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Salman Rushdie

Did you mean: Salman Rushdie (Writer), Salman Rushdie (large image), Salman Rushdie (Actor, Comedy/Comedy Drama)

 
Who2 Biography: Salman Rushdie, Writer
 

  • Born: 19 June 1947
  • Birthplace: Bombay, India
  • Best Known As: Author of The Satanic Verses

Name at birth: Ahmed Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born English novelist and critic, famous for fantastical novels about the post-colonial relationship between cultures of the East and West. Raised in India and Pakistan, he was educated in England and emigrated there in 1965. A graduate of Cambridge University (1968), Rushdie worked as an actor and in advertising until the success of his second novel, Midnight's Children (1981, Booker Prize), allowed him to work as a writer full-time. That novel cemented Rushdie's literary fame, but he became even more famous for the controversy stirred by his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. Rushdie's depiction of Muhammad and other Islamic figures in the book offended some members of Islam, and the novel was banned in India soon after its publication. Iran's political and religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa on 14 February 1989, declaring that Muslims should kill Rushdie for defaming Muhammad and insulting Islam. The order was not rescinded by Iran until 1998, and Rushdie for many years avoided the public and had police protection when he travelled. After the publication of his novel, The Moor's Last Sigh (1995, Whitbread Prize), he became a public figure once again, and has since published novels, story collections and essays that challenge cultural conventions of both the East and the West. Despite decades of sharp criticism of the British government, Rushdie was made a Knight Bachelor in June of 2007 and is now referred to as Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie. The announcement of his knighthood rekindled the ire of strident Islamic groups in Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia. His other novels include Shame (1983), The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) and Shalimar the Clown (2005).

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Biography: Salman Rushdie
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The Indian/British author Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 1947) was a political parablist whose work often focused on outrages of history and particularly of religions. His book "The Satanic Verses" earned him a death sentence from the Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Although he was called a writer to watch after the appearance of his first novel and was awarded one of the most prestigious literary prizes in Europe for his second, Salman Rushdie became a household word because of the enemies his fiction made rather than the admirers. The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, earned him a death sentence from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then religious sovereign of Iran and spiritual leader to millions of fundamentalist Moslems worldwide.

Born Ahmed Salman Rushdie on June 19, 1947, to a middle-class family in Bombay, India, Rushdie was educated in England and eventually received his M.A. from King's College, Cambridge. After a brief career as an actor he made a living as a freelance advertising copywriter in England from 1970 to 1980. The experience of expatriation, which he shared with many writers of his generation who were born in the Third World, is an important theme in his work.

However, Rushdie's opus in particular expanded the meaning of the word "expatriate" to possibly its total linguistic limits. For instance, Midnight's Children (1981) is in part the story of a baby who was not only the result of an extramarital affair, but who was then switched at birth with a second illicit child. The hero of the novel is doubly removed from his true patrimony: His mother's husband is not his father, and the Englishman with whom his Indian mother slept - who his mother thinks is his father - is not his real father either. In addition, the hero is caught between the two great religions of Indian, Islam and Hinduism, neither of which he can claim as his own. Finally, he spends his life being shunted back and forth by circumstance between the Indian republic and its antithesis, Pakistan.

Rushdie unfailingly took the stance of a lifelong member of the diaspora, which may be the most consistently autobiographical aspect of his work. Long before his hurried exile from the public eye, in an interview published after Midnight's Children received the Booker McConnell Prize, Rushdie presciently said: "I have a fear that it may, at some point, become necessary to make choices among [India, England, and America], and that it will be very painful."

Another characteristic of Rushdie's work is its reliance on the fantastic. In fact, Rushdie's first book, Grimus (1979), was classified as science fiction by many critics. It is the story of Flapping Eagle, an American Indian who is given the gift of immortality and goes on an odyssey to find the meaning of life. Shame (1983) has a Pakistani heroine, Sufiya Zinobia, who blushes so hotly with embarrassment at her nation's history her body boils her bath water and burns the lips of men who attempt to kiss her. The title Midnight's Children refers to the 1,001 infants born in the first hour of India's independence, all of whom have para-human powers. And The Satanic Verses opens with the miraculous survival and transfiguration of two Indian men who fall out of the sky after their jumbo jet to England is blown up in midair by Sikh terrorists.

