On finally reading The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie (lots of blasphemy in this post, obviously)

 I love blasphemy.  It is not merely that I hold freedom of speech sacrosanct, so to speak.  (And how could one blaspheme against that? A fatwa?)  No, I truly love blasphemy.  Why?  It is a meaningful act.  It is an act that says "I will not be constrained by your silly superstitions."  You may live by whatever invented superstitions you choose.  That is your right.  But you may not impose them on me, and if you are offended by my refusal to accept those strictures, then whatever anguish you suffer by my refusal is anguish you impose on yourself.  Blasphemy is awesome.

Consider.  People v. Ruggles (1811).  Fun, little case from the State of New York.  I'm just going to quote from the Case Summary, directly.

The defendant was indicted at the general sessions of the peace, held at Kingsbury ... for that he did ... wickedly, maliciously and blasphemously, utter, and with a loud voice publish, in the presence and hearing of divers good and Christian people, &c. of and concerning the Christian religion, and of and concerning Jesus Christ, the false, scandalous, malicious, wicked and blasphemous words following, to wit, "Jesus Christ was a bastard, and his mother must be a whore," in contempt of the Christian religion, and the laws of this state, to the evil and pernicious example of all others, &c.

Ruggles.  My man.  So how did this pass constitutional muster?  Funnily enough, by a sort of hole in the law.  1811.  The First Amendment, according to the strict text, only limits Congress.  The 14th Amendment hadn't passed yet.  That would be the amendment with the due process clause, which prohibits states from infringing on life, liberty, or property.  Meaning... what?  Over time, we got a process called "incorporation," which was the process by which the restrictions on Congress in the Bill of Rights were applied to the states in interpretation of the due process clause.  So, in 1811, Congress couldn't tell Ruggles fuck-all about religion or speech, but the State of New York could.  Once the 14th Amendment was ratified, and the Supreme Court gradually decided that this meant states couldn't do anything Congress couldn't do with respect to fundamental rights, the State of New York wouldn't have been able to fuck with my man, Ruggles, like that just for pointing out what a whore Mary was, and what a bastard Josh was for being the son of such a whore.

Speak your truth, Ruggles!

Anyway, I totally dig blasphemy.  And if you tell me something is blasphemous, that I shouldn't read it, and threaten to kill the person who wrote it...

How did it take me this long to read it?

I honestly don't know.  I have intended to read Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses for, well, decades.  We all have too many books to read.  As the cancel culture thing became a central part of Western cultural life, it started moving up the to-read stack.  Then, honestly, Afghanistan's fall to the Taliban, and oh, yeah, I really ought to read it.

And fuck Mary up and down the boulevard is it an awesome book!  Don't get your hairshirt in a twist about that line.  I'm writing about Salman Rushdie.  Then again, is a hairshirt supposed to be twisted?  I don't know.  After all, Leviticus says you aren't even supposed to mix fabrics, so if you're mixing fabrics, lay off me for the blasphemy thing.  How many biblical laws are you breaking?

Moving on.  Seriously, it took me this long to read The Satanic Verses?  Damn.  (See what I did there?)  Amazing book.  So, some quick explanations, and then commentary, as usual.  Spoilers, obviously.

The novel begins with one of the better opening sequences you will ever read.  Two characters, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, in freefall from an airplane disaster.  The former, practically cavorting, the latter trying to act the proper Englishman in a suit and bowler, maintaining a stiff upper-lip.  Bizarre, hilarious, surreal... and then through a combination of singing and arm-flapping... they... don't... plummet and die.  They are transformed respectively into avatars of the Archangel Gibreel and... the adversary before getting to the water, getting to shore, and stumbling onto the coast of jolly, old England.

Farishta is a Bollywood star who makes "theologicals."  That is, he makes movies about various gods, in which he plays the gods.  Chamcha left Bombay as a teenager, and settled in London, becoming a voice actor.  However, he returned to Bombay on family business, which put him on that plane with Farishta.  The plane got hijacked, landed in the desert, and they were held hostage for a few months by a group of terrorists, most of whom were sort of the B-list.  Then, the plane took off again, and blew up over the coast of England, which Farishta and Chamcha survived, due to their transformations.  Possibly by the intervention of Shaitan himself, heavily hinted as the narrator.

The book, of course, gets weird and surreal, but instead of doing the expected apocalyptic scenario, the stakes remain low, and the examination is an examination of individuals.  Smart move, from a writing perspective.  Farishta kinda is Gibreel, and he appears to have some power (like the ability to bring a tropical heat wave to London), but he is also batshit crazy, and the latter part is the more important part within the novel.  It's more of a character study than anything else.  A study of Farishta, those around him, and how they relate.  And yeah, he is kind of an avatar of Gibreel, but he is so far from a good guy that... wow.

