Core
120
C.
Knight
Spring
2001
The Salman Rushdie Controversy
Master List of Paper Topics
Due May 23
The following list is based on topics you suggested, but
I have added some of my own and some from earlier lists. The topics have also been revised and
edited--to clarify them, to narrow them, and to keep one topic from overlapping
too much with others. (Nonetheless,
some overlap remains.) In addition to
serving as suggestions for your papers, the topics also summarize issues raised
in the course. In writing your papers,
you will want to rethink the topics and make them your own. Devote the first paragraphs of the paper to
restating the topic as you are going to approach it. Your paper ought to concentrate primarily (but not exclusively)
on the Rushdie controversy rather than an interpretation of The Satanic
Verses. I have added brief
discussions of possible sources, but these are suggestions. You need to take responsibility for finding
sources. You can write a perfectly good
paper using sources in The Rushdie File and the course packet, but there
are several good Rushdie bibliographies on the internet, a bibliography in book
form by Joel Kuorrti, and an annotated bibliography by M. D. Fletcher in the
essay collection Reading Rushdie (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), including
materials specifically on the Satanic Verses controversy.
1. The Authority of the
Author. What is the public authority of the imaginative author? Why do we pay attention to what a novelist
has to say? Rushdie sharply criticizes
contemporary Western society, and he attacks the religious authority of
Islam. He may have the right to do so,
but what makes his opinions of any more value than anyone else's? Does his authority derive from the
imaginative power of the text he has written?
Does it derive from the inherent plausibility of what he has to
say? Does it derive from his own
expertise on the subject? Does it
derive from his past experience and stature as an author? Does it derive from the respect in which
authors are held by Western culture?
Does it derive from other sources?
If a combination of factors gives writers such authority, what
contribution does each factor make in the case of The Satanic Verses? [Rushdie has a great deal to say about what
authors do and where their authority lies in Imaginary Homelands;
Todorov and Kundera address the issue in the course packet, as, in a negative
way, does Benslama.]
2. Insult and Intention. If Rushdie
thought his book might insult Muslims, should he have written it? Was insulting Islam Rushdie's
intention? (For that matter, how can we
decide what Rushdie’s intentions actually were?) What purpose would such insult serve, and did The Satanic
Verses achieve that purpose? Could
Rushdie have achieved the same purpose without offending Muslims? If he might have predicted the violent
uproar that his book would cause, should he, for that reason, have withheld
it? Should Rushdie have been more
sensitive towards Muslim faith, and if so, would his sensitivity have made a
difference? More generally, should an
author publish a book that he or she knows will cause moral, social, or
political controversy? [After the fact, Rushdie discusses his intentions in “In
Good Faith” (Imaginary Homelands); numerous Muslim writers in File describe
the nature and depth of their insult in various ways (see particularly pp.
236-56). Peter Jones takes a
philosophical view of the insult issue.]
3. Blasphemy and Belief. Is the charge
of blasphemy against Rushdie reasonable?
What is blasphemy anyway? (Is
there a single definition, and if not, what is the significance of the different
definitions?) Based on the
definition(s) of blasphemy, can a fictitious book be regarded as
blasphemous? Can a nonbeliever be held
responsible for blasphemy? Or is the
author’s belief irrelevant if a book is published that contains material that
believers perceive as blasphemous? Who
should decide what is blasphemous? Is
Rushdie’s novel blasphemous? If so,
does Rushdie’s blasphemy lie in his irreverent treatment of figures from early
Islamic history (including Muhammad) or in the serious questions that he raises
about the truth of religious revelation?
Should blasphemy be protected by freedom of speech, or is respect for
the sacredness of religion a higher value than free speech? [Materials relevant
to the issue of blasphemy include the essay by Mazrui and other materials from File
(for example pp. 185-94 212-36), as well as (from the course packet) Akhtar,
Levy (especially), and Jones.
4. Blasphemy and the Law. England's law
against blasphemy is limited to offenses against the Church of England. Offenses against other religious groups are
not covered. The United States does not
have a federal law against blasphemy, but it is illegal in some states. Various alternatives to England's blasphemy
law have been considered. Should
countries with established religions (England, as well as many Catholic and
Islamic countries) have laws protecting their national religions? Should blasphemy protection be extended to
all religions? Should blasphemy be
eliminated as a state or national offence?
Should a law protecting religions from insult (parallel to laws against
incitement to racial hatred) substitute for the offense of blasphemy? What are the possible problems of these
alternatives? [Materials from File include efforts by Muslims to argue
for changes in the law and the interesting argument by Rabbi Jacobovits (pp.
197-99); the legal status of blasphemy is discussed by Levy,]
5. The Fatwa. What was the
purpose of the fatwa against Rushdie?
