Talk:Satanic Verses controversy/Archive 1

Proposed Disambiguation page
There is now a Satanic Verses article on the Quranic ayat issue, a The Satanic Verses article on the Rushdie novel and an The Satanic Verses controversy article on the fatwa against the novel and related issues.

I propose creating a Disambiguation page, which will mean I think changing the article on the novel back to Satanic Verses (novel) --BoogaLouie 17:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Satanic Verses as a pious work
I don't have a source handy, but I remember one of the arguments against the fatwah (advanced by Rushdie himself among others), is that the novel is in part an expression of piety. The "blasphemous" passages all occur in the dreams of a man who has fallen into madness and despair (Farishta) because he has lost his religious faith. The dreams cause him great agony and deepen this crisis. He recovers from his mental illness, and the dreams stop, only when he rediscovers his faith. Apart from the aburdity of condemning a man to death for something dreamed by a character in a work of fiction, the actual message of the dreams and the narrative that frames them is that blasphemous ideas cause pain. It seems to me that this should be incorporated into the article. Anyone agree? No. Anyone remember the article where Rushdie said this and have a cite for it? Psychlist (talk) 16:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)Psychlist

Controversial elements of The Satanic Verses
Does anyone still think this needs copyediting? or should I take the tag off?--BoogaLouie (talk) 21:14, 19 January 2008 (UTC)


 * tag removed --BoogaLouie (talk) 18:13, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

This article is heavily sourced from a single book that, as cited, certainly doesn't seem terribly neutral or non-partisan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.247.59.50 (talk) 18:21, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Contradictory Statements
"February 14, 1989: ... the 15 Khordad Foundation, an Iranian religious foundation or bonyad, offers a reward of $US1 million or 200 million rials for the murder of Rushdie."

"1993: The 15 Khordad Foundation in Iran raises the reward for Rushdie's murder to $300,000."

"1997: The bounty is doubled, to $600,000."

"February 14, 2000: Ayatollah Hassan Saneii, the head of the 15th of Khordad Foundation, reiterates that the death sentence remains valid and the foundation's $2.6 million reward will be paid with interest to Rushdie's assassins. Persians take this news with some skepticism as the foundation is "widely known" to be bankrupt."

My guess is that the actual reward was initially $1,000,000, it was increased by $300,000 to $1,300,000, then doubled to $2,600,000.

Connor Gilbert 18:05, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the problem is value of rials. 200 million rials was equal to about $100,000 US on the black market and several million $ US officially. --BoogaLouie 00:14, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

"Most religious figures ... Born-again ex-president Jimmy Carter wrote about the need to be "sensitive to the concern and anger" of Muslims and thought severing diplomatic relations with Iran would be an "overreaction.""

"Some non-religious figures...Jimmy Carter" Gennies (talk) 20:40, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Sentence removed about Dahl
I've removed the part in italics from:

Roald Dahl, a British author and member of the Literaray Guild had some pertinent remarks as reproduced ...

I feel that it shows a point of view, which Wikipedia tries to avoid.

You may know better than me, as I'm no expert in the subject of the article. Thanks, Drum guy (talk) 20:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

yes this is truth saying boo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.190.159.3 (talk) 13:45, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Satanic verses.jpg
The image Image:Satanic verses.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check


 * That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
 * That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Media copyright questions. --03:31, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Chopped para
In a effort to improve the attribution of opinions in the article, I chopped this paragraph. The reason being that it doesn't detail any actual reasons people where outraged by the book, but just a commentator (Pipes) trying to second guess what Muslims MAY be outraged by. I think there is enough sourced comments of Muslims taking offense that we don't need to include a non-Muslim trying to imagine what Muslims could be upset by. Ashmoo (talk) 10:23, 30 December 2008 (UTC) Daniel Pipes identified other more general issues in the book that might anger Muslims including:
 * The complaint in the book by one of Mahound's companions : "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 ...." This mixes up "Islamic law with its opposite and with the author's whimsy."
 * As the prophet of Rushdie's novel lies dying, he is visited by the Goddess al-Lat, indicating either that al-Lat exists or the prophet thought she did.
 * The angel "Gibreel's vision of the Supreme Being" is described as "not abstract in the least. He saw, sitting on the bed, a man of about the same age as himself," balding, wearing glasses and "seeming to suffer from dandruff."
 * Regarding communalist violence in India, often religious in nature, a character in the book complains: "Fact is, religious faith, which encodes the highest aspirations of human race, is now, in our country, the servant of lowest instincts, and God is the creature of evil."


