My idea was to have an account of my status as an ex-Muslim, in two parts. However, due to space, I am going to conclude in a final third (or even fourth) part. In this part, I want to discuss what impact Salman Rushdie had on my faith when I was a Muslim. In the next part, I am going to finally critique moderate Muslims and the dangers behind their inaction; especially considering their implications on fundamentalist Islamic states, peoples and organisations.

The Devilishly Brilliant Sir Salman Rushdie

Between the dusty covers of a conventional book, its jacket long discarded, wisdom arose like fingers pointing to the sun. The light seemed so blindingly obvious; Here were words spoken that were heartfelt, true, and beautiful. It recalls the longing of lands that many writers have focused their brilliance on: Consider the exiled words, longing and writings of Milan Kundera or James Joyce. Salman Rushdie writes, in The Satanic Verses:

An exile. Which must not be confused with, allowed to run into, all the other words that people throw around: emigre, expatriate, refugee, immigrant, silence, cunning. Exile is a dream of glorious return. Exile is a vision of revolution: Elba, not St Helena. It is an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back. The exile is the ball hurled high into the air. He hangs there, frozen in time, translated into a photograph; denied motion, suspended impossibly above the native earth, he awaits the inevitable moment at which the photograph must begin to move; and the earth reclaim its own.

I fell in love with these words, with the writer, instantly. The entire book is a great piece of literature, as are all of Rushdie’s works. But captured here is the essence of being secure – what do I call my home? Where do I find stability and peace? It is one of our eternal questions as individuals we have to face. One of the ways many have answered this question is by identifying with religious faith.

One might call faith a moving island, its inhabitants gesturing toward others to join them upon their tiny piece of stability. Faith here is beyond all truth-claims and philosophy: It is a place for one to feel safe and belong. I have perhaps answered my first question in matters of treating faith like a race: In a sense, yes, it is. People feel perhaps more strongly about their moving island of stability, their faith, – foggy, distant and inherently personal as it is amidst the moving sea of objectivity – than about their “race”. I understand this, as I was part of something close, personal and welcoming. Like a cog in a growing, organic machine, I slotted in amidst the grinding wheels of progress.

Salman Rushdie was the spanner.

Grinding to a halt, my moving island and its inhabitants jerked with a profound startlement. Our eyes widened and accepted something had changed. The sea around us was whipped into a fury; fists were raised, glaring at the spanner. Who does he think he is to comment on the leader, the creator of this great island: Muhammad? Who was this Rushdie-Spanner to claim Muhammad was human, all too human, able to make mistakes?

Yes: Our eyes widened and with that came clarity. Our choices opened up in a two-fold path: Those whose tongues licked the flame of hatred, and those who brushed themselves off from the security, the belonging and the safety of religious faith. The machine called Islam continues to grind, puff and drive through the waters of our lives, turning tumultuous waves of horror and destruction where it goes. White foam is turned blood red as it weaves it course through our lives. This island is now a machine – as has become of many religious faiths. Floating amidst the privacy of personal lives no ripple would quiver out, but this is not the goal of faith.

If religious faith, specifically Islam began as an island, it is an island seeking to become the whole world. Outside its domain, nothing but Infidels, Apostates, Nonbelievers exist. It is known as dar al-harb, or the territory of war: The bifurcated world as a Muslim ought to see it. The territory to be conquered (dar al-harb) and the territory already conquered, erroneously known as lands of peace (dar al-islam).

The distinction between the two is more complicated than first appears and one would be better off learning more than what is spoken of here.

Implications of The Satanic Verses, or, In Mammalian Light

I am often asked “What was the big deal with the book?”

I will speak briefly about the wider, political implications but focus more on their impact in reducing Muhammad to the mammal he was. There are many places to read about the horrible time (from 1989 to the late 90’s) that unveiled itself, revealing the wider implications for intolerant, religious bullying from behind the waggling finger of pretentious, sexually repressed old men.

There are actually two issues engaged here: the issue of the “Satanic Verses” within Islam and the book by Rushdie under the same name. Correctly brought to wider realisation, Rushdie did not simply create this story of the Prophet “out of thin air” (as the Shakespearean sayings goes). The incident itself is central to the history of Islam and is spoken of by people such as al-Tabari and Ibn Ishaq. These are scholars Muslims regard as authoritative in all other aspects of Islam – there is no reason why, simply because Muhammad is placed in a mammalian light, Muslims can or should deny this incident.

