The Vice Chancellor of the Darul Uloom
seminary in Deoband is annoyed. He (I am assuming the vice chancellor is a man)
is cheesed off. He is about as happy as Gordon Brown was on the May 2010
election day.
Why is the vice chancellor of the Darul
Uloom Seminary in Deoband peeved? What is making him more sore than bleeding
haemorrhoids? What has caused him to be as comradely as a starving grizzly bear
that can’t get to the bee-hive at the top of the branch?
I can clarify.
The vice chancellor of the Darul Uloom
seminary is in a towering rage (and we are talking at least forty stories here)
because the infidel is coming to town.
I think more clarification is in order at
this stage.
The first question requiring an answer is:
where in Allah’s name is Darul Uloom seminary? That is easy. The answer, given
in the first line of this post, is: Deoband.
The next question: where in the name of
Mohammad is Deoband? I can answer this, too. Deoband is a town (I am assuming
it is a town seeing as it has a seminary which boasts of a vice chancellor,
although calling a cleric in a seminary a vice-chancellor is a bit like a
chiropractor calling himself a doctor) in India.
Where in India, I hear you asking, is
Deoband? There you have got me. I don’t have a f**king clue. But wherever it
is, the infidel would be well advised to steer clear of it. Because he is not
welcome there.
The infidel in question is Salman Rushdie,
the Booker Prize winning author of Midnight’s Children, who, in 1988,
wrote a novel entitled The Satanic Verses, which incurred
the wrath of the then supreme leader of the Islamic republic of Iran, the AyatollahRuhollah Khomeini. Khomeini, in his infinite wisdom, decreed that Rushdie had
insulted the prophet and any punishment short of execution was too kind. And
Khomeini was not in a mood to show mercy to the insulter of the prophet (and by
extension Islam). He took out a fatwa
against Rushdie which gave permission for the infidel to be killed wherever he
(the infidel) was.
The densely written The Satanic Verses, which
I doubt would otherwise have been heard of, let alone read, in the Muslim
world, achieved instant notoriety following Khomeini’s fatwa. Rushdie went into hiding and had to stay hidden for several
years (the British taxpayers’ money was well spent in protecting him).
The Satanic Verses was
banned in many countries, most of them Islamic.
India was one of the first countries to ban
The
Satanic Verses. The book is still officially banned in India, although,
according to an Indian friend of mine, for a while after Khomeini’s fatwa the novel was one book that was
smuggled the most into the country (until the Indians realised that it was
unreadable).
(As an aside, I read somewhere that The
Satanic Verses has sold more copies than Midnight’s Children. It
is Rushdie’s most commercially successful novel to-date, all thanks to
Khomeini’s fatwa, although I doubt
that that was Khomeini’s intention when he took out the fatwa.)
Salman Rushdie is of Indian descent (he was
born and brought up in Mumbai, India), and he was said to be deeply hurt that
the country of his origin banned the book even before it was banned in some of
the Islamic countries.
India, of course, is not an Islamic
country. It is a secular, democratic country. However, it has a sizeable Muslim
population. Muslims form almost 14% of India’s population (more than 100
millions). One guesses that the Indian authorities were not overtly keen to
piss off the already pissed off Muslim population by allowing the novel to
become freely available.
In due course Rushdie came out of hiding. I
am not exactly sure, but I think after Khomeini’s death (I hope he is enjoying
the delights of the paradise after leading a life of piety) the Iranian government
found some sort of face-saving formula, managing, in the process, the kind of
intellectual contortions that would have British politicians nodding with
approval; and essentially said that they were taking back Khomeini’s fatwa (and were happy to wait, instead,
for the infidel to be struck by the full wrath of Allah).
India might have banned The
Satanic Verses, but it has not banned Rushdie from travelling to India.
Rushdie is invited to attend a literary
festival that will be held in Jaipur, Rajasthan later this month. It is this invitation that has raised the
hackles of the vice-chancellor of the Darul Uloom seminary.
Rushdie is not the only prominent writer
(in the Western hemisphere) who will be in attendance. Other prominent authors
attending this literary festival include the Pulitzer Award winning American
novelist, Annie Proloux; the 1991 Booker Winner Ben Okri (we shall ignore for
the moment that Okri has written little of consequence since his Booker win
twenty years ago); the British playwright David Hare; and Richard Dawkins. The
last name is interesting. I have not read Richard Dawkins (he bores me with his
constant anti-God, anti-religions hectoring), but I should hazard a guess that
Dawkin’s views about all religions, God, and figures—historical and current
that claimed to have had a special relationship with or an exclusive channel of
communication with the Supreme being—are likely to be even more sceptical than
those expressed in one section of The Satanic Verses.
