Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" (Earth, prophet, religious leader)

[greatcalgarian]

Comparing this:

The Last Temptation of Christ, (in Greek "O Teleutaios Peirasmos", "Ο Τελευταίος Πειρασμός") also published as The Last Temptation, is a novel written by Nikos Kazantzakis, first published in 1951. It follows the life of Jesus Christ from his perspective. The novel has been the subject of a great deal of controversy due to its subject matter, and appears regularly on lists of banned books.
The central thesis of the book is that Jesus, while free from sin, was still subject to every form of temptation that humans face, including fear, doubt, depression, reluctance, and lust. By facing and conquering all of man's weaknesses, Kazantzakis argues in the novel's preface, Christ became the perfect model for our lives; he sacrificed not only on the cross, but throughout his life. He struggled to do God's will, without ever giving in to the temptations of the flesh.

with this:

The second sequence is the one that contains most of the elements that have been criticised as offensive to Muslims. It is a thinly transformed re-narration of the life of the prophet Muhammad (called "The Messenger" in the novel) in Mecca ("Jahilia" in the novel). At its centre is the episode of the "Satanic Verses", where the "Messenger" first pronounces a revelation in favour of the polytheistic deities of pre-Islamic Mecca, in order to placate and win over the population, but later renounces these as an error induced by Satan. The narrative also presents two fictional opponents of the "Messenger": the demonic heathen priestess Hind and the irreverent skeptic and satirical poet Baal. When the "Messenger" returns to the city in triumph, Baal organizes an underground brothel in which the prostitutes take on the identities of the "Messenger"'s wives. Also, one of "Messenger"'s companions claims that he, doubting the "Messenger"'s authenticity, had subtly altered portions of the Qur'an as "Messenger" narrated it to him.

I would say the writer of "The Last Temptation of Christ" is actually supportive of Jesus as painted in NT, whereas the writer of the Satanic Verses is definitely making fun of Mohammed the accepted as Prophet by the Muslim.

I have tried to read
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/angl...atanic_verses/

But it is too 'literaturish', and beyong my interest and comprehension.

[greatcalgarian]

I think discussion in this page is easier to follow:

http://www.flightpath.com/nublog/archives/000052.html
Two related incidents stand out in recent popular religious history: the uproar surrounding the release of Martin Scorsese's 1988 cinematic adaption of Nikos Kazantzakis' novel The Last Temptation of Christ and that surrounding the nearly simultaneous publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. This paper will first briefly recount the history of the protests and then examine the religious and ethical implications of this history. Why did the release of these artistic works provoke such extreme reactions? Why did these incidents leave such a dramatic impression on the popular consciousness? By adopting a modified version of Mircea Eliade's concepts of sacred and profane, this paper presents a model of religious experience that argues we are a society questioning the meanings of blasphemy, sacredness, and profanity in light of a growing recognition of the importance of multiculturalism in the world community.

[greatcalgarian]

This shows the double standard of the British:

The protest gradually mounted. The Action Committee and other organizations petitioned the Conservative Government to ban The Satanic Verses on the authority of Great Britain's law prohibiting blasphemy. With no response from the Government or Viking Penguin, the Action Committee organized a large rally and ceremonial burning of The Satanic Verses in Bradford in early January 1989; similar rallies were soon held in other cities, including London. On the first of February, British Home Secretary Douglas Hurd announced that the Government had no intention of banning the book and noted that the House of Lords and the Government's legal counsel had determined that Britain's blasphemy laws specifically applied only to the official Church of England and, as a result, also to Christianity in general.[6]

Moderate Muslims in UK attempted to resolve the problem through democratic lawful process, but the law is applying in double standard, without showing any respect for other religion other than Church of England. That may anger the moderate Muslim and hence supported with strength Koemini Fatwa, sad sad.

[greatcalgarian]

This work, thinly disguised as a piece of literature, not only grossly distorts Islamic history in general, but also portrays in the worst possible colours the very characters of the Prophet Ibrahim and the Prophet Mohamed (peace be on them). It also disfigures the characters of the Prophet's Companions (Bilal, Salman Farsi, Hamza, Abu Sufyan, Hind, Khalid and several others) and the Prophet's holy wives and describes the Islamic creed and rituals in the most foul language. This is the most offensive, filthy and abusive book ever written by any enemy of Islam and deserves to be condemned in the strongest possible way.[18]
Al-Ghamdi's criticism is not without merit; Rushdie's novel is acidic and irreverent, and the scenes that recount the early years of Islam and the recording of the Qur'an are no exception.

[greatcalgarian]

At least two early Muslim scholars, ibn Sa'd and an anonymous Persian historian, have related a legend which explains the origin of a group of apparently contradictory verses in the Qur'an, the so-called "Satanic verses."[20] Surah 53.19-20 reads "Have you thoughts about al-Lat, al-'Uzza, and the third, Manat, the other goddess?"[21] Satan is supposed to have interfered here with the transmission of the holy words to Muhammad and tricked the prophet into interjecting an additional verse which allowed for a mixture of Islam and the indigenous polytheistic faith: "These are the exalted birds whose intercession is to be desired."[22] Through the archangel Gabriel, God corrected this error in a later revelation (Surah 17.73-75) which restored the strict monotheism of Islam: "They had almost beguiled you away from what We had revealed to you with the temptation to invent something else against Us. On that score they would have taken you up as a friend. Had We not rallied you, you had almost conceded to them a little."[23]

[greatcalgarian]