Rushdie always used the element of the fabulous to make painfully incisive political commentary (among other varieties of observation). Shame is so thinly disguised a parody of recent Pakistani history as to be transparent, and the hero of Midnight's Children was described as a man "handcuffed to history" by the political journal Commonweal. Rushdie is often compared with Lawrence Sterne as well as Jonathan Swift as a political parablist, but according to The New York Times Book Review, "It would be a disservice to Salman Rushdie's very original genius to dwell on literary analogues and ancestors."

Rushdie also made a career out of poking fun at religious fanatics of every stripe. One technique of Rushdie's in furtherance of this aim was to infuse common objects with enormous symbolic significance. In Midnight's Children, for instance, pickled chutney is one of the main images for India's cultural and social maelstrom; in The Satanic Verses, bad breath plays a vital role in telling good from evil. Few other writers dare to found entire symbolic structures on items as replaceable as a sheet with a hole in the middle, but to Rushdie it undoubtedly seems a worse exercise in illogic to kill people over the contents of a so-called "holy" book.

Rushdie's habit of using the outrages of history - especially religious outrages and religious history - made The Satanic Verses (1988) a book of frightening precognition. In the novel, Rushdie has a writer sentenced to death by a religious leader. The writer in the book is a scribe meant to chronicle the life of a prophet who - as the writer of the book enjoys riddling - both "is and is not" Mohammed. Creating this character, who exists within a psychotic dream of one of the two men who fell from the airplane, was a natural extension of Rushdie's personal horror at fundamentalist Islamic rule. It is this dream sequence which ignited fatal riots in India and garnered Rushdie the Ayatollah Khomeini's death sentence.

The title of the novel refers to verses from the Koran, which were struck out by later Islamic historians, describing an episode in which Mohammed briefly wavered in his adherence to belief in a single god and allowed mention to be made of three local goddesses. The dream section in the book details, from the point of view of a schizophrenic Indian actor who fancies himself an archangel, how the holy prophet yielded to temptation and then reversed himself. There are other "satanic" verses in the book, notably those a modern-day husband anonymously sings over the phone to drive his wife's lover insane with jealousy. But the contemporary aspect of the novel has been almost completely overlooked by the controversy surrounding it.

Khomeini's death threat extended not only to Rushdie himself, but to the publishers of The Satanic Verses, any bookseller who carried it, and any Moslem who publicly condoned its release. Several major bookstores in England and America had bomb scares, and the novel was temporarily removed from the shelves of America's largest book selling chains. Two Islamic clerics in London were murdered, ostensibly for questioning the correctness of Rushdie's death sentence on a talk show. Numerous book-burnings were held throughout the world.

Rushdie himself, and his possible disguises in hiding, became an established figure of black humor. During the 1990 Academy Awards presentation, which was seen worldwide by an estimated one billion viewers, comedian Billy Crystal joked that "the lovely young woman" who usually hands Oscar statuettes to their recipients "is, of course, Salman Rushdie."

Rushdie's wife of 13 months, author Marianne Wiggins, went into hiding with him when the death threat was announced. She soon emerged and indicated that their marriage was over.

In 1990 Rushdie released the fantasy novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories, written for his son (by a first marriage), Zafar. That same year Rushdie publicly embraced Islam and apologized to those offended by the The Satanic Verses. He made several appearances in London book-stores to autograph his newest work. But even after the Ayatollah's death, his successor, Iran's President Hashemi Rafsanzani, refused to lift the death edict. Rushdie continued to appear in public only occasionally, and then under heavy security.

Although the severity of the Ayatollah's sentence was at least partially a political gambit to aid his regime in its final days, it carried the force of gospel for many terrorists who regard America - and the freedom of speech espoused in the American Constitution - as the "Great Satan." Rushdie will live in danger until the last Khomeini loyalist has passed away. As if in a scene from one of his novels, the innocent speaker of a personal truth is surrealistically threatened with slaughter by his opposite, who claims a patent on universal truth. Rushdie has already been acclaimed as a supreme artist; one can only hope, for his sake as well as ours, that his life will no longer imitate his art.

Rushdie continues to live an isolated life. He has re-married, however, and become a father for the second time. Occasionally he makes radio appearances, but, they are usually unannounced. Rushdie's novel entitled The Moor's Last Sigh was published in 1995. This book drew hostile and negative reactions from Hindu militants in India.

