# Why Did Muslims Go Crazy Over "The Satanic Verses"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 15, 2012, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-muslims-go-crazy-over-the-satanic-verses/637794 "2012-10-15T17:39:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-muslims-go-crazy-over-the-satanic-verses/637794/21 "2012-10-17T21:57:20Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Practically none, I’m sure. How many of the people who protest any work of art actually read or see it first? Most people don’t like to confront stuff that offends them and it’s sort of beside the point. They don’t want to know about the broader artistic context. Almost all of the offended people were taking directions from their imams or other people who found it politically advantageous to be “offended” by the book. They heard it was blasphemous or disrespectful to Islam based on shifty or false descriptions about the content and that was all they needed. I’m sure you’re right, but there _was_ one character who ran a brothel where all the whores named themselves after Muhammed’s wives. I believe this sequence was set in Medina when Muhammed was still alive and Islam was just taking off. All the newly-Muslim men in town found the fantasy of having sex with one of the Prophet’s wives incredibly titillating. Also, there was a suggestion that Muhammed was not receiving the Koran from the Angel Jibril, but from the all-too-human main character, Jibril. And the depiction of the Prophet deciding to edit out the “Satanic Verses” - which referred to two local Meccan goddesses as if they were real deities - was bound to offend some fundie mullahs, the way pointing out contradictions in the Bible pisses off some fundie Christians. So there really was some stuff in the book to offend the mullahs and imams in Iran. > [@Seanette](#): > > I can’t figure out how anyone stayed awake to get to any dubious material. 🙂 > > Seriously, though, SV was one of the more boring books I’ve ever attempted to read (I _think_ I finished it, but this was 20+ years ago). Really? YMMV, of course, but I found it fantastic. Rushdie is a bit florid in his prose, it’s true, but I get why he’s a great writer. Reading him is like eating a really rich chocolate truffle cake - small doses are called for. ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-muslims-go-crazy-over-the-satanic-verses/637794/22 "2012-10-17T22:58:43Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > Really? YMMV, of course, but I found it fantastic. Rushdie is a bit florid in his prose, it’s true, but I get why he’s a great writer. Reading him is like eating a really rich chocolate truffle cake - small doses are called for. Glad someone enjoyed it. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-muslims-go-crazy-over-the-satanic-verses/637794/23 "2012-10-17T23:00:27Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > I’m sure you’re right, but there _was_ one character who ran a brothel where all the whores named themselves after Muhammed’s wives. I believe this sequence was set in Medina when Muhammed was still alive and Islam was just taking off. All the newly-Muslim men in town found the fantasy of having sex with one of the Prophet’s wives incredibly titillating. Yes, all of that is in there. > [@](#): > > Also, there was a suggestion that Muhammed was not receiving the Koran from the Angel Jibril, but from the all-too-human main character, Jibril. The human character Gibreel doesn’t give the verses to Mahound. The bit that mattered, at least to me, was a paragraph where Gibreel (as the angel) says that he was responsible for both the “Satanic” verses and the “real” verses. There is a notion in there that angels don’t have free will of their own. They are bound to people and the people make the angels do what they want. So the idea was that Gibreel gave Mahound the good and bad verses (because Mahound really was torn by the dilemma he found himself in: endorse the local goddesses and end the persecution, or remain incorruptible?). > [@](#): > > So there really was some stuff in the book to offend the mullahs and imams in Iran. Yes, there is. I’m not arguing that there is nothing in the book a Muslim couldn’t get offended by: I said earlier that the Ayatollah was not responsible for all the outrage. But you have to know that upwards of 99 percent of the people who protested the book and said Rushdie needed to die hadn’t read it. There’s just no way. That’s not how people operate. Most people won’t deliberately read or watch something that they have been told is personally offensive to their beliefs. > [@Seanette](#): > > Glad someone enjoyed it. 😃 I liked it, too. I thought Midnight’s Children was better, but I’d only heard people say the book wasn’t that good and was mostly notable because of the theological uproar. It turns out that’s not the case. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-muslims-go-crazy-over-the-satanic-verses/637794/24 "2012-10-18T03:50:40Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > Eschew rejecting the obvious. The obvious here being that violence works and makes later threats of violence credible. That was obviously effective, so we’ve seen more of it. Whatever gets rewarded gets repeated. > [@Labdad](#): > > Probably about as many fundamentalist Christians who went crazy over _The Last Temptation of Christ_ went to see that. Or as many leftists who claimed the movie would lead to a rise in anti-Semitism. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-muslims-go-crazy-over-the-satanic-verses/637794/25 "2012-10-18T03:57:06Z")
Chiming in to say I remember enjoying the book too, although not as much as _Midnight’s Children_ from what I recall. It has been a long time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-muslims-go-crazy-over-the-satanic-verses/637794.md?page=1)