Rushdie's prose here is scandalous enough, yet he adds insult to injury and suggests that the incident of the Satanic verses was far from isolated. The character Salman, who mirrors the historical figure of Salman al-Farsi, the illiterate prophet's scribe, becomes increasingly disillusioned with Mahound's message after the Satanic verses incident and begins to alter more and more of the sacred writing. As Rushdie writes,

One night the Persian scribe had a dream in which he was hovering above the figure of Mahound at the Prophet's cave on Mount Cone....[It] struck him that his point of view had been that of the arch-angel, and at that moment the memory of the incident of the Satanic verses came back to him as vividly as if the thing had happened the previous day. "Maybe I hadn't dreamed of myself as Gibreel," Salman recounted. "Maybe I was Shaitan [Satan]." The realization of this possibility gave him his diabolic idea. After that, when he sat at the Prophet's feet, writing down rules rules rules, he began, surreptitiously, to change things.
"Little things at first. If Mahound recited a verse in which God was described as all-hearing, all-knowing, I would write, all-knowing, all-wise. Here's the point: Mahound did not notice the alterations. So there I was, actually writing the book, polluting the word of God with my own profane language. But, good heavens, if my poor words could not be distinguished from the Revelation by God's own messenger, then what did that mean? What did that say about the quality of the divine poetry? Look, I swear, I was shaken to my soul....I was writing the Revelation and nobody was noticing, and I didn't have the courage to own up. I was scared silly, I can tell you. Also: I was sadder than I have ever been.[25]

While questioning the moral character of Muhammad is considered somewhat sacrilegious, Islamic scholarship has never questioned the fully human nature of the prophet, usually allowing for the possibility of weakness. This confession by Rushdie's namesake, on the other hand, is the ultimate blasphemy a Muslim can commit: claiming that the Qur'an is not the literal word of God, that it is profane. Ultimately, it is for these claims, even as a play within a play, that Rushdie and The Satanic Verses were condemned.

[greatcalgarian]

Unlike The Satanic Verses, The Last Temptation of Christ makes no pretense of camouflaging the identity of its characters. Most of the figures in the Christian gospels appear, but the central figures are Jesus of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene, Saul of Tarsus, and Judas Iscariot. While these figures generally correspond to their biblical counterparts, Kazantzakis deliberately transforms their characters and the roles they play in Jesus' life and passion.
Kazantzakis' novel is devoted to exploring the "fully human" doctrine of Jesus' nature more completely and meaningfully than he thought was done in the gospels. Kazantzakis' Jesus is a carpenter-prophet wandering about Judea, not fully sure of what he is preaching or where he is headed. Only through the course of the novel does Jesus begin to fully appreciate the significance of the message that he is preaching.

[greatcalgarian]

In his hallucination, Jesus watches himself be let down from the cross into a pastoral landscape where he makes love with his lifelong love, Mary Magdalene. In Jesus' dream, God wills that Mary Magdalene be soon thereafter stoned to death by a mob including Saul of Tarsus. When Jesus discovers this, he seems remarkably unconcerned; indeed, he almost immediately settles down with two wives, living in a menage-a-trois with Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazaraus. Together, these three give birth to a large family, and Jesus seems satisfied with his placidly domestic life.

Days went by, months, years. In the house of Master Lazarus the sons and daughters multiplied, and Martha and Mary competed to see who would give birth to the most....In the evenings, he would return, exhausted, to sit in his yard, and his women would come and wash his feet and calves, light a fire, lay the table for him and open wide their arms....
What happiness this is, Jesus reflected, what profound correspondence between body and soul, between earth and man!...And Martha and Mary held out their hands and touched the man they loved and the children which issued from their wombs and resembled him, touched them to see if they and all this joy and sweetness were real. So much happiness seemed much too much to them, and they trembled.[28]

Kazantzakis' sexist prose and simplistic dualism notwithstanding, Jesus' condition is far removed from his anguished and crucified "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The happy family's idyllic existence is soon to be shattered, however. Mary has a dream within the dream in which she realizes that this life is only a hallucination, that their many years together have been nothing more than a trick by Satan to divert Jesus from his mission.

[greatcalgarian]

Just as Rushdie was condemned for suggesting in a play within a play that the Qur'an may be polluted with profane verse, and indeed, was not directly revealed by God, so was Kazantzakis condemned for presenting the hallucinated possibility that Jesus was fully human and not at all divine. This similarity is too marked to be mere coincidence; indeed, as we shall see in the next section, the perceived blasphemies committed by The Satanic Verses and The Last Temptation of Christ together reveal a fundamental conflict of the modern world.

[kai]

Originally Posted by greatcalgarian

This shows the double standard of the British:

The protest gradually mounted. The Action Committee and other organizations petitioned the Conservative Government to ban The Satanic Verses on the authority of Great Britain's law prohibiting blasphemy. With no response from the Government or Viking Penguin, the Action Committee organized a large rally and ceremonial burning of The Satanic Verses in Bradford in early January 1989; similar rallies were soon held in other cities, including London. On the first of February, British Home Secretary Douglas Hurd announced that the Government had no intention of banning the book and noted that the House of Lords and the Government's legal counsel had determined that Britain's blasphemy laws specifically applied only to the official Church of England and, as a result, also to Christianity in general.[6]

Moderate Muslims in UK attempted to resolve the problem through democratic lawful process, but the law is applying in double standard, without showing any respect for other religion other than Church of England. That may anger the moderate Muslim and hence supported with strength Koemini Fatwa, sad sad.

well what a surprise a christian countries blasphemy laws only cover christians, i think that has been rectified now ,Henryv111 must have overlooked other faiths