SR claims to be born into Muslim family but not a MUslim

[truebohra]

SR is the Reformist among larger Muslim community just like Engineer, Asgar in DB community

.

SR claims to be born into Muslim family but not a MUslim

Ortho Muslim against Reformist Muslim...
SR toh Muddai Che....

[Muslim First]

TB
Ortho Muslim against Reformist Muslim...
SR toh Muddai Che....

It has nothing to do with SR being ortho or reform
SR is Muslim in name only and he will admit to it.

[ghulam muhammed]

SR is the Reformist among larger Muslim community just like Engineer, Asgar in DB community

A typical brainwashed abde, comparing apples to oranges.

[Muslim First]

Rushdie a Poor, Sub-Standard Writer: Katju

http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=748953

[Muslim First]

Rushdie came from a liberal Westernized family which had no great fervor for religious tradition:

My relationship with formal religious belief has been somewhat chequered. I was brought up in an Indian Muslim household, but while both my parents were believers neither was insistent or doctrinaire. Two or three times a year, at the big Eid festivals, I would wake up to find new clothes at the foot of my bed, dress and go with my father to the great prayer-maidan outside the Friday Mosque in Bombay, and rise and fall with the multitude, mumbling my way through the uncomprehended Arabic much as Catholic children do--or used to do--with Latin. The rest of the year religion took a back seat. I had a Christian ayah (nanny), for whom at Christmas we would put up a tree and sing carols about baby Jesus without feeling in the least ill-at-ease. My friends were Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, and none of this struck me as being particularly important.
(Rushdie: "In God We Trust" 376-377)
Read more
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophon ... intro.html

[Muslim First]

Mis/Representations of Islam:

A Study of Salman Rushdie's

The Satanic Verses,

and 'The Rushdie Affair'.

http://victorian.fortunecity.com/coldwa ... htm#muslim

[Al Zulfiqar]

DO WE SEE ANY SIMILIARITY

yes we do, between you and the simians of the rwandan tropical rainforests, with their backward sloping foreheads, flaring nostrils and long swinging extremities, displaying brute neanderthal characteristics.

thanks for asking this profoundly thought provoking question...!

[feelgud]

Of fanatic 'liberals', free speech flag-bearers, false journalism and Indian Muslims' restraint during Jaipur Literary Festival :
===================================

1. Firstly, not a single person among India's nearly 200 million Muslims had issued any threat in case Salman Rushdie arrived here but a section of media portrayed it as if Muslims were hounding him and ready to teach him a lesson.

2. Just Deoband and one or two other groups had urged the government that he shouldn't be allowed to enter India. This is a pure democratic right, a demand.

Forget fatwas, no organisation had issued any warning or hinted of violent protest. Even government didn't say that it will stop him from coming here. A Muslim minister, Salman Khurshid, had gone ahead to say that it was Rushdie's legal right and he was a PIO and couldn't be stopped.

3. How much more responsible the community could be? But the blame is being put on Muslims and they are being termed as fundamentalists who are accused of harping over an issue even after decades.

Rushdie didn't come claiming certain underworld threat. He later accepted that he had been misled. Now who misled him, it remains unclear. He blames government but doesn't name any agency or person. Isn't it his failure that he didn't turn up. However, with the Congress-led UPA in power, the 'appeasement' theory has also been floated to defame Muslims.

4. After he didn't come to Jaipur, self-styled flag-bearers of free speech began reading excerpts from the banned book as a mark of protest. Even after this provocative act, much to TV channels' chagrin, no Muslim burnt any effigies or held any demonstration, which is also our democratic right. Just like free speech, these democratic rights should be protected as well.
Jaipur has over half-a-million Muslims. In the season of throwing shoes, none of them even held a demonstration or protest. Because the section that is pompous enough to consider themselves as liberal and the rest of Indians as 'traditional' or 'non-progressives', don't know an iota about India or its culture.

The vast millions in India are not intellectual bigots like you. That's why this multi-cultural nation has survived despite conflicts. Rushdie's visit was a non-issue. As an Indian Muslim, I had no interest at all. But again it was turned into a 'minority issue'.

France is secular and liberal to an extent that a Sikh can't wear turban and Muslims can't wear their skullcap. In Britain, it's different. Scandinavian countries have their owns standards. The laws are markedly different in America. India can't be France or Norway.