Further Reading

Contemporary Authors, volume 111 (1984), edited by Hal May, contains selected reviews of Grimus, Midnight's Children, and Shame, as well as a comprehensive selection of reviews and news stories surrounding The Satanic Verses. A lengthy interview by Gerald Marzorati appeared in The New York Times Magazine (November 4, 1990). In 1991 Rushdie published Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991, a kind of intellectual autobiography. Rushdie was mentioned in "People" Time (Septmeber 18, 1995)

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
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(born June 19, 1947, Bombay, India) Anglo-Indian novelist. Educated at the University of Cambridge, he worked as an advertising copywriter in London in the 1970s before winning unexpected success with Midnight's Children (1981, Booker Prize), an allegorical novel about modern India. His second novel, Shame (1983), is a scathing portrait of politics and sexual morality in Pakistan. The Satanic Verses (1988), which includes episodes based on the life of Muhammad, was denounced as blasphemous by outraged Muslim leaders, and in 1989 Iran's Ruhollah Khomeini condemned Rushdie to death. Rushdie became the focus of enormous international attention and was compelled to remain in hiding until 1998, when Iran said it would no longer enforce Khomeini's decree. Rushdie's other novels include The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), Fury (2001), and Shalimar the Clown (2005). He was knighted in 2007.

For more information on Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, visit Britannica.com.

 
Fairy Tale Companion: Salman Rushdie
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Rushdie, Salman (1947– ), Indian‐born novelist. Born in Bombay to a Muslim family, Rushdie was sent to school in England in 1961. After reading history at Cambridge, he spent some time as an advertising copywriter. His first novel, the allegorical Grimus (1975), already demonstrates two distinctive elements: the use of a fantastical narrative idiom—notably less restrained in Grimus than elsewhere—and the exploration, in both form and content, of the meeting of the cultures of East and West (he has since published a collection of stories entitled East, West, 1994).

However, it is in Midnight's Children (1981) that Rushdie's mode of storytelling appears fully formed. A dense, discursive epic of post‐Independence India, it fuses baroque realism and a Shandean narratorial voice with a spirit of storytelling deeply informed by oral and folk traditions. It draws heavily on The Arabian Nights, both as a model for fantastical, expansive tale‐spinning against a background of personal and national disorder, and, in the form of the one‐thousand‐and‐one children born in the first hour of independence, as an expression of manifold possibility, of new, untold, and retold stories: ‘1001, the number of night, of magic, of alternative realities’.

Rushdie's third novel, Shame (1983), another fictionalized history, experiments further with a form of written orality, conjuring a host of fairy‐tale characters and motifs from both European and Arabic/Indian traditions, and using the ingredients and techniques of traditional storytelling, notably the juxtaposition of comedy and violence, to tell a story of ‘Peccavistan’, the narrator's ‘looking‐glass Pakistan’.

Rushdie's use of folk‐ and fairy‐tale material is always integral to the work as a whole: the use of non‐Western traditions and modes of storytelling in novels dealing with the legacies of colonial rule, and the use of genuinely popular culture to tell the unofficial stories lying beneath orthodox histories. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), the children's novel Rushdie wrote in the wake of the fatwa issued against him for what was seen as blasphemy against Islam in The Satanic Verses (1988). Haroun takes its basic conceit from Somadeva's enormous Sanskrit story cycle, Kathasaritsagara (The Ocean of the Sea of Story, c.1070), the title of which is literalized in the form of the ocean visited by the eponymous young hero, in his quest for the solution to his storyteller father's mysterious narrative sterility. An Arabian night in its own right, it is an argument against the silence that follows when storytelling ends, and a reminder of the continued relevance of the wellsprings of narrative tradition.

Bibliography

  • Batty, Nancy E., ‘The Art of Suspense: Rushdie's 1001 (Mid‐) Nights’, Ariel, 18 (1987).
  • Brennan, Timothy, Salman Rushdie and the Third World: Myths of the Nation (1989).
  • Cundy, Catherine, “‘Through Childhood's Window: Haroun and the Sea of Stories’”, in D. M. Fletcher (ed.), Perspectives on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie (1994).
  • Rushdie, Salman, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991 (1991).

