24. Based on Rushdie’s treatment of British racialism, François (1994, 315, inspired by André Comte-Sponville) concluded, “All ideologies are religious.”
25. Goontellike (1998, 83) characterized Powell as the spokesman of British racism in the 1960s. Asad (1990, 240) claimed, Powell’s preferred policies were now British policy. Cundy (1996, 65) noted, book burning due to The Satanic Verses controversy fulfilled Enoch Powell’s conflictual vision. For Parashkevova (2012, 84), Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher were “racist politicians” in the novel.
26. Wheatcroft (1994, 26–27) maintained that a critic of racism, Rushdie is a natural “hate figure for British conservatives. . . . Everything about Rushdie’s history and personality make him obnoxious to many Englishmen.” In parallel, Khan (2005, 67) claimed, “Rushdie consciously explores a radical sense of otherness, which is heightened for immigrants as a consequence of displacement.” For Rushdie’s broad advocacy for immigrant issues in the UK and The Satanic Verses, see Teverson (2007, 90), Jussawalla (1996, 60), Ruthven (1990, 12–13), Kimmich (2008, 147), Mann (1995, 288), Bardolph (1994, 210), Clark (2000, 147), Sanga (2001, 15), and Fischer and Abedi (1990, 112). For Brennan (1989, 151), The Satanic Verses facilitated religious questioning for Islamic immigrants in England, not necessarily in a negative way. For The Satanic Verses as a novel against immigrants, see Asad (1990, 259) and Mondal (2013b, 63), who wrote that the novel represented Muslims as “Other” and it was reminiscent of Orientalist discourse. And Mazrui (1990, 117) blamed Rushdie for “treason to the faith.” Whereas Grant (1999, 92) saw no grounds for real offense for Muslims, and Engblom (1994, 299) remarked, Thatcher’s portrayal in the novel was “extremely harsh and perhaps tasteless.”
27. See Kimmich (2008, 141), Asad (1990, 247), Weber (1991, 372), Kuortti (2007, 125), and Bakshian (1989, 44).
28. See Roger Ballard in Werbner (1996, 70–71), Gray (1989, 82), Fischer and Abedi (1990, 117), and Asad (1990, 247).
29. See Roger Ballard in Werbner (1996, 70), Bakshian (1989, 44), and Trousdale (2013, 152).
30. Works mainly focused on The Satanic Verses and the right to free expression include, Hitchens (2003), Ruthven (1990), Pipes (1998), Gardner (1990), Weber (1991), Trousdale (2013), Wheatcroft (1994), Clarke (2013), DeCandido (1989), For (1994), Said (1989), and Ranasinha (2007). For a contrary perspective, which considered the novel hate literature and recommended a ban, see Mazrui (1990, 116–39).
31. For a comparable assessment of scholarship, see Clark (2000, 129), Teverson (2007, 5), Kuortti (1997b, 89), Sanga (2001, 107), Cundy (1996, 65), Trousdale (2013, 151), Suleri (1994, 221), and Werbner (1996, 67).
32. See Asad (1990, 248) and Parashkevova (2012, 71).
33. See Suleri (1992, 222), Jussawalla (1996, 53–54), Afzhal-Khan (1993, 168), Almond (2003, 1130), and Werbner (1996, 65). For Hussain (2002, 12), the novel was pro-Islam but anti-Muslim. In contrast, Kortenaar (2008, 340) claimed, Rushdie’s Muhammad fought corruption but ushered in intolerance and misogyny. And for Hassumani (2002, 68), Islam and monotheism was problematized in the novel through dreams.
34. See Suleri (1992, 190).
35. See Almond (2003, 1142), Teverson (2007, 158), Jussawalla (1996, 56–7, 63), Fischer and Abedi (1990, 109), and Morton (2008, 61–62). For Al-Azm (1994, 279–80), Rushdie re-energized Islamic thought through the novel. For Mufti (1992, 278), the novel was engaged “in the cultural politics of contemporary ‘Islam.’” Webner (1996, 55) argued, the novel presents “a serious modernist vision of Islam as a universal, liberal, and tolerant tradition”; it is “a serious attempt to explore the possibility of a liberal more ‘open’ Islam” (ibid., 69); “[T]he central project of the book: to reclaim Islam as an ethical religion for secular Muslims, a new breed. Rushdie does so by exploring the central ethical values of Islam as he understands them but also by rejecting Islam’s current stress on extreme purity and ritualized praxis at the expense of ethics” (ibid., 65, italics in original).
