The Satanic Verses: Ruminations on Freedom of Speech and Expression

Even three decades after the publication of Salman Rushdie’s satiric novel, The Satanic Verses, the controversies regarding the novel has not come to an end. While many praise novel for its literary merits, the Muslim community across the world regards it as offensive, blasphemous and as an anti-Islamic propaganda. They see the novel as a direct attack on and a conspiracy against Islam by the use of distortion and scorn, which have the effect of alienating Muslims from their faith. This article analyses Rushdie’s satire on the sacred in Islam, namely, the controversial ‘satanic verses’ that permitted intercessory prayers to three Meccan deities, the Muhammad event, the concept of divine revelation and the birth of Islam. Rushdie’s narrative progresses by re-telling and re-imaging matters of history and faith by fantasising and fabulating them. The result is that Rushdie’s novel becomes a catalogue of multiple layers of conflict; it sets the long-cherished Islamic beliefs against the imaginative and satiric re-interpretation of those beliefs. Rushdie’s handling of the sacrosanct issues of the Islamic faith does not seem to resonate with the spirit of the ‘freedom of speech and expression.’ In the process, Rushdie overstretches the limits of the freedom of expression. Rushdie’s satire in The Satanic Verses on what is sacrosanct in Islam does not seem to contribute to any form of constructive or reformative thinking in society; it has only resulted in division and disturbance. Therefore, the article argues that it not only goes against the intent and spirit of satiric literature, but also tends to become spiteful in nature