— Stephen Benson

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Sir Salman Rushdie
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Rushdie, Sir Salman (sälmän' rūsh') , 1947–, British novelist, b. Bombay (now Mumbai, India). He is known for the allusive richness of his language and the wide variety of Eastern and Western characters and cultures he explores. His first novels, including Midnight's Children (1981; Booker Prize; adapted for the stage by Rushdie, 2003) and Shame (1983), incorporate the technique of magic realism; elements of this approach can also be found in his later fiction. Parts of his allegorical novel The Satanic Verses (1988) were deemed sacrilegious and enraged many Muslims, including Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, who in 1989 issued a fatwa sentencing Rushdie to death. Violence occurred in some cities where the book was sold, and Rushdie went into hiding. From his seclusion he wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), a novelistic allegory against censorship; East, West (1995), a book of short stories; and The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), a novel that examines India's recent history through the life of a Jewish-Christian family. The Iranian government ended its support for the fatwa in 1998, but in 2004 an Iranian group offered a bounty for Rushdie's murder. Rushdie's first post-fatwa novel, The Ground beneath Her Feet (1999), mingles myth and reality in a surreal world of rock-and-roll celebrity. Since then he has also written the novels Fury (2001), Shalimar the Clown (2005), and The Enchantress of Florence (2008), a romantic fantasy of 16th-century East and West, chiefly tales of Mughal India and Renaissance Italy. In addition, his work includes numerous essays, many of them included in Step across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002 (2002). Rushdie was knighted in 2008, provoking condemnation from some Muslims.

Bibliography

See Conversations with Salman Rushdie (2000), ed. by M. Reder, Salman Rushdie Interviews: A Sourcebook of His Ideas (2001), ed. by P. S. Chauhan; studies by T. Brennan (1989), J. Harrison (1992), C. Cundy (1996), M. K. Booker, ed. (1999), R. Y. Clark (2001), H. Bloom, ed. (2003), P. Chowdhury (2007), and S. Morton (2008).

 
Quotes By: Salman Rushdie
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Quotes:

"One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable."

"Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations."

"Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings."

"The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges."

"The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins."

"Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself."

See more famous quotes by Salman Rushdie

 
Wikipedia: Salman Rushdie
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Salman Rushdie

At a breakfast honouring Amos Oz in September 2008
Born Ahmed Salman Rushdie
19 June 1947 (1947-06-19) (age 62)
Bombay, India
Occupation Novelist, essayist
Nationality United Kingdom
Genres Magic Realism, Satire, Post-Colonialism
Subjects Criticism, travel

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He first achieved fame with his second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), which won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his early fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. His style is often classified as magical realism mixed with historical fiction, and a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world.

His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was at the center of The Satanic Verses controversy, with protests from Muslims including Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) in several countries. Some of the protests were violent, with Rushdie facing death threats and a fatwā (religious edict) issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Supreme Leader of Iran, in February, 1989. In response to the call for him to be killed, Rushdie spent nearly a decade largely underground, appearing in public only sporadically, but was outspoken on the fatwā's censoring effect on him as an author and the threat to freedom of expression it embodied.[citation needed]

He was appointed a Knight Bachelor for "services to literature" in June 2007,[1]. He also holds the highest rank — Commandeur — in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France. He began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in 2007.[2] In May 2008 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His latest novel is The Enchantress of Florence, published in June 2008.[3] In July 2008 Midnight's Children won a public vote to be named the Best of the Booker, the best novel to win the Booker Prize in the award's 40-year history.

Contents

Personal life

The only son of Anis Ahmed Rushdie, a University of Cambridge-educated lawyer turned businessman, and Negin Butt, a teacher, Rushdie was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India.[4][5] He was educated at Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai, Rugby School, and King's College, Cambridge, where he studied history. He worked for two advertising agencies (Ogilvy & Mather and Ayer Barker) before becoming a full-time writer.[6]

Rushdie has been married four times. He was married to his first wife Clarissa Luard from 1976 to 1987 and fathered a son, Zafar. His second wife was the American novelist Marianne Wiggins; they were married in 1988 and divorced in 1993. His third wife, from 1997 to 2004, was Elizabeth West; they have a son, Milan. In 2004, he married the Indian American actress and supermodel Padma Lakshmi, the host of the American reality-television show Top Chef. The marriage ended on 2 July 2007 with Lakshmi indicating that it was her desire to end the marriage. In the Bollywood press, he was, in 2008, romantically linked to the Indian model Riya Sen, with whom he was otherwise a friend.[7] In response to the media speculation about their friendship, she simply stated "I think when you are Salman Rushdie, you must get bored with people who always want to talk to you about literature." [8]

In 1999, Rushdie had an operation to correct a "tendon condition" that, according to him, was making it increasingly difficult for him to open his eyes. "If I hadn't had an operation, in a couple of years from now I wouldn't have been able to open my eyes at all," he said.[9]

