First Steps
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Find your seating assignment (by door) and
find your BOOK NUMBER
Grab your Haroun book (according to the
book number)
Grab your journal (from crate on floor)
Tape the Journal Expectations checklist on
the front inside cover of your journal
First 5 minutes of class:
Quick Write: “Is ultimate freedom of speech
for a society a good thing? Why? Or is there
a time when freedom of speech should be
limited? Explain.
Agenda
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QuickWrite: “Is ultimate freedom of
speech for a society a good thing?
Why? Or is there a time when freedom
of speech should be limited? Explain.
 Debate
Intro to Salman Rushdie/the book
 Go over Anticipation Survey/Guide
 Start Reading
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Homework: Read Chapters 1-2 for
THURSDAY
Salman Rushdie
“Who dares not speak his free thoughts is a slave.”
Euripides
“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom
to offend, it ceases to exist.”
Rushdie
The Bio
Date of Birth:
June 19, 1947
Place of Birth:
Mumbai (Bombay), India
Childhood:
 Wealthy Muslim parents, sheltered life
 Favorite book was The 1001 Nights (1001 Arabian Nights)
 At age 14, sent to school in England
 Moved to Pakistan in 1964 with his family
Education:
M.A. in History, University of Cambridge
The Satanic Verses
The Real Satanic Verses
The title “Satanic Verses” refers to an old story in the Islamic world,
one that is included in the Hadiths, not the Quran. It has been
told orally and written by early Islamic scholars, but it is
controversial because it implies that a misspoken phrase was
recorded as Holy words.
The gist of the explanatory story (which, for centuries, has been
judged to be without foundation) was that after the Prophet
recited two verses mentioning the names of three pagan
goddesses, Satan cast on to his tongue another two verses that
added: “These [women too] are the exalted..., and their
intercession is to be hoped for.” The angel Gabriel intervened
in time, and God put things right before the lying verses about
intercession could be counted as part of the Quran. One
reason that the story was judged to be false is that it suggested
that the Prophet had erred.
Another part of the novel probably outraged Muslims the most. It
describes people mocking and imitating Muhammad’s 12
wives. Muslims revere Muhammad’s wives as the “mothers of
all believers.”
The Fatwa
SOME Muslims considered Rushdie’s FICTIONAL book
blasphemous, sacrilegious, and offensive. Politicians
and religious leaders called for Muslims to rise ire too.
It was banned in India and sparked riots and
demonstrations by Islamist organizations
in India, Pakistan, and the U.K.
Issued by Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khomeini in
February, 1989:
“I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the
Satanic Verses book which is against Islam, the Prophet and the
Koran, and all involved in its publication who were aware of its
content, are sentenced to death.”
Effects of the Fatwa
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Khomeini and his government put a U.S. $5 million bounty on
Rushdie
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Bookstores that sold The Satanic Verses were firebombed,
riots ensued in areas where it was believed Rushdie was
visiting
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The death sentence, which technically extended to anyone
who even owned the best-seller, cost the life of the novel’s
Japanese translator who was stabbed to death in 1991, and
its Italian translator was wounded during a knife attack in the
same year, by Muslim extremists. Other civilian deaths
resulted as well.
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Even as late as 1999, Rushdie remained a target. Even now,
extremist still hold to the fact that the fatwa could only be
revoked by the one who administered it, and he is dead.
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My husband’s question…
“The Plague Years” (Was is worth it?)
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Nine long years of bodyguards, secret residences, bulletproof
mattresses propped against hotel windows, and the achingly slow
international wrangling…Rushdie goes into hiding in England, living
in 30 residences during 6 months.
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“I am forty-five years old, and I can’t leave my places of residence
without permission. I do not carry keys. Sometimes there are ‘bad
patches.’ During one ‘bad patch’I slept in thirteen different beds in
twenty nights. At such times a great wild jangle fills your body. At
such times you begin to come unstuck from yourself.”
(from Step Across this Line)
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“…For many people, I’ve ceased to be a human being. I’ve
become an issue, a bother, an ‘affair’. Bullet-proof bubbles, like this
one, are reality-proof, too. Those who travel in them, like those who
wear Tolkien’s rings of invisibility, become wraith-like if they’re not
careful…”
(from Imaginary Homelands 431)
Rushdie on Haroun
“It was quite deliberately written in such a way that people didn’t
ask whether it was a children’s book or a grown-up’s book.
A child could pick it up, read it, and get a child’s pleasure out
of it; an adult could get an adult’s pleasure out of it.”
The fatwa left him questioning whether or not writing was worth
the risk, and he would’ve stopped if not for his promise to his
son to write him a book, which turned into Haroun. It is his
explanation of the events to his son.
His Writings
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Grimus--published in 1975; Rushdie’s first attempt at published
writing; often overlooked; included myth, magic and science fiction.
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Midnight’s Children-- published in 1981; won numerous
awards. It’s the story of Saleem Sinai who was born at the same
moment that India gained its independence from Great Britain. It
covers various key moments in India’s history. (Note: Rushdie was
also born on India’s Independence Day).
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Shame--published in 1983; also focused on politics, specifically
the situations in Pakistan.
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The Satanic Verses--published in 1988; caused a huge
controversy; won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1988.
Rushdie on Writing
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“If somebody’s trying to shut you up, sing louder and, if possible, better.
My experience just made me all the more determined to write the very
best books I could find it in myself to write.”
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“In my view, the best one can do is to show, by writing books, by
continuing, that it didn’t work. That even this colossal threat did not work.
The Satanic Verses was not suppressed, the author of The Satanic
Verses went on writing. Life goes on.”
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Look at the dictators I’ve written about- one Indian, one Pakistani, and one Iranian, all
assassinated or dead.
On the other hand, this did silence people. Writers are afraid to write anything bad or
question Islam.
Literature survives; the writer may die, but banning a book can actually increase its ability
to live.
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“One of the good things that books can do is to start interesting
arguments.”
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“Writers have an opinion about the world and offer arguments about the
world. They should also offer contemplation.”
Rushdie’s Lesson
“Our lives teach us who we are. I learned the hard way that when you
allow anyone else’s description of reality to supplant your own--and
such descriptions have been raining down on me, from security
advisors, governments, journalists, Archbishops, friends, enemies,
mullahs--then you might as well be dead. Obviously, a rigid,
blinkered, absolutist worldview is the easiest to keep hold of,
whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I’ve always carried
about is more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might…no
matter how great the storm. ‘Free speech is a non-starter,’ says
one of my Islamic extremist opponents. No, sir, it is not. Free
speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life
itself.”
(Imaginary Homelands 438-9)
Does freedom of speech include freedom of hate speech? Does
it mean defending the right for people to say things you
disagree with, even hate?
One Thousand and One Nights
Huge influence of Rushdie as a child
 Passed down in oral tradition since
before the 8th century
 Frame story
 Archetypal characters/stories
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 Practice:
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Disney
Consider: How does Rushdie play with
the concepts from 1001 Nights in
Haroun?
Rushdie’s Take on Reading
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Reading shouldn’t be too structured by theory or
plans for dissecting it. It is first and foremost to be
read, an interaction between the text and the reader.
He writes for readers to find pleasure again in
reading for the sake of reading.
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Every reader should walk away taking something
different from the story. It is ok for it to mean
something different to the reader.
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Fiction: it is not true. That must be understood (and
not taken out of context as with The Satanic Verses.
On the other hand, fiction and reveal deeper truths,
human truths, than reality or non-fiction can.
Coffee House Book Talk Time