See examples of Muslim's indifference and apathy to the issue on one hand, and on the other hand dirty journalism practiced by sections that tried to link it to UP elections. The words like 'appeasement' and 'vote bank politics' were used, even when Muslims remained silent.


http://www.anindianmuslim.com/2012/01/o ... peech.html

[truebohra]

"What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age"

THIS WHAT YOU PROGGY WANT & THIS IS ALSO WHAT SR WANT.....
Doesnt it sound similiar...
You can find this Kind of Psuedo-Liberalist everywhere.

[mmv]

Salam and Thanks all for reply.
Whats Dawoodi Bohra view on this issue?..
Had Dai condemned, accepted or ignored when SR book was released.?

[ghulam muhammed]

Had Dai condemned, accepted or ignored when SR book was released.?

The dai waits and sees as to which side of the grass is greener and then acts accordingly. When he couldnt condemn Bal Thackerey and his shiv sena for the riots in mumbai, when he couldnt condemn the mastermind of Gujarat mass genocide, Narendra Modi, when he couldnt condemn the israelis for their atrocities in palestine, what the hell is he going to say anything against SR.

I challenge you that had Rushdie written 'The Burhanic verses' and portrayed saifee mahal as a brothel and the dai its keeper, you would have seen mass protests by bohras who would have been out on streets alongwith the amils and zaadas. According to bohras and their dai, Salman Rushdie has done nothing wrong......... he has only insulted the Prophet (s.a.w.), so whats the big deal ? Had it been their cult leader then things would have been different. By now you should have realised that 'Bohraism' and 'Islam' are poles apart.

[ghulam muhammed]

The war of words witnessed here is not between Islam and any other faith, but between the God-centered view of the universe with the theory of nihilism which ends up denying one’s own existence — Rushdie belongs to the same genre which insults the Virginity of Mary, whom the Quran describes as one “who guarded her chastity”. It is another matter that today by and large it is only a section of Muslims who hold these values dear and are eager to articulate their point of view. The tragedy here is that due to the ridicule heaped on Islam, it becomes difficult for ordinary Muslims to make sense of striking the balance between tradition and modernity and they either become desacralized or withdraw into their shell.

It would be a safe assertion to make that most of those clamouring for the side of Rushdie have either not read the book, or not understood the tradition of which he is definitely a part. To compare him with MF Hussain is not really germane, because the latter is not part of any tradition of vilification of Hindu goddesses by Muslims. In fact, MF
Hussain while not any paragon of virtue, has not strayed too far from what is already part of Hindu tradition in the artisan engravings at Khajuraho.

Rushdie on his part has not only willingly become part of a well-established western tradition of abuse but is also guilty of treachery to the culture of the nation he was born into — it is no wonder that he had to run away to lead a lascivious life with unending affairs in the West. This is symptomatic of a number of ex-Muslims or born Muslims who make it their hobby to bash Islam and everything it holds sacred — whether it is Ayan Hirsi Ali or Irshad Manji or Ali Sina or Taslima Nasrin — Islam-bashing is the fastest way to get a Western passport and all the temporary luxuries of this life!

[ghulam muhammed]

I recd an e-mail as follows :-

First of all, most of the "intellectual" and "liberal" guys are fashionably atheistic in their outlook. Not that anyone cares. But today, to be called an "intellectual" one needs to trumpet his/her atheism or anti-theism. Or at least claim to be an agnostic. The other must-have requirements of the modern day "intellectual" are

a) he or she must look down up on all believers with contempt,
b) call for the abolition of certain "outdated" religious laws,
c) if possible, call for the abolition of religion itself,
d) support absolute freedom of expression to the extent of describing the guy who abuses his own parents, paints nude pictures or takes nude photographs as a great "artist", a great "wordsmith" and so on.

Because of these intellectuals a particular "porn star" of Indian origin called Sunny Leone claimed when she recently visited India that "A porn star does not mean a prostitute." Please click on this link,
http://relationship-troubles.blogspot.c ... -says.html

Pray tell us madam Leone, what else is a porn star if she is not a prostitute? Do you mean porn stars f... for charity? (Don't blame me friends for using the f... word. May be I got afflicted with Rushdieitis).