Then there is Saladin.  He experiences a transformation into a satyr-satan form, before recovering.  More importantly, he has to grapple with internal moral struggles set up around a biblical fall, jealousy, vengeance, and all of that.  Small scale.  Personal.  That's what keeps it interesting.  And just as Farishta is not anything close to a good person, Chamcha does some bad shit, but he is far from irredeemable evil.

Point being, this is all fascinating, and as a point of timeliness, the backdrop within London has a serial killer on the loose with the police going after a black activist who is a douchebag misogynist, but... innocent, and you get a lot about race and the police, and this is from the perspective of London in the 1980s.

OK, so how the... hell... does this lead to Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa for the death of Salman Rushdie in 1989?

Basically, Gibreel Farishta and his wacky, wacky dreams.  In his dreams, he is straight-up Archangel Gibreel, and there are a few dream sequences, that play out in series, every time he goes to sleep.  The big one, for Kimmy, had to do with "Mahound."  Huh?  Mohammed.  I had to look that up.  There is some history associated with referring to Mohammed as "Mahound," and if you want that, go read up on that from people who actually know it, but my first reaction was, did Rushdie make this up to cover his ass on the Mohammed thing?  Nope.  He was pulling from history.  Anyway, he used the name, "Mahound," for reasons.  But here's the deal.  One of the dream-serials is a story that is clearly a weirdo-retelling of Mohammed, where a businessman-prophet named "Mahound" is hanging around a city made of sand, called, Jahilia.  There is a lot in the dream that tells you, yeah, this is supposed to be the story of Mohammed, but not quite.  A dream version.  Surreal.  Weird.  Different.  And within the dream, Gibreel dreams himself as the Archangel Gibreel, floating above, watching, and occasionally being called by Mahound, where there is a weird fight/struggle/something.  Point being, Gibreel isn't coming to Mahound and telling him, hey, here's the deal, boyo.  Mahound himself is the actor, as in, the one who is active.  The player.  The thing.

But here's where Kimmy and his band of fuckin' nutjobs can really decide that Salman belongs with my man, Ruggles.  Within the dream, Mahound needs a scribe.  One of his disciples is a scribe, taking down dictation for all of the visions, rules, 'n such.  At one point, our scribe starts to get a little suspicious.  You see, every time someone challenges Mahound, our boy head on up the mountain, has himself a little "talk" with the Archangel Gibreel, and comes back down with a rule saying, hey, look, the big guy in the sky says I'm right.  Pretty convenient, right?  So anyway, our scribe decides to start testing Mahound.  He starts changing a word or two.  Just subtly, here and there.  To see if Mahound notices.  And... he doesn't.  So the scribe keeps doing it.  And doing it.  And it takes a long-ass time before Mahound gets any inkling that anything is going on.  Big changes, lots of changes.  Translation:  Mahound is kind of a fraud.

Then, you have another of Mahound's disciplines who runs off to hide in a brothel, "marries" the prostitutes, who take on the names of Mahound's wives, and...

Yeah, Kimmy didn't like that.  That made Kimmy really angry.

The funny thing is, that was way less blasphemous than the whole thing with the scribe!  Which is kind of an interesting point about what gets people angry.  The thing with the scribe?  That's an indictment of the whole enterprise.  The brothel schtick?  That don't mean a thing.  It may have some swing, but it still don't mean a thing.  Yet to Kimmy, that is over the line.  There's no thought behind this.  Which makes my point about blasphemy and bullshit.

So now let's go meta.

Within the novel, Gibreel Farishta has these weirdo dreams, and decides to start making some Bollywood movies based on them!  Now you're thinking, holy shit!  A movie about Mohammed?!  They'll fuckin' kill him!  And the thing is... you're right.  They would fucking kill anyone who tried to make that movie.

If someone tried to make the movie, "Mahound," they would be murdered.

I am 100% certain that the movie, "Mahound," would not be completed, because of mass murder.  Not even just one person.  A bunch of people would be murdered, and it would get shut down.  The terrorists would win.  In fact, they have won.  Because nobody would ever even consider anything like this.  The fact that you know it means they have won.

But here's what happens in the novel.  As pieces are being moved into place for the production, there is a press discussion of the idea of this movie, and there is... nervousness!  There is... are you sure about this?  There is... really?  You're doing this?  There is... um... wouldn't this be a little... blasphemous?