(I should briefly clarify my position on
God and religion, here. Having given the matter considerable thought over the
years, I have decided to hedge my bets and have settled on a position of agnosticism.
It is like this: if you spend all your life believing that God exists, that
there is afterlife, and that you would be answerable for your deeds in this
life after your death; and if God does not exist, if there is no afterlife,
what have you got to lose? You die, and there is nothing after that. On the
other hand, if you spend all your life bad-mouthing God, and if he does exist,
then, upon your demise, you are going to meet a Supreme Being that is more f**ked
off than the vice chancellor of the Darul Uloom seminary in Deoband, India.)
So, this is the situation. There is a
literary festival in India, to which Salman Rushdie is invited. The vice
chancellor of a Muslim seminary in India is upset about it. He does not think
that the infidel who has insulted the great religion and its founder should be
invited in any official capacity to India.
I have no reason to believe that the vice
chancellor is an unwise man. I do not know whether he has actually read The
Satanic Verses. If he has never left India, he would not—at any rate,
should not—have read the offending novel, which is banned in that country. (May
be he travelled to the UK with the specific aim of reading the novel and
deciding for himself whether Rushdie offended the Muslim sentiments; or perhaps
he was content to put his faith in the sound judgment of the late Ayatollah of
Iran and considered The Satanic Verses blasphemous even if he has not read the novel
himself. It does not matter. You have a right to feel offended about or have
view against something you have no personal experience of. I am totally against
greenhouse gases; I think it is bad news for the planet. I also believe that
America, China, and India, in that order, are currently the worst offenders;
and the politicians—power-makers in case of China—in their short-sightedness
are making our planet a more dangerous place. Believe me, I hold very strong
view on the matter; I have seriously considered going on marches (before
rejecting it in favour of shouting abuses at the TV screen at the Ten o’clock BBC
news). I could not explain to you, though, what exactly greenhouse gases are
and in what way they are endangering the planet. But that does not stop me from
having very strong views on the subject.) The point is: people can have very
strong views on matters they know little about, or, in some cases, are even
misinformed about. That is life. Therefore, while it is possible that a vast majority of the tens
of millions in the Islamic world who feel deeply offended by the alleged
anti-Islamic views of Rushdie in The Satanic Verses has not actually read the novel, that does not
make the sentiments ersatz in my view.
I would rather they read The Satanic Verses and decide for
themselves whether or not Rushdie offended Islam. (May be some of them did and
feel, after reading the novel that
Rushdie insulted their religion. I have known a few educated Muslims over the
years and with some of them, whom I became friendly with, I tried to discuss
The Rushdie issue. Not a single one of them admitted to have read The
Satanic Verses. None of them called Rushdie an infidel, either, I
should point out; or wished him a horrible death. There was, if anything, a marked reluctance to discuss this on their part,
which I suspected was because they did hold strong views on the matter. But
that is my guess.) I could also go on the Net and find out more about it so
that I can have an informed opinion on the matter; but I can’t be bothered.
So what is the vice chancellor of the Darul
Uloom seminary in Deoband saying? According to the article in The Daily
Telegraph, the vice chancellor, who goes by the impressive name of
Maulana Abul Qasim Nomeni, is calling upon
‘the Muslim organizations of the country [India]
to mount pressure on the centre to withdraw the visa and prevent him [Rushdie] visiting
India where [tens of millions] community members still feel hurt owing to the
anti-Islamic remarks in his writings The Muslims cannot pardon him at any
cost.’
Abul Qasim
Nomeni, it would be fair to say, is not feeling particularly benevolent towards
Rushdie, which, one might say, is only to be expected of a man whose name
rhymes with Khomeini. He is (or thinks he is) speaking on behalf of tens of
millions of community members (Muslims), who, he assures us, are still hurt
over the anti-Islamic remarks in Rushdie’s writings. (Interesting that Maulana
does not actually mention The Satanic Verses; instead he uses
the generic term ‘writings’. Does this mean that Rushdie has made remarks that
can be construed as anti-Islamic in his other writings?—I have read half a
dozen Rushdie novels and The Satanic Verses is the only one
which can be viewed as anti-Islamic. Or is it the case that the pious Maulana
can’t bring himself to even utter the name of the infidel’s novel?)
The headline
under which The Daily Telegraph chose to publish the article is also interesting.
The headline is:
Sir Salman Rushdie facing
threat of Muslim reprisals over Jaipur Literature Festival appearance’.