36. For Jussawalla (1996, 54), the historically tolerant Islamic tradition that Rushdie built upon was Indian Islam. In contrast, according to Ruthven (1990, 9), when compared to Arab Islam, Indian Islam was unsure of itself and, therefore, more aggressive. Fischer and Abedi (1990, 150) claimed, the novel reflected Persian sensibilities not Arab Islam.
37. For a comparable view, see Clark (2000, 4, 130), Kimmich (2008, 177), Asad (1990, 240), Grant (1999, 71), Ruthven (1990, 15), Kuortti (1997b, 129–30), Kuortti (2007, 125–26), Mann (1995, 281), Sanga (2001, 68), Mann (1995, 281), Majumdar (2009, 48, 100, 118), Morton (2008, 67), Booker (1994, 242–43, 251), and Engblom (1994, 298).
38. An exceptional genre of analytical argumentation on the novel concerned the voice of its narrator, or its alleged satanic narration. Clark (2000, 134) forcefully argued, the novel’s narration alternated between the voice of its Godlike author and Satan. However, his literature review (136–41) was a case in point that even for a narrowly confined debate on narration, a confounding array of viewpoints were inevitable: According to Knönegel (1991), it was difficult to identify the novel’s narrator, although a satanic point of view constituted its ideological core; on the contrary, Harrison (1992) claimed, Rushdie must have toyed with the idea of satanic narration, eventually abandoning it, with vestiges left behind; Brennan (1989) regarded the whole novel as a rival to the Quran with Rushdie as its prophet and Satan as its supernatural voice, even though this Satan may have actually corresponded to tricky opportunists who used and abused the name of God to justify their own and unjustifiable ends; Booker (1994) pointed out, although Satan was the novel’s narrator, its narrator might actually be God or archangel Gabriel, as they were intertwined and virtually indistinguishable; Corcoran (1990) noted, satanic narration, albeit plausible, was basically in chapter two; Nair (1989) and Aravumiddin (1989) separately suggested, the whole novel served to convey the idea that evil poisoned life, incurably and inescapably, like a devilish trap. For other references to the novel’s satanic narration, see Kimmich (2008, 145) and Booker (1994, 247) who argued, confusion about the authority of the narrator and, therefore, about the authority of the text was effectively an attack against the authority of text-based religions.
Despite The Satanic Verses’ overarching concern with racial and religious dogmatism, Rushdie overtly tied its diverse plots and unrelated story lines and their competing but unassociated heroes, almost always spiritually gifted, through the theme of rebirth. Or the first thing that a close textual analysis of The Satanic Verses suggested was its being a novel about rebirth. Befittingly, it began with a semi-phrase strictly corresponding to rebirth. And this accorded with the novel’s twin concerns. Alternative attempts at rebirth, whether eventually successful or failed, whether generated by immigration and cultural synthesis or holy visions and angelic communications, together composed it.
The Satanic Verses’ transcendental visionary heroes were, either individually or with their disciples, engaged in the pursuit of spiritual renewal, or rebirth. And the very nature of immigration involved an attempt at remaking oneself, or rebirth. Further, the immigrant desire for rebirth smacked of an infringement upon a quintessential godly prerogative, or creation, and it was possibly blasphemous. A short passage from Defoe’s (1819 [1726]) The History of the Devil, which served as the novel’s epigraph, confirmed the devious nature of migration. It stated, Satan was confined to become a vagabond, a wanderer, without a fixed abode, and that although Satan, given his angelic quality, held a sort of empire in the skies, this did not negate his punishment, as he was always without a fixed place, or territory, where he could stand upon.
In other words, The Satanic Verses was conceived ambitiously and its epigraph was a playful indication of its complex tasks. However, those of its chapters which attempted to unite the novel’s twin concerns were strained and no match for the artistic beauty of its other chapters that were exclusively devoted to a single theme, that being supernatural religion or Islam. Indeed the novel’s opening chapter, rich and disorienting, perfectly illustrated Rushdie’s great ambitions and insurmountable limitations.