And the response?

No!  No!  This isn't blasphemous!  You see, this is a fictionalized story.  This isn't the story of Mohammed.  This is Mahound, it's a different story, fake theology.  They didn't make this reference, but the substance of their response was that it was no more than Neil Gaiman's Sandman.  Dreamy and everything!  The theology is entirely concocted.  (OK, Lucifer appears in Sandman, but the theology is not biblical theology.  It's Gaiman's invention.)

So the producers just dismiss the idea of a real backlash.

What happens?  The movie flops and disappears.  Like it never happened.  Weirder still, it flops and disappears as sectarian divisions ramp up in India at the end.

Let's take stock.  Rushdie creates a fictionalized version of the Mohammed story, as a dream within a novel.  Within the novel, that dream is turned into a movie.  As a plot point, characters consider the possible religious backlash against such a movie, and dismiss it.  In reality, that very story gets a fucking fatwa against Rushdie himself, for the novel, rather than the movie, without even any visual images.

So Rushdie considered the notion of a backlash, dismissed it, and then got a fatwa against him, and had to spend years of his life in hiding from psychos with a hit on his head.

Ruggles had to spend three months in prison, and pay a $500 fine.  (In 1811 dollars.)

And remember, this was a fucking awesome book!  Ruggles?  I mean, I kinda dig the phrasing, I guess, but he's no Salman Rushdie.  Maybe jazz it up a bit, you know?  It was nothing some drunken asshole couldn't have said with no Muse to inspire him.  If you're going to blaspheme, blaspheme big.  You know, "Piss Christ."  Now that's blasphemy!  Not something I want in my house, but thanks for sharing, Andres!  I'll take the Van Gogh instead.

Anyway, there's a thing goin' 'round this country, particularly on the identity politics/cancel culture left.  It goes a little something like this:  If I feel badly, then you did wrong.  You owe me something ranging from apology to recompense to removal from your job or public discourse.  And I don't have to show that you did wrong.  My feelings are the proof that you did wrong.

If you want to see this in action... it is a little difficult to recommend this at this point, given that Bret Weinstein has gone totally off the deep end with COVID conspiracy theories, but once upon a time, he was not batshit crazy.  Go watch the actual Evergreen State video, which was the thing that led to his departure.  He did nothing wrong, and the kids never actually accused him of doing wrong.  They stated that their feelings were all they needed to show to prove that he did wrong, and rejected the concept of evaluating his actual words and actions.  If I feel wronged, you did wrong.  Period.  End of discussion.  This is crazy, but it is everywhere.

And anyone who accepts this premise must also accept that Salman Rushdie did wrong.  Because the Ayatollah Khomeini felt wronged.  As did his band of fucking psychos.  The death warrant part of the fatwa may not be something with which such people openly agree, although death threats are an unfortunately common thing these days, yet the "I feel wronged so you did wrong" structure is the basis of left-wing attacks on speech.  And applied to The Satanic Verses, it would mean that it is a very, very evil book.  And Salman was a very bad person for writing it, because he hurt their feelings.

I say it's a fucking awesome book.  Even if it had been a bad book, I'd still be on his side politically, but admittedly, it's easier given how cool the book was.  People have tried to ban bad music.  Anyone remember 2LiveCrew?  Yeahno.  Thanks for sharing, but no thanks.  If y'all want to enjoy, and I don't have to listen, go for it, but the closest I come to hip hop is Me'Shell Ndegeocello, who has more talent than every rapper ever, combined, and I'm sorry, but that dramatically understates her talent.  (She even had a song called "Jabril" on one of her albums!)

So trying to wrap all of this up, the point is that blasphemy is a violation of religious law.  You cannot impose your religious strictures on those who do not follow your religion, and expecting others to abide by your religious strictures... no.  And what Salman Rushdie learned is to make no concessions on this point.  He actually tried to apologize on this.  He regretted it.  As he should.  No concessions on this.

Within the novel, within the dreams, a question is posed.  A question is posed when an idea is new.  What kind of an idea are you?  An idea that compromises?  Or an idea that is pure?

Free speech.

And now, some music.  I wasn't sure what I would post until I made that reference to Me'Shell.  Let's go with her, and by reference to India, and Gibreel's career, instead of "Jabril," how about a live performance of "God Shiva."  This whole performance is great, but I set the video to start at about 17:00, when the band goes into "God Shiva."  Allen Cato really needs to record more.  Dude is an amazing guitarist, and holy shit can Me'Shell play that bass.