Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is a massively successful piece of literature that has garnered similarly massive levels of controversy, due largely in part to its portrayal of the prophet Muhammed and his companions. In this essay I will conduct a close reading of one part of the novel, the climax and conclusion of the Return to Jahilia section, in order to better understand the nature of this controversy.

                Return to Jahilia comes to a head when the twelve prostitutes of The Curtain, looking for ways to turn a higher profit amidst the Prophet Mahound’s strict rules, assume the identity of his twelve wives in the bedroom. The women begin using aliases, change how they look and act, and eventually succeed so well at the task that “their previous selves [begin] to fade away” (Rushdie 395). This development is important to the conversation of The Satanic Verses’ banning because the way that the employees of The Curtain mimic Mahound’s wives is reflective of how the characters of the novel (including the twelve women) mimic the characters of Muslim lore. The text represents this distinction through the countless eerie similarities between the women of The Curtain and their new namesakes: “As the twelve entered into the spirit of their roles the alliances of the brothel came to mirror the political cliques at the Yathrib mosque” (394). For all intents and purposes, these women are the Prophet’s brides as they would have appeared in the novel, just as Mahound is Muhammed, Gibreel is Gabreil, so on and so forth. Rushdie then uses this meta-distinction do demonstrate his point in “humanizing” the mythical figures of the Prophet and his companions. When the women of The Curtain sink into their roles, Baal (who will become their Mahound) sees “the shapes of the girls moving past him, their edges blurred, their images somehow doubled, like shadows superimposed on shadows” (395). He is demonstrating how, when figures become larger-than-life, they become blurry, and less knowable. The other characters of the novel represent the opposite of this process, where Rushdie takes the blurred figures that have already been created and reconstructs them. Syed Ali Ashraf writes of this as libel: “Here we are faced with a fundamental problem. If some writer uses my name and the names of some of my friends and also selects some situation and incidents of my life and distorts them and vilifies them do I not have the right to charge that person for slander and defamation” (PPT Slide 4)? Objectively, the members of The Curtain do just this, and are protected for years by the secrecy of the people and their pursuit of pleasure. This reviewer is taking Mahound’s position, which is seen later in the section.

                Even after Mahound returns to Jahilia and undrapes The Curtain for good, and the twelve women are arrested, it is only Baal’s actions that result in his and their deaths. For twelve days he sings sweet verses to his “wives,” and the public and the guards surrounding the women’s prison are so moved by his words that they allow him to continue until it is discovered who he is singing to. Similar to the novel itself, even if the words themselves are beautiful, odious poems, their context is what is most important for those who would go against them.  This is especially true for the Rushdie affair, where reviewer Syed Shahabuddin writes “I have not read it, nor do I intend to. I do not have to wade through a filthy drain to know what filth is. For me, the synopsis, the review, the excerpts, the opinions of those who had read it and your gloating were enough” (PPT Slide 12). In the scholarly fields we uphold the standard of reading, rereading (and rereading and rereading) and critiquing, but for the view of a work in the general public that does not hold fast.

                However, then, when Baal, on trial, repeats without lies the blasphemy hiding behind the curtains, the public only laughs and laughs in response. They know, Mahound knows, Baal knows what the result of the trial will be. The reader, too, already knows what will happen, as the section begins with the line “Gibreel dreamed the death of Baal” (402). The trial is inevitable; the minds of those present have already been made. Baal then takes his final opportunity to speak truth— if all is lost anyway, why withhold or submit? This is similar to how Rushdie, more recently, has begun to accept the controversy his novel has caused, for instance in his 2023 BBC interview. “In the end” he says, “it’s the books that matter, not the knives.” Before his death, Baal exchanges one last set of words with Mahound: he shouts “Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can’t forgive” to which his executioner responds “Whores and writers. I see no difference here.” Baal is killed conveying Truth against Mahound, and in that way what the latter says is true; while writers pursue Truth in description of the human condition, prostitutes pursue Truth in human pleasure. This is why the “twelve wives” were so enticing to the people of Jahilia, because they humanize the Prophet and his wives in the same way Rushdie does.

                To those opposed to The Satanic Verses, these representations of the figures of the Quran are not ones to be blurred and reconstructed, but to be upheld as models of “perfection,” as reviewer Syed Ali Ashraf writes: “The theory is a simple one. It is just disbelief in Prophethood, in the come of “revelations” from God and in the perfection of humanity in the life and character of Prophet Muhammed, peace and blessings of God be upon him” (PPT Slide 2). When Rushdie works with the figures of the Quran, chipping away at perfection to create humanity, rather than the other way around. To the upholders of the fatwa, he is attacking both the sacred nature of the prophet (by humanizing him) and his familial nature (by placing him as the antagonist of certain stories like Return). The violence that resulted from this is saying “you attacked our family, so we will attack yours.” This is especially true in Return because it attacks the chastity and pureness of the Prophet’s wives. Overall, these points show how books are never just pieces of text— they are the context surrounding them in the hands of the reader. The threat, then, of books is that even though an author is responsible for the writing of a piece, it is impossible to know for sure how it will be received. And just as you can’t control the effect of the book, you can’t control the response to that effect either.