Maybe I am
missing something, or The Daily Telegraph has chosen to
keep hidden a vital piece of information from its readers.
What Abul Qasim
Nomeni is, according to the Telegraph’s own article, asking is:
(a) the writer’s centre withdraw invitation to Rushdie, and / or (b) withdraw
the visa to Rushdie so that he cannot travel to India. (The second calling is
presumably to Indian authorities; I wouldn’t have thought that the writer’s
centre that has organized the festival would have any say in the matter.)
That hardly qualifies
as a threat of Muslim reprisal. The vice chancellor is not exhorting the
‘community members’ to tie explosive to their genitals and blow themselves up
in the festival. He is encouraging the community members to put pressure on the
Indian government to withdraw Rushdie’s visa. One might disagree with the vice
chancellor; one might feel that his views are not adequately informed; but one
can hardly take an issue with his methods.
In recent years,
the UK has banned a number of organizations, books and pamphlets, which the
government (read security agencies) feels is inimical to the fabric of the
society; the government has also banned individuals from entering the country.
The vice chancellor Nomeni wants a ban on Rushdie visiting his country. He is
entitled to his views, however misguided we think they are, and, in a free
country, he has every right to voice them. India is a country with free speech;
it is not country with free visiting rights.
The worry, of
course, is that while the learned vice chancellor of the Darul Uloom university
might not be espousing violent methods to get the message across, his clarion
call might just be the kind of encouragement some radical ‘community members’—
who have come to the conclusion that the world does not change through somebody
asking nicely and whose chief mode of communication, therefore, is hand-made
bombs—do not need.
Let’s go back to
India’s banning of The Satanic Verses. I don’t know why India banned the book, but
I can guess. The Indian politicians probably concluded that (a) the Muslim
sentiments were indeed hurt by the novel, and (b) publishing of the book might
lead to law and order problems. And they decided that the best way to deal with
the situation and prevent it from escalating further was to ban the book.
The Satanic Verses was not the first, and won’t be the last,
book to be banned. The list of novels banned in the UK and America in the
twentieth century, because they fell foul, in some way or the other, of the
powers that be, is longer than a lemur’s tail.
That does not
make the banning of The Satanic Verses right, mind, in my view; however, as the
cliché goes, time is the best leveler, and decisions which either make perfect
contextual sense or serve some or the other expediency (political, cultural
etcetera), will look, with the passage of time, cynical, dishonest and wrong.
Is Abul Qasim
Nomeni, the vice chancellor of Darul Uloom seminary, a fundamentalist Muslim?
He might be, or he might not be. All I can say is Islam is not the only
religion which generates fundamentalists. Christianity has its own brand of
religious headcases. Like the organization in Russia which wants the Bhagvad
Geeta (sacred book of Hindus) to be banned in Russia because it is
anti-Christian, apparently. Or the American nutter who was going to burn the
Koran. There is no dearth of Christian Evangelists who are bat-shit mental and
go into proselytizing over-drive, spreading the true message of Christmas (and
generally being a pain in the neck) every December. True, in recent years, the
Christian fundamentalists have not been involved in acts of spectacular
violence; but that might be because Christian lands have not been invaded by
Muslim armies.
However, let’s
get back to the Rushdie affair. In recent years, Rushdie is the second author
that I know of who has invited disapprobation for his alleged anti-Islamic
views. In 2010, V.S. Naipaul withdrew from giving the inaugural speech for the
European Writers’ Parliament, in Turkey, after a slew of Turkish writers and
journalists, criticized the decision to invite Naipaul, who, according to them,
was anti-Islamic. (Commented on this blog.)
Rushdie—bless
him!—has so far shown no inclination to withdraw. Instead he has given out a
statement (bold or belligerent, take your pick) to the effect that he fully
intends to attend the festival, and because he is of Indian origin he does not even
need a visa to visit India.
Rushdie, in the
words of William Darlymple, the organizer of the Jaipur Literary Festival, has
made a major ‘contribution to multiculturalism, pluralism and co-existence.’ He
is (Dalrymple, again) ‘one of the greatest artists India has created’. He is
also (Dalrymple hasn’t finished yet) ‘one of the greatest figures to come out
of Indian Muslim community.’
This is high
praise indeed. I do not know about Rushdie’s contribution to all the isms
Dalrymple is talking about; neither do I possess knowledge of great Muslim
figures that have come out of the Indian Muslim community (I am happy to take
Dalrymple’s word for it). What I do know (having read six of his novels) is
Rushdie is a superb writer. Three cheers for Rushdie.