Career

Major literary work

His first novel, Grimus (1975), a part-science fiction tale, was generally ignored by the public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight's Children (1981), however, catapulted him to literary fame. It also significantly shaped the course that Indian writing in English would follow over the next decade, and is regarded by many as one of the great books of the last 100 years. This work won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years respectively.[10] Midnight's Children has received numerous awards and been cited as Rushdie's best, most flowing and inspiring work.[citation needed] The story follows the life of a child born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn of a new and tumultuous age in the history of the Indian sub-continent and the birth of the modern nation of India. The character of Saleem Sinai has been compared to Rushdie himself.[11]

After Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote Shame (1983), in which he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan, basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Shame won France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of postcolonial literature are characterised by a style of magic realism and the immigrant outlook of which Rushdie is very conscious, as a member of the Indian diaspora.

Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua in the 1980s, The Jaguar Smile (1987). The book has a political focus and is based on his first hand experiences and research at the scene of Sandinista political experiments. In an interview at San Francisco University promoting The Jaguar Smile, he advocated that students not write what they wanted to write[citation needed], but what they couldn't help but writing. He referenced a work in progress, that came out the following year, a project that would impact his life in ways he could never have expected.

His most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, was published in 1988 (see section below). Rushdie has published many short stories, including those collected in East, West (1994). The Moor's Last Sigh, a family epic ranging over some 100 years of India's history was published in 1995. The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) presents an alternative history of modern rock music. The song of the same name by U2 is one of many song lyrics included in the book, hence Rushdie is credited as the lyricist.

Salman Rushdie presenting his book Shalimar the Clown

Rushdie has had a string of commercially successful and critically acclaimed novels. His 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown received, in India, the prestigious Crossword Fiction Award, and was, in Britain, a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.[12]

In his 2002 nonfiction collection Step Across This Line, he professes his admiration for the Italian writer Italo Calvino and the American writer Thomas Pynchon, among others. His early influences included James Joyce, Günter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Lewis Carroll. Rushdie was also a personal friend of Angela Carter and praised her highly in the foreword for her collection "Burning your Boats."

Other activities

Rushdie has quietly mentored younger Indian (and ethnic-Indian) writers, influenced an entire generation of Indo-Anglian writers, and is an influential writer in postcolonial literature in general.[13] He has received many plaudits for his writings, including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature, the Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy), and the Writer of the Year Award in Germany and many of literature's highest honors.[14] He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center from 2004 to 2006.

He opposes the British government's introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, something he writes about in his contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays by several writers, published by Penguin in November 2005. Rushdie is a self-described atheist[citation needed], and a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association.

Salman Rushdie having a discussion with Emory University students

In 2006, Rushdie joined the Emory University faculty as Distinguished Writer in Residence for one month a year for the next five years.[15] Though he enjoys writing, Salman Rushdie says that he would have become an actor if his writing career had not been successful. Even from early childhood, he dreamed of appearing in Hollywood movies (which he would later realize in his frequent cameo appearances).

Rushdie is a fan of pop culture[citation needed] and includes fictional television and movie characters in some of his writings. He had a cameo appearance in the film Bridget Jones's Diary based on the book of the same name, which is itself full of literary in-jokes. On 12 May 2006, Rushdie was a guest host on The Charlie Rose Show, where he interviewed Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose work has also faced violent protests, about her 2005 film, Water. He also appears in the role of Helen Hunt's obstetrician-gynecologist in the film adaptation (Hunt's directorial debut) of Elinor Lipman's novel Then She Found Me. In September 2008, and again in March 2009, he appeared as a panelist on the HBO program "Real Time With Bill Maher".

The Satanic Verses and the fatwā

The publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in the Islamic world because of what was perceived as an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. The title refers to a disputed Muslim tradition that is related in the book. According to this tradition, Muhammad (Mahound in the book) added verses (sura) to the Qur'an accepting three goddesses who used to be worshipped in Mecca as divine beings. According to the legend, Muhammad later revoked the verses, saying the devil tempted him to utter these lines to appease the Meccans (hence the "Satanic" verses). However, the narrator reveals to the reader that these disputed verses were actually from the mouth of the Archangel Gibreel. The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities.

On 14 February 1989, a fatwā requiring Rushdie's execution was proclaimed on Radio Tehran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time, calling the book "blasphemous against Islam" (chapter IV of the book depicts the character of an Imam in exile who returns to incite revolt from the people of his country with no regard for their safety). A bounty was offered for Rushdie's death, and he was thus forced to live under police protection for years afterward. On 7 March 1989, the United Kingdom and Iran broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy.

