Short Summary of The Satanic Verses by salman Rushdie
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Course
Religious education
Institution
GCSE
Book
The Satanic Verses
This short summary of about three paragraphs contains everything you need to know about the Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. The book can be quite chunky and hard to get through, especially for those doing it for RE/RS/RT (religious studies & philosophy). This is the shortest most comprehensive ve...
Short summary of Satanic Verses
The novel surrounds two men: Gibreel Farisshta and Saladin Chamca. Both men meet for the
first time on a flight from India to London. During flight, a bomb explodes and both men
(“the only survivors”) fall from the sky, Gibreel turning into an angel and Saladin into a devil.
Gibreel has a series of dreams, one of the most important being a retelling of the story of
Muhammad, where many people were offended that Rushdie named prostitutes after
Muhammad’s wives. Gibreel’s life improves, and he ends up seeing the woman he loves.
Saladin’s life goes downhill he’s arrested and max at Gibreel he now wants to kill Gibreel.
Saladin lies and says Gibreel’s lover is having an affair on him, but Gibreel figures out it’s a
lie and now the tables turn, and he wants to kill Saladin. In the end Gibreel sees Saladin in a
burning building and rescues him. He shows forgiveness, despite everything.
The theme of the book is the good and the evil with angel Gibreel being the good and
Saladin as the devil being evil. But Rushdie implies that, this isn’t true because Gibreel
commits the terrible act of killing himself, but Saladin ends up happy and makes amends
with his father.
Muslims find the book portrays Islam in a bad light, “deceitful, ignorant and sexually deviant” says
HuffPost. Many were outraged by Mahound, the character who appears in Gibreel’s dreams, and
who was “a thinly perversely disguised representation of the prophet Mohammed”, says The New
York Times.The name Mahound was used in medieval Christian plays to represent satanic figures,
and some Muslims concluded that Rushdie was implying that prophet Mohammed was a false
prophet, and he was not as powerful and divine as the Quran says. Rushdie also described Mecca
as “Jahilia” which signifies the ignorance of people prior to revelations received by Mohammed.
The most controversial part of the book was that Rushdie named twelve prostitutes in a Brothel
after prophet Muhammad’s wife.
Many Muslims spilled into the streets protesting over the book's publication. There were riots and
mobs in Srinagar and Kashmir. Some people even sent death threats, although Rushdie was
expecting some backlash, he didn’t think it would be this bad. On February 14, 1989’ the supreme
leader of Iran issued a fatwa calling on all Muslims to execute Rushdie and everyone involved in
the publication of the book. An Iranian religious foundation offered a $1m bounty to anyone who
killed Rushdie, and he has been stabbed before in attempted murder.
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