Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 91
91 It is a well-known fact, and a non-practising Muslim like Rushdie would also be aware of this, that the wives of the Holy Prophet(sa) had a revered status as ‘the Mothers of the Faithful’, and this delib- erate comparison was surely to incite passionate rage amongst the Muslims who would treat this as more insulting to them than if their own wives and mothers were insulted. Perhaps Rushdie in his naivety and stupidity thought that under the guise of fiction he could get away with anything! And he has stretched this pretence to the limit, so much so that even his own supporters must have felt embarrassed about his devious scheme. Rushdie’s hatred of Islam continues in this novel and he taunt- ingly jibes at everything Islamic, no matter how trivial. For example, he insinuates that a Muslim’s life is governed by all sorts of rules and he is thus not free to express his own self: ‘The faithful lived by lawlessness, but in those years Mahound - became obsessed by law. . . . . rules, rules, rules. . . rules about every damn thing, if a man farts let him turn his face to the wind, a rule about which hand to use for the purpose of cleaning one’s behind. It was as if no aspect of human existence was to be left unregulated, free. The revelation - the recitation - told the faithful how much to eat, how deeply they should sleep, and which sexual positions had received divine sanction. . . ’ (pp. 364-5). Rushdie also ridicules the Islamic form of ablution and prayers: ‘Ablutions, always ablutions, the legs up to the knees, the arms down to the elbows, the head down to the neck. Dry-torsoed, wet- limbed and damp-headed, what eccentrics they look! Splish, splosh, washing and praying. On their knees, pushing arms, legs, heads back into the ubiquitous sand, and then beginning again the cycle of water and prayer. ’ (p. 104). Rushdie has clearly ridiculed the laws of Sharia in Islam by us- ing foul language as he did in Midnight’s Children. But in Satanic Verses he has gone at length on this subject and throughout the