The publication of the book and the fatwā sparked violence around the world, with bookstores being firebombed. Muslim communities in several nations in the West held public rallies in which copies of the book were burned. Several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked, seriously injured, and even killed.[16] Many more people died in riots in Third World countries.

On 24 September 1998, as a precondition to the restoration of diplomatic relations with Britain, the Iranian government, then headed by Mohammad Khatami, gave a public commitment that it would "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie."[17][18]

Hardliners in Iran have, however, continued to reaffirm the death sentence.[19] In early 2005, Khomeini's fatwā was reaffirmed by Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.[20] Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid.[21] Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwā on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it,[20] and the person who issued it - Ayatollah Khomeini - has been dead since 1989.

Salman Rushdie has reported that he still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year on 14 February letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him. He was also quoted as saying, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat."[22] Despite the threats on Rushdie, he has publicly said that his family has never been threatened and that his mother (who lived in Pakistan during the later years of her life) even received outpourings of support.[23]

A former bodyguard to Rushdie, Ron Evans, planned to publish a book recounting the behaviour of the author during the time he was in hiding. Evans claimed that Rushdie tried to profit financially from the fatwa and was suicidal, but Rushdie dismissed the book as a "bunch of lies" and took legal action against Ron Evans, his co-author and their publisher.[24] On 26 August 2008 Rushdie received an apology at the High Court in London from all three parties. [25]

The failed assassination attempt and Hezbollah's comments

On 3 August 1989, while Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh was priming a book bomb loaded with RDX explosives in a hotel in Paddington, Central London, the bomb exploded prematurely, taking out two floors of the hotel and killing Mazeh. A previously unknown Lebanese group, the Organization of the Mujahidin of Islam, said he died preparing an attack "on the apostate Rushdie". There is a shrine in Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery for Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh that says he was "Martyred in London, 3 August 1989. The first martyr to die on a mission to kill Salman Rushdie." Mazeh's mother was invited to relocate to Iran, and the Islamic World Movement of Martyrs' Commemoration built his shrine in the cemetery that holds thousands of Iranian soldiers slain in the Iran–Iraq War.[17] During the 2006 Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared that "If there had been a Muslim to carry out Imam Khomeini's fatwā against the renegade Salman Rushdie, this rabble who insult our Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, Norway and France would not have dared to do so. I am sure there are millions of Muslims who are ready to give their lives to defend our prophet's honour and we have to be ready to do anything for that."[26] James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation testified before the United States Congress that a "March 1989" (sic) explosion in Britain was a Hezbollah attempt to assassinate Rushdie which failed when a bomb exploded prematurely, killing a Hezbollah activist in London.[27]

International Gorillay

In 1990, soon after the publication of The Satanic Verses, a Pakistani film was released in which Rushdie was depicted plotting to cause the downfall of Pakistan by opening a chain of casinos and discos in the country. The film was popular with Pakistani audiences, and it "presents Rushdie as a Rambo-like figure pursued by four Pakistani guerrillas"[28]. The British Board of Film Classification refused to allow it a certificate, as "it was felt that the portrayal of Rushdie might qualify as criminal libel, causing a breach of the peace as opposed to merely tarnishing his reputation."[29] This move effectively banned the film in Britain outright. However, two months later, Rushdie himself wrote to the board, saying that while he thought the film "a distorted, incompetent piece of trash", he would not sue if it were released.[29] He later said, "If that film had been banned, it would have become the hottest video in town: everyone would have seen it".[29] While the film was a massive hit in Pakistan, it went virtually unnoticed in the West.[29] He has said that there was one legitimately funny part of the movie, his character torturing a Pakistani fighter by reading from his book The Satanic Verses.

Knighthood

Rushdie was awarded a knighthood for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours on 16 June 2007. He remarked, "I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way."[30] In response to his knighthood, many nations with Muslim majorities protested. Parliamentarians of several of these countries condemned the action, and Iran and Pakistan called in their British envoys to protest formally. Mass demonstrations against Rushdie's knighthood took place in Pakistan and Malaysia. Several called publicly for his death. Some non-Muslims were also disappointed by Rushdie's knighthood, believing that the writer did not merit such an honour.[31]

According to a July 2007 report by the BBC, Al-Qaeda have also condemned the Rushdie honour. The Al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri is quoted as saying in an audio recording that Britain's award for Indian-born Rushdie was "an insult to Islam", and it was planning "a very precise response."[32]

Religious and political beliefs

Rushdie came from a Shi'ite Muslim family but says that he was never really religious. In 1990, in the "hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him," he issued a statement in which he claimed "he had renewed his Muslim faith, had repudiated the attacks on Islam in his novel and was committed to working for better understanding of the religion across the world." But later said that he was only "pretending".[33]

His books often focus on the role of religion in society and conflicts between faiths and between the religious and those of no faith.