It occurred during the time that Muhammad was attempting to penetrate Mecca (or Makkah as Muslims call it). Many of his followers had retreated to Abyssinia. According to the histories, Muhammad was told by Jibreel (Gabriel) to allow the importance of the three popular deities to rest alongside that of Muhammad’s god. It was because of these deities (Lat, Mannat and Uzza, then dominating the minds of the Meccans) that Muhammad was having little success in swaying more people into his brand of worship.

Muhammad then recited specific verses that praised or confessed the importance of the three other deities. Of course, Muhammad later realised his mistake after careful pains were taken in the realisation of the “Oneness” of Allah. It is for this same reason that Muslims reject or don’t identify with the Doctrine of the Trinity (to be fair, the Doctrine was formulated by Gregory of Nazianzus and others. People, in other words, that Muslim scholars would not take seriously beyond the bounds of eliminating the singularity of their god). Muhammad claimed that the verses he spoke were deceptively endowed by the lying lips of Shai’tan (Satan). Hence, those verses and the incident itself became known as the Satanic Verses.

“So what?” one might fairly ask.

One website, particularly scathing of the “blasphemer” Salman Rushdie states:

The true, vital issue about the Satanic verses is this. If Muhammad were unable to distinguish Satan’s voice from God’s voice, then could there be verses in the Qur’an that Muhammad assumed were from God but were really from Satan? Maybe much of the Qur’an is Satanic in origin, in spite of Muhammad’s conviction that it was entirely from Allah.

Like “The Problem of Evil” in Christianity, or the revelations of science over doctrines in all Abrahamic faiths, this is yet another problem as a nonbeliever I do not have to face. No mental contortions to fit beliefs into the tiny box of faith. No breaking of truth to funnel into gooey lumps of religious obscurantism. I don’t have to do this anymore. But here, we see the problem for Muslims.

Their beloved Prophet could not distinguish between the word of their god and Satan. How far are they willing to trust him? Looking at it very basically, one can see something more important than the tug of war between god and Satan: The unmasking of a mammal to reveal his humanity and therefore fallibility. The most devastating realisation hits the hearts and minds of those islanders, as their eyes widen to the roaring sea:

Islam rests on the shaky shoulders of a normal human being.

The Island is Shaken

Rushdie simply alerted me to this fact, in his beautiful prose. He goes further by creating a character who was the Prophet’s scribe. It was this character’s actions which shifted the ground beneath my feet. Muhammad is widely known for being illiterate (an unprovable claim and rather dubious considering his abilities as a businessman); he had scribes that wrote down his words (which supposedly came from the angel Jibreel). Rushdie has a character who decides to start changing words, here and there, after the Prophet recites (hence, this became the Quran^* which means “recitation”). He then reads these passages back to the Prophet, who approves. The Prophet (the character in Rushdie’s book) does not notice the differences. Eventually, this clever scribe changes the meanings of whole sentences and still the Prophet (called Mahound in The Satanic Verses) does not notice!

The scribe loses his faith in Muhammad, as being anything beyond a mortal man. When the scribe’s writing fell into the dust at his feet, my faith went with him. It lies there now, forever, gathering the dust of knowledge, buried beneath the sands of what I hope is progress. Is it still an island, a place to belong? If I dig myself down, remove all that I’ve learnt, all that I know, all that I believe in now, that Island would forever have the scars and pockmarks of truth that destabilised it in the first place. It would be like a place recently devastated by war. Even if I chose to return, not for the metaphysical claims, not for the rewards in heaven, but simply for solace and belonging – I would find nothing but the roar of the outside world, as the Island slowly begins to sink beneath the sea.

____

ENDNOTE

* – the Qu’ran is neither perfect, infallible or beyond criticism; it is perhaps less violent than the Old Testament, but nonetheless constantly calls for death to nonbelievers; it is not a work of science and it has not remain unchanged as it is. There were many parts tossed out, never spoken of and forgotten – ie. many Qu’rans. Its arrangement follows the pattern of longest to shortest verse, excluding the central Surah Al’Fatiga at the beginning. I suggest reading or owning a copy of this very important book, but to realise that is not the work of god but the work of fallible, ignorant men.