Finally, do these "intellectuals" know that in the West, hundreds of people have been sent to jail or made to resign for their "anti-Semitic" views? Do they know that holocaust denial is a crime in the West? Check this link out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_again ... ust_denial

Have these guys who are shouting from the rooftops in favour of freedom of expression ever questioned these Holocaust laws? Or do they think that freedom of expression applies only to those who speak against Islam and its
Prophet?

[anajmi]

Bro GM,

I completely agree with the contents of this email. Not sure why you decided to put it in this thread though. You should create a brand new thread for this one. We have such "intellectual" and "liberal" folks here on this forum as well.

[ghulam muhammed]

Salman Rushdie, as the name suggests identifies as a muslim and in all probability he is being supported by vested interests to tarnish the image of Islam as this would then look more soft and acceptable to the world rather then Islam being ridiculed by a jew, hindu or christian. The truth is that a so called muslim who is out to interpret the Quran and teachings of Prophet (s.a.w.) is in fact an "Atheist" :-

In a PBS interview with David Frost, Rushdie was asked whether he believed in god and replied "I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in."

"God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith. ..and afterwards, to prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down. [...] From that day to this I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person." -- from In God We Trust (1985)

---

Suggesting that Rushdie is no longer godless, a reader reports of a 1997 CNN story which said that Rushdie had converted to Islam.

---

But more recent info on Mr. Rushdie is trickling in via a recent discussion on UseNet the editor came across: on February 13, 1998, Rushdie appeared on the BBC2 television program "Newsnight" and identified himself as an atheist. Apparently he has been attempting to establish himself as a 'secular Muslim' to maintain his cultural identity separate from a religious one. This would be along the same lines that an atheist Jew will refer to himself as a 'secular Jew'

http://www.celebatheists.com/wiki/Salman_Rushdie

[wise_guy]

Even if the bohras go on the street, would Salman Rushdie give a damn to them... ??? He would enjoy the news scene with a nice juicy piece of chicken and a glass of scotch in his hand.

[ghulam muhammed]

Even if the bohras go on the street, would Salman Rushdie give a damn to them... ??? He would enjoy the news scene with a nice juicy piece of chicken and a glass of scotch in his hand.

This doesnt give anyone the licence to remain mute spectators to the evils going around in our society, especially when someone attacks ones religion. Imagine what would have been the state of Islam had Hussain (a.s.) given a "damn" to Yazid and allowed him to enjoy a juicy piece of chicken and a glass of scotch !!!

[profastian]

Even if the bohras go on the street, would Salman Rushdie give a damn to them... ??? He would enjoy the news scene with a nice juicy piece of chicken and a glass of scotch in his hand.

This doesnt give anyone the licence to remain mute spectators to the evils going around in our society, especially when someone attacks ones religion. Imagine what would have been the state of Islam had Hussain (a.s.) given a "damn" to Yazid and allowed him to enjoy a juicy piece of chicken and a glass of scotch !!!

Again, a stupid analogy. Yazid was a Muslim and was a man of importance who could have changed the fundamentals of Islam. That is why Hussain rose against Him. He didn't protest against every Tom, dick and Harry aka Salman Rushdie who spoke against Islam.

[Muslim First]

by profastian on Thu Feb 02, 2012 5:10 am
Again, a stupid analogy. Yazid was a Muslim and was a man of importance who could have changed the fundamentals of Islam. That is why Hussain rose against Him. He didn't protest against every Tom, dick and Harry aka Salman Rushdie who spoke against Islam.

Wow

Mau.Mo.Bu. a modern day Hussein!!!

He is saving himself to rise against midern day Yazid.

Any suggestion who he can rise afainst?

[Muslim First]

Corrections please

by profastian on Thu Feb 02, 2012 5:10 am
Again, a stupid analogy. Yazid was a Muslim and was a man of importance who could have changed the fundamentals of Islam. That is why Hussain rose against Him. He didn't protest against every Tom, dick and Harry aka Salman Rushdie who spoke against Islam.

Wow

Mau.Mo.Bu. a modern day Hussein!!!

He is saving himself to rise against modern day Yazid.

Any suggestion who he can rise against?