Rushdie advocates the application of higher criticism, pioneered during the late 19th century. Rushdie calls for a reform in Islam[34] 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.

Rushdie supported the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, leading the leftist Tariq Ali to label Rushdie and other "warrior writers" as "the belligerati'".[35] He was supportive of the US-led campaign to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan which began in 2001, but was a vocal critic of the 2003 war in Iraq. He has stated that while there was a "case to be made for the removal of Saddam Hussein", US unilateral military intervention was unjustifiable[36].

In the wake of the 'Danish Cartoons Affair' in March 2006 - which many considered to be an echo of the death threats and fatwā which had followed the publication of Rushdie's Satanic Verses in 1989[37] - Rushdie signed the manifesto 'Together Facing the New Totalitarianism', a statement warning of the dangers of religious extremism. The Manifesto was published in the left-leaning French weekly Charlie Hebdo in March 2006.

In 2006, Rushdie stated that he supported comments by the then-Leader of the House of Commons Jack Straw, who criticised the wearing of the niqab (a veil that covers all of the face except the eyes). Rushdie stated that his three sisters would never wear the veil. He said, "I think the battle against the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women, so in that sense I'm completely on [Straw's] side."[38]

Rushdie continues to come under fire from much of the British academic establishment for his political views. The Marxist critic Terry Eagleton, a former admirer of Rushdie's work, attacked him for his positions, saying he "cheered on the Pentagon's criminal ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan".[39] However, he subsequently apologized for having misrepresented Rushdie's views.

At an appearance at 92nd Street Y, Rushdie expressed his view on copyright when answering a question whether he had considered copyright law a barrier (or impediment) to free speech.

No. But that's because I write for a living, [laughs] and I have no other source of income, and I Naïvely believe that stuff that I create belongs to me, and that if you want it you might have to give me some cash. [...] My view is I do this for a living. The thing wouldn't exist if I didn't make it and so it belongs to me and don't steal it. You know. It's my stuff.

Salman Rushdie[40]

