Read Online Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Salman Rushdie
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people heard that he had accepted the three winged goddesses, the news was popular. “They were delighted and greatly pleased at the way in which he spoke of their gods,” Ibn Ishaq wrote, “saying, ‘Muhammad has spoken of our gods in splendid fashion.’ ” And Bukhari reported, “The Prophet … prostrated while reciting
An-Najm
, and with him prostrated the Muslims, the pagans, the jinns, and all human beings.”
Why, then, did the Prophet afterward recant? Western historians (the Scottish scholar of Islam W. Montgomery Watt, the French Marxist Maxime Rodinson) proposed a politically motived reading of the episode. The temples of the three winged goddesses were economically important to the city’s ruling elite, an elite from which Muhammad was excluded, unfairly, in his opinion. So perhaps the “deal” that was offered ran something like this: If Muhammad, or the Archangel Gabriel, or Allah could agree that the bird-goddesses could be worshipped by followers of Islam—not as the equals of Allah, obviously, but as secondary, lesser beings, like, for example, angels—and there already were angels in Islam, so what harm could there be in adding three more, who just happened already to be popular and lucrative figures in Mecca?—then the persecution of Muslims would cease, and Muhammad himself would be granted a seat on the city’s ruling council. And it was perhaps to this temptation that the Prophet briefly succumbed.
Then what happened? Did the city’s grandees renege on the deal, reckoning that by flirting with polytheism Muhammad had undone himself in the eyes of his followers? Did the followers refuse to accept the revelation about the goddesses? Did Muhammad himself regrethaving compromised his ideas by yielding to the siren call of acceptability? It was not possible to say for sure. Imagination had to fill in the gaps in the record. But the Qur’an spoke of how all the prophets had been tested by temptation. “Never have We sent a single prophet or apostle before you with whose wishes Satan did not tamper,” it said in Sura 22. And if the incident of the Satanic verses was the Temptation of Muhammad, it had to be said that he came out of it pretty well. He both confessed to having been tempted and also repudiated that temptation. Tabari quotes him thus: “I have fabricated things against God and have imputed to Him words which He has not spoken.” After that the monotheism of Islam, having been tested in the cauldron, remained unwavering and strong, in spite of persecution, exile and war, and before long the Prophet had the victory over his enemies and the new faith spread like a conquering fire across the world.
“Shall God have daughters while you have sons? That would be an unjust division.”
The “true” verses, angelic or divine, were clear: It was the femaleness of the winged goddesses—the “exalted birds”—that rendered them inferior and fraudulent and proved they could not be the children of God, as the angels were. Sometimes the birth of a great idea revealed things about its future; the way in which newness enters the world prophesied how it would behave when it grew old. At the birth of this particular idea, femaleness was seen as a disqualification from exaltation.
Good story
, he thought when he read about it. Even then he was dreaming of being a writer, and he filed the good story away in the back of his mind for future consideration. Twenty years later he would find out exactly how good a story it was.
JE SUIS MARXISTE, TENDANCE GROUCHO , said the graffiti in Paris that revolutionary spring. A few weeks after the Paris
évènements
of May 1968, and a few nights before his graduation day, some anonymous wit, possibly a Marxist of the Grouchonian tendency, chose to redecoratehis bourgeois, elitist college room, in his absence, by hurling a bucketful of gravy and onions all over the walls and furniture, to say nothing of his record player and clothes. With that ancient
An-Najm
, and with him prostrated the Muslims, the pagans, the jinns, and all human beings.”
Why, then, did the Prophet afterward recant? Western historians (the Scottish scholar of Islam W. Montgomery Watt, the French Marxist Maxime Rodinson) proposed a politically motived reading of the episode. The temples of the three winged goddesses were economically important to the city’s ruling elite, an elite from which Muhammad was excluded, unfairly, in his opinion. So perhaps the “deal” that was offered ran something like this: If Muhammad, or the Archangel Gabriel, or Allah could agree that the bird-goddesses could be worshipped by followers of Islam—not as the equals of Allah, obviously, but as secondary, lesser beings, like, for example, angels—and there already were angels in Islam, so what harm could there be in adding three more, who just happened already to be popular and lucrative figures in Mecca?—then the persecution of Muslims would cease, and Muhammad himself would be granted a seat on the city’s ruling council. And it was perhaps to this temptation that the Prophet briefly succumbed.
Then what happened? Did the city’s grandees renege on the deal, reckoning that by flirting with polytheism Muhammad had undone himself in the eyes of his followers? Did the followers refuse to accept the revelation about the goddesses? Did Muhammad himself regrethaving compromised his ideas by yielding to the siren call of acceptability? It was not possible to say for sure. Imagination had to fill in the gaps in the record. But the Qur’an spoke of how all the prophets had been tested by temptation. “Never have We sent a single prophet or apostle before you with whose wishes Satan did not tamper,” it said in Sura 22. And if the incident of the Satanic verses was the Temptation of Muhammad, it had to be said that he came out of it pretty well. He both confessed to having been tempted and also repudiated that temptation. Tabari quotes him thus: “I have fabricated things against God and have imputed to Him words which He has not spoken.” After that the monotheism of Islam, having been tested in the cauldron, remained unwavering and strong, in spite of persecution, exile and war, and before long the Prophet had the victory over his enemies and the new faith spread like a conquering fire across the world.
“Shall God have daughters while you have sons? That would be an unjust division.”
The “true” verses, angelic or divine, were clear: It was the femaleness of the winged goddesses—the “exalted birds”—that rendered them inferior and fraudulent and proved they could not be the children of God, as the angels were. Sometimes the birth of a great idea revealed things about its future; the way in which newness enters the world prophesied how it would behave when it grew old. At the birth of this particular idea, femaleness was seen as a disqualification from exaltation.
Good story
, he thought when he read about it. Even then he was dreaming of being a writer, and he filed the good story away in the back of his mind for future consideration. Twenty years later he would find out exactly how good a story it was.
JE SUIS MARXISTE, TENDANCE GROUCHO , said the graffiti in Paris that revolutionary spring. A few weeks after the Paris
évènements
of May 1968, and a few nights before his graduation day, some anonymous wit, possibly a Marxist of the Grouchonian tendency, chose to redecoratehis bourgeois, elitist college room, in his absence, by hurling a bucketful of gravy and onions all over the walls and furniture, to say nothing of his record player and clothes. With that ancient
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