[ghulam muhammed]

Again, a stupid analogy. Yazid was a Muslim and was a man of importance who could have changed the fundamentals of Islam. That is why Hussain rose against Him.

I know that 'truth hurts' but then get your facts right. Salman Rushdie, as the name suggests is a born muslim and majority of the people are unaware of his atheist leanings hence he is widely percieved as being a muslim. Your analogy in fact is rather stupid which suggests that 'only' if an 'important muslim' person poses a threat to Islam and its fundamentals should he be opposed. This way you are also defending your dai by giving him a clean chit for his support and felicitation of Narendra Modi who then is a non muslim and wasnt out there to change the fundamentals of Islam.............. He ONLY massacred a few thousand muslims, burnt a few thousand muslim houses, his men raped and burnt a few muslim women and made a few lakh muslims homeless.

[anajmi]

He is saving himself to rise against midern day Yazid.

Any suggestion who he can rise afainst?

He bent down and apologized when the muslims started hammering the Hussain worshippers. That was an ideal time to rise up against Yazidi muslims, instead, the Dai ran in police cars.

[ghulam muhammed]

Welcome to Planet Blitcon

Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan dominate British literature - and they're convinced that Islam threatens civilisation as we know it

The names of the most famous contemporary writers have become international brands. When they speak, the world listens. And increasingly, they speak not just through their fiction, but also via newspaper opinion pages, influential magazines, television chat shows and literary festivals. Novelists are no longer just novelists - they are also global pundits shaping our opinions on everything from art, life and politics to civilisation as we know it.

The British literary landscape is dominated by three writers: Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan. All three have considered the central dilemma of our time: terror. Indeed, Amis has issued something of a manifesto on the subject he terms "horrorism". In their different styles, their approach and opinions define a coherent position. They are the vanguard of British literary neoconservatives, or, if you like, the "Blitcons".

The second Blitcon conceit is that Islam is the greatest threat to this idea of civilisation. Rushdie's suspicion of and distaste for Islam is obvious in his novels Midnight's Children (1981), Shame (1983) and The Satanic Verses (1988). References to Islam in Midnight's Children can be read as deliberately insulting: even the most basic Islamic term, "Allah" (linguistically the monotheistic One God), comes in for a specious hammering: "Al-Lah has been named after a carved idol in a pagan shrine built round a giant meteorite." In Shame, Rushdie describes Islam as a mythology that cannot survive close examination, but in The Satanic Verses it becomes an abomination. The novel imagines a rival life of the Prophet Muhammad, complete with historical details and every orientalist stereotype imaginable. As the product of the paranoid delusions of a violent, sexually perverted businessman, The Satanic Verses suggests, Islam runs contrary to every decent value known to man. The message is reinforced in Shalimar the Clown (2005). The protagonist of the novel, Shalimar, turns from a loveable clown and tightrope walker into a fuming terrorist. But what motivates his fury? The sexual betrayal of his wife and the fanatical zeal of an "Iron Mullah" who forces people to build mosques and shroud their women in burqas. In Rushdie's world, a humane interpretation of Islam is a total impossibility.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200612110045

[SBM]

Rushdie is poor, sub-standard writer: Katju

Wednesday January 25, 2012





New Delhi: A day after Salman Rushdie's video conference at Jaipur Literature Festival was cancelled, Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju Wednesday said the author is a "poor" and "sub-standard writer" who would have remained largely unknown but for his controversial book "The Satanic Verses".

"Salman Rushdie dominated the Jaipur Literature Festival. I do not wish to get into the controversy whether banning him was correct or not. I am raising a much more fundamental issue," he said in a statement here.

"I have read some of Rushdie's works and am of the opinion that he is a poor writer, and but for 'Satanic Verses' would have remained largely unknown. Even 'Midnight's Children' is hardly great literature," Katju said.

"I am not in favour of religious obscurantism. But neither do I wish to elevate a sub-standard writer into a hero."

Katju, a former judge of the Supreme Court, decried the admirers of the India-born author now based in Britain, saying they suffered from "colonial inferiority complex" that a writer living abroad has to be great.

"The whole problem with the so-called educated Indians of today is that they still suffer from the colonial inferiority complex. So whoever lives in London and New York must be a great writer, while writers living in India