 * Disagree. These are all issues that would anger pious Muslims. --BoogaLouie (talk) 18:40, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

This article is ridiculously biased, I wold suggest that it be deleted if it is not soon and very quickly cleared up and made much more objective. Specific examples include the 'Westerner's Response' section which pretty much states that anyone who was in favour of the book and critical of the Muslim response to it only held this opinion because they were "wrong" or "mistaken". Reading this article made me feel like I was reading some sort of propaganda report. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.216.90.196 (talk) 04:48, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Weasel words tag
Although this section is not an addition of mine, I presume that the issue here is with the word "arguably". First, the argument is not left unstated or vague; it is contained in the following clause and is therefore available to be confirmed or rebutted. Second, the entire sentence is a reasonably accurate paraphrase of what Daniel Pipes says in his book, which is cited as the source for the sentence. I have removed the tag, but if there are other issues, or you think the sentence needs to be recast, we can certainly discuss it.-- Shelf Skewed  Talk  20:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Attribution of opinions
I notice many, if not most of the opinions in this article are stated as facts (with a citation). Additionally, a large portion of these opinions come from Daniel Pipes, whose opinions are far from universally accepted amongst both academia and the world at large. All opinions need to be attributed within the text. I am going to start on doing this. Ashmoo (talk) 10:30, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * In defense of use of Daniel Pipes book, he is most definately has not been accepted in academia and the world at large in the last decade or more, but his book was written 18 years ago when he had exhibited the neocon wingnut behavior we see today. --BoogaLouie (talk) 17:49, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I have no particular problem with citing Pipes. I think any statement that seeks to characterise Muslims or the Muslim world in general or explain why things happen the way they did needs to be attributed, because even a well respected opinion on such a topic is going to be disputed by large numbers of people. Ashmoo (talk) 09:46, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * In opposition of using Daniel Pipes is citation 22 (as of September 22, 2009), page 65 of The Rushdie Affair, "Using the name Mahound instead of Muhammad had another consequence: almost all of the British book reviewers, unaware of the name's meaning or the Prophet Muhammad's biography, completely missed The Satanic Verses' connection to Islam. It was as though Rushdie was writing a covert message to Muslim readers." Emphasis added. Rushdie's book itself is full of allusions to Islam, not only of Muhammad's life, but frequent use of "Allah" by characters, description of the pre-Islamic Kaaba, etc.
 * Perhaps I'm being naive to the utter cultural ignorance of British literary critics, but one would have to absolutely no knowledge of Muslim culture and practices to not have caught on to scores of blunt references. 67.22.255.19 (talk) 21:33, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Page Lock Candidate
The book itself is controversial enough to merit it's own article regarding the controversy, and by no account is this religious anger relegated solely to the past. The vehement banning and censorship of this book still exists widely in the Arabic world, and still has a considerable effect in the Muslim populations of western nations.

Therefore, I submit that due to the level of present day controversy, which is inherently religious in nature and the possibility of "edit vandalism" or "edit warring" as well as the fact that dissension on this topic is proportionally misrepresented by the ethnicity and religion of most popular as well as staff editors of Wikipedia; this page should be edit locked.

Given the historical level of violence and political and religious outrage surrounding this book, the page dedicated to it's controversy SHOULD BE LOCKED. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.220.59.46 (talk) 18:03, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Controversial elements
I added the copyediting tag to this section, because I find it very difficult to understand. The sentence about prostitutes and "Muhammad’s wives" is very awkwardly structured. The claim that the novel has nothing to do with Islam is contradicted by most of the rest of the article. Abraham is called a "bastard," but it's not clear by whom. One of the characters? The narrator? In general, this section could be made much more clear.

