Rushdie’s Challenge to Islamic Orthodoxy

In the spring of 1989, a 21-year-old Iraqi university student named Ali came home and made a shocking discovery: On the living-room table of his family’s home was a copy of The Satanic Verses. A friend of Ali’s father had smuggled Salman Rushdie’s controversial book from London, removing its distinctive blue cover and hiding it in his luggage. This was like finding a bomb.

Ali, a shy and curious young man with a passion for reading, was thrilled to be holding such a forbidden object. Ayatollah Khomeini had recently issued his notorious fatwa condemning Rushdie to death, and protests by Muslims were erupting around the world against what they claimed was an intolerable insult to their faith. Crowds gathered in public squares to burn the book; bookstores were being firebombed. Ali’s father, a relatively liberal man, had taken a risk just by letting a copy enter his home.

Ali, who left Iraq more than a decade ago, told me was no easy novel. Ali had studied English for years, but Rushdie’s language was sophisticated and inventive, so much so that reading it required great mental effort and frequent recourse to the Oxford English Dictionary, which he kept beside him. He took notes as he went, partly out of habit and partly because his father’s friend wanted the book back in a week. When he finished it, he was exhausted.