Bibliography

Books

Essays

Awards

See also

References

  1. ^ "The UK Honours System - Queen's birthday list 2007" (PDF). Ceremonial Secretariat, Cabinet Office. 2007. http://www.honours.gov.uk/upload/assets/www.honours.gov.uk/queens_birthday_list2007.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-06-28. 
  2. ^ "Salman Rushdie to Teach and Place His Archive at Emory University". Emory University. http://news.emory.edu/Releases/RushdieProfessorship1160159900.html. Retrieved on 2007-07-10. 
  3. ^ "Freshnews article". http://www.freshnews.in/rushdies-the-enchantress-of-florence-is-a-historical-novel-20224. 
  4. ^ "Literary Encyclopedia: Salman Rushdie", Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved on 20 January 2008
  5. ^ "Salman Rushdie (1947-)", c. 2003, Retrieved on 20 January 2008
  6. ^ "Salman Rushdie biography", 2004, British Counsel, Retrieved 20 January 2008.
  7. ^ "Salman Rushdie sets his sights on the 'Bollywood Jordan'", The Daily Mail, 12 June 2009
  8. ^ As Salman Rushdie steps out with another beautiful woman" 21 July, 2008, The Evening Standard
  9. ^ "Rushdie: New book out from under shadow of fatwa", CNN, 15 April 1999. Retrieved on 21 April 2007.
  10. ^ "Readers across the world agree that Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is the Best of the Booker.". Man Booker Prizes. 2008. http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1099. Retrieved on 2008-07-10. 
  11. ^ Saleem (Sinai) is not Salman (Rushdie)(although he marries a Padma) and Saleem's grandfather Dr Aadam Aziz is not him either, but there is a touching prescience at work here. In the opening pages of Midnight's Children, Dr Aziz while bending down on his prayer mat, bumps his nose on a hard tussock of earth. His nose bleeds and his eyes water and he decides then and there that never again will he bow before God or man. 'This decision, however, made a hole in him, a vacancy in a vital inner chamber, leaving him vulnerable to women and history.' Battered by a fatwa and one femme fatale too many, Sir Salman would have some understanding of this. One more bouquet for Saleem Sinai 20 Jul 2008 by Nina Martyris, TNN. The Times of India
  12. ^ "The 2007 Shortlist". Dublin City Public Libraries/International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. 2007. http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/2007/shortlist.htm. Retrieved on 2007-04-05. 
  13. ^ Rushdie's postcolonial influence
  14. ^ Times of India Story on Rushdie's influence and awards http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Review/One_more_bouquet_for_Saleem_Sinai/articleshow/3254751.cms
  15. ^ "Salman Rushdie to Teach and Place His Archive at Emory University". Emory University Office of Media Relations. http://news.emory.edu/Releases/RushdieProfessorship1160159900.html. Retrieved on 2006-12-06. 
  16. ^ See Hitoshi Igarashi, Ettore Capriolo, William Nygaard
  17. ^ a b Anthony Loyd (8 June 2005). "Tomb of the unknown assassin reveals mission to kill Rushdie". The Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article531110.ece. 
  18. ^ "26 December 1990: Iranian leader upholds Rushdie fatwa". BBC News: On This Day. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/26/newsid_2542000/2542873.stm. Retrieved on 2006-10-10. 
  19. ^ Rubin, Michael (1 September 2006). "Can Iran Be Trusted?". The Middle East Forum: Promoting American Interests. http://www.meforum.org/article/1002. Retrieved on 2006-10-10. 
  20. ^ a b Webster, Philip, Ben Hoyle and Ramita Navai (20 January 2005). "Ayatollah revives the death fatwa on Salman Rushdie". The Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article414681.ece. Retrieved on 2006-10-10. 
  21. ^ "Iran adamant over Rushdie fatwa". BBC News. 12 February 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4260599.stm. Retrieved on 2006-10-10. 
  22. ^ "Rushdie's term". http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2007021501382200.htm&date=2007/02/15/&prd=th&. Retrieved on 2007-02-15. 
  23. ^ "Cronenberg meets Rushdie". http://www.davidcronenberg.de/cr_rushd.htm. 
  24. ^ "Rushdie anger at policeman's book". BBC. August 2, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7538875.stm. 
  25. ^ "Bodyguard apologises to Rushdie". BBC. August 26, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7581842.stm. 
  26. ^ "Hezbollah: Rushdie death would stop Prophet insults". AFP. February 2, 2006. http://www.natashatynes.com/newswire/2006/02/hezbollah_killi.html. 
  27. ^ James Phillips (2007-06-20). "Hezbollah’s Terrorist Threat to the European Union - Testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Europe". http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/phi062007.htm. 
  28. ^ Joseph Bernard Tamney (2002). The Resilience of Conservative Religion: The Case of Popular, Conservative Protestant Congregations. Cambridge, UK: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. 
  29. ^ a b c d "International Guerrillas and Criminal Libel". Screenonline. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/460938/index.html. Retrieved on 2008-02-07. 
  30. ^ "15 June 2007 Rushdie knighted in honours list". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6756149.stm. Retrieved on 2007-06-16. 
  31. ^ 'Sir Rubbish: Does Rushdie Deserve a Knighthood', Times Hugher Educational Supplement, 20 June 2007
  32. ^ "10 July 2007 Al-Qaeda condemns Rushdie honour". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6289110.stm. Retrieved on 2007-07-10. 
  33. ^ Rushdie: I was deranged when I embraced Islam | TimesOnline
  34. ^ Muslims unite! A new Reformation will bring your faith into the modern era 11 August 2005
  35. ^ Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, Pluto Press, 2004, p60
  36. ^ Letters, Salman Rushdie: No fondness for the Pentagon's politics | World news | The Guardian
  37. ^ StandWithUs.com - Dangerous Hypocrisy: World Reactions to the Danish Cartoons
  38. ^ Wagner, Thomas (10 October 2006). "Blair, Rushdie support former British foreign secretary who ignited veil debate". SignOnSanDiego.com. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20061010-0539-britain-veildispute.html. Retrieved on 2006-10-10. 
  39. ^ The ageing punk of lit crit still knows how to spit - Times Online
  40. ^ Radio show Medierna broadcast on Sveriges Radio P1 on 31 January 2009.

External links

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