I don't know enough about the materal to feel comfortable editing this myself.Toscaesque 15:37, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


 * also


 * This article is missing the fact that there are actual satanic verses in the quran which were later edited out namely surah 53 verses 21 and 22 were Mohammad placates his old tribe by saying that the moon gods three daughters intersession is to be hoped for(meaning that they too are gods), which is completely blasphemous and in an effort to reassure his followers that there is only the one true god said that satan put those words in his mouth without him knowing it. This is attested to by 4 early reciters Al-Wakid, Ibn Saad, Ibn Isaq and al Tabari who is the same person as Ibn Jarir.  Tabari says that the verses were originally written down at the same time as Sura 17:73-75.  In addition to these there are also 7 more latter reciters with different chains of transmition than the first 4.


 * This actually deserves an entire page unto it's self.


 * The subject does have its own article, Satanic Verses, which is mentioned and linked to in the hatnote at the very top of the article.-- Shelf Skewed  Talk  03:20, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Citations don't line up with comments
For example, I noticed that citation 5 is in reference to "This clashes Western Ideal X, with Muslim Ideal Y" [5], yet 5 is not a declaration of Y, of the clash between X and Y, or any such thing. It is an article about a Pakistan being annoyed at his knighthood. Surely the citation should be expert opinion saying directly "Y".

The quote is "against the core belief of many Muslims–that no one should be free to "insult and malign Muslims" by disparaging the "honour of the Prophet" Muhammad".

It doesn't demonstrate: A clash, that it is core, that there are many (weasel word). It just hand waves. 213.132.45.37 (talk) 06:28, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

No discussion of Rushdie's security in the UK?
I find it odd that there's no discussion of the steps taken by the British government to protect Rushdie. By protecting him, The UK government was aligning itself with him in the eyes of the Iranians and Muslims worldwide. Of special note, it was the conservative government of Margaret Thatcher that stood up for the leftist Rushdie, while at the same time many of the leftist intellectuals who Rushdie would have associated himself with sold him out to the Muslim reaction in the form of some kind of multiculi appeasement. This was all well discussed in the media at the time. 01:40, 5 December 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarkinBoston (talk • contribs)

Content of article
After a long time away from this article I see it is again full of conjecture and speculation. Too much of it is Western authors second guessing what the Muslim world was thinking and trying to analyse how it change the world. While a bit of analysis is fine (as long as opinions are attributed), most of the article should be about the facts of the case. Also, a lot of general talk about Islamism and censorship that are not directly related to the TSV case crept into the article. These need to be removed. Ashmoo (talk) 15:25, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Article titles
Wikipedia:Article titles says not to place definite or indefinite articles at the beginning of titles unless they are part of a proper name, but the DISPLAYTITLE template isn't making the definite article part of the book's title. Either the article is moved or the italicisation is changed, correct? Vanobamo (talk) 21:53, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You're probably right. I changed it so that the proper title of the novel is reflected. DonQuixote (talk) 01:34, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Bosnia and Albania, Egypt and Libya
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the book is not and never was banned in Bosnia and Albania. When speaking of countries with significant Muslim populations that haven't banned the book, the article only mentions Turkey.

Also, I think the book is no longer banned in Egypt, and after the fall of Gaddafi, also in Libya.

Justice and Reason (talk) 23:30, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

UCLA on Khomeini
Article says: “the director of the Near East Studies Center at UCLA, George Sabbagh, told an interviewer that Khomeini was "completely within his rights" to call for Rushdie's death.” It is a very curious sentence, coming from someone at UCLA. It would be good to have a longer quote in context to understand that opinion. I have added a reference to the TIME archive, but I don’t know the exact article that is cited. If someone with a subscription to the TIME archive could check that, I would be very curious to know the more general context of this quote.--OlivierMiR (talk) 15:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Sunni reaction to the fatwa
The man who issued it all was a well known Shi'ite, and it is well known that there are tensions between the two largest sects of Islam, of course, there was calls for death by a lot of Sunni, but did any Sunni outright commend/agree with Ayatollah Khomeni's Fatwa?--79.68.235.143 (talk) 03:29, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on The Satanic Verses controversy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090411220826/http://www.scribd.com:80/doc/7671324/Rushdie-haunted-by-his-unholy-ghosts-by-Mohamed-Arshad-Ahmedi to http://www.scribd.com/doc/7671324/Rushdie-haunted-by-his-unholy-ghosts-by-Mohamed-Arshad-Ahmedi

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 23:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on The Satanic Verses controversy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20071016180134/http://iol.co.za:80/index.php?set_id=9&click_id=103&art_id=ct20020115201056206U5153306 to http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=9&click_id=103&art_id=ct20020115201056206U5153306

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 13:23, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on The Satanic Verses controversy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160120231224/http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/213161.html to http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/213161.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070930184713/http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/articles/misc/rushdie.html to http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/articles/misc/rushdie.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070930184713/http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/articles/misc/rushdie.html to http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/articles/misc/rushdie.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 22:42, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on The Satanic Verses controversy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120512105406/http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2009/02/21/freedom-of-speech-wilders-orwell-and-the-%E2%80%9Ckoran-ban%E2%80%9D/ to http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2009/02/21/freedom-of-speech-wilders-orwell-and-the-%E2%80%9Ckoran-ban%E2%80%9D/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 15:29, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on The Satanic Verses controversy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20040202043457/http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/ to http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 07:36, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 08:33, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Margaret Thatcher
Should this article point out that Margaret Thatcher issued a speech in response to the controversy caused by this book's publication in which she said "World religions have faced comments that are offensive - very offensive. But if they are strong, they will have the strength to stand up to them".Vorbee (talk) 18:53, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2019 and 8 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mac507.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:10, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Dates need YEARS
Really… the section "Fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini" starts with "On 14 February". Further down you can find the 19th of February 1990. But if you look closely (this is an encyclopedia, you can and should not expect people to read every freakin' word!) you find a 1989 in the fourth paragraph following.

"On 14 February 1989". How is that so hard? Added 1989, assuming that's the correct year.

Oh, and the it's 18 February… 1989? 1990? --jae (talk) 08:35, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

"Fault Line" between Western Culture and X
The current lede describes a "fault line" between Western Culture ("freedom of expression") and supporters of an under-specified counter-philosophy. Unfortunately, specific source cited claims that:

"Salman Rushdie has tried to insult and malign Muslims through his writings and this had provoked very strong reaction and sentiments in the Muslim world...If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammad, his act is justified."

There seem to be two claims:

1. Non-Muslims should not be free to depict the prophet Muhammed

2. It is justified to kill people who depict Muhammed

There is a confusion about exactly what is on the other side of the "fault line" compared to "freedom of expression". Are there sources about how widely held (1) and (2) are? DenverCoder9 (talk) 21:00, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

EDIT:

I've revisited this, and I wonder whether it's appropriate to phrase it as:

> The issue was said to have divided "Muslims from Westerners along the fault line of culture,"

In particular, the article body makes good points that the 1998 fatwa can be seen as an attempt by the Iranian regime to create an "US vs. Them"/"Non-Muslim vs. All Muslim (including Sunni/Shia)" mentality to bolster its own stability, with its own people and other Sunni countries, esp. Saudi Arabia.

Are there good statistics about where the general opinion of "Muslims" fell? Otherwise, I'm inclined not to frame it so simply.

Title: "Controversy"
Is there a better title than "Satanic Verses Controversy"? It makes it sounds like a scholarly debate about the book. The scholarly debate seems mostly about the reaction to the book, and the "controversy" includes bombings, killings, and larger geopolitical negotiation and national-scale events. DenverCoder9 (talk) 04:54, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Subtitle: "Attempts to revoke the fatwa"
This section details the Iranian government withdrawing from outright support and calling themselves neutral, three reaffirmations, and an explanation as to why Iran will not revoke the fatwa. This subtitle on first glance implies some sort of significant effort to revoke the fatwa, and if such an effort exists the body of text here doesn't detail it. This should be folded into "Support for Khomeini's fatwa" and "Criticism of Khomeini's fatwa." 173.24.145.238 (talk) 06:51, 23 November 2022 (UTC)