Was it totally based on religious considerations? Was it appropriate according to Islamic
law? Is it legal according to
international law? Is there any
justification for extending the fatwa to publishers, translators, and
book stores as well as to Rushdie? What
considerations of religion, or the moral application of religion, would justify
it in the mind of a believer? To what
degree was it based on considerations of Iranian or international politics, and
to what degree are these separable from religious considerations? How did the fatwa effect the image of
Islam? In the long run, did the fatwa
help the case against Rushdie’s novel or hurt it? [Most of the material on this
topic is collected in File, especially pp. 68-76, 87-97, 202-36; but see
also Akhtar, in the course packet.]
6. Banning Books. Under what
circumstances should The Satanic Verses or any other literary work be
banned? What are the criteria that
should determine whether or not a work should be banned? What is the mechanism by which book banning
should take place? (Who, in short,
decides?) What are the roles of
publishers (who do not print most of the manuscripts submitted to them) in the
banning of books? Is there a real
distinction between banning and the normal rejection of a book by a publisher? What are the relative rights of individual
authors on one hand and, on the other, of communities and governments who have
been offended by a book, and who should judge and protect those rights?
7. Free Speech and Muslim
Culture. Does freedom of speech (a modern, Western concept) merely serve
as a veil behind which Rushdie can criticize another faith? If Rushdie's intention is to challenge
believers to make changes they do not wish to make, is that purpose served by
masking criticism behind the claim that he is just practicing freedom of
speech? Does free speech imply no moral
or legal obligations? Is freedom of
speech inapplicable to Islam because it is a Western concept quite different
from Islamic belief in an indisputable text?
Does freedom of speech give Rushdie the right to express his
anti-religious views regardless of the values of those who might feel insulted
by what he says? Is the government
(clearly an interested party, in many cases) the appropriate agency to
determine what speech is to be protected or to protect those whose speech
offends others? [For this question and the previous one, Parekh provides a good
summary; Waldron articulates the liberal argument thoughtfully; there is
considerable material, on both sides, in File (especially 194-212). Rushdie often returns to issues of free
speech in Imaginary Homelands.
See also Benslama on free speech and textuality.]
8. Culture Wars. Khomeini
claimed that Rushdie’s novel was produced as part of a broad cultural attack by
the West on Islam. Is there any sense
in which this charge is true (even if Rushdie was writing as an individual
author rather than as a paid agent of a western conspiracy)? After all, even Edward Said, in many
respects sympathetic to Rushdie, associates the book with orientalism (or
anti-Arab prejudice in western literature and scholarship). Is the idea that The Satanic Verses
is an element in the culture wars supported by the awards and acclaim with
which the book was greeted and by the defense of the book by western
writers? On the other side, did such
political figures as Rajiv Gandhi and Khomeini use the publication of a
controversial novel about Islam simply as an excuse to attack the West and to
solidify their own power?
9. Islamic Hostility. What are the
sources of Muslim hostility to The Satanic Verses? What is the force of such various factors as
the alleged blasphemous or insulting character of his novel itself, the sense
that Rushdie, as an Indian and former Muslim, has betrayed his people, the
international tensions between East and West, the insecurities of a victimized
minority community in Britain? Do any
of the factors justify such steps as banning the book or killing the author? Is there, in fact, any legitimate and
appropriate recourse available to offended Muslims, and does the apparent
difficulty of finding such recourse contribute to the unrest caused by the
book? Do the factors creating the
hostility help westerners understand the problems of the national and
international Islamic community?
10. Racial and Religious Stereotypes. The
Satanic Verses is itself about stereotypes of racial and religious
groups. Rushdie presents himself as a
public opponent of racism and he presents his novel as anti-racist as
well. Some critics disagree, claiming
that the novel uses and spreads racist stereotypes about West Indians and
Asians, especially Pakistanis. But
attackers of Rushdie sometimes use racist stereotypes about him, and defenders
of Rushdie often use ethnic expressions such as “Muslim barbarism.” The controversy generated by the novel
seemed to engage such stereotypes–some paralleling those represented in the
novel, others different from them. To
what degree does the stereotyping of religious, ethnic, national and cultural
groups in the discussion of the novel resemble the stereotyping that the novel
itself discusses (and attacks). To what
extent is the controversy over The Satanic Verses an exchange of insults
and stereotypes rather than a substantial debate? Do the stereotypes on both sides, however regrettable, point to a
kind of reality? [Rushdie makes his
views of British racism perfectly clear in “The New Empire within Britain” (IH
129-38); writers such as Mazrui and Akhtar indicate Islamic reactions to the
novel; Said and Bhabha indicate fears of racism on both sides; Jones considers
the (limited) role of ethnic identity; Parekh, who is deputy chairman of the
Commission for Racial Equality, fairly summarizes various responses.]
11. Literature and
Religion. Rushdie and other moderns have argued that literature and the
imagination have largely replaced religion as the primary repository of social
and individual values and of ways of understanding the world. (Religion may remain important not because
its supernatural claims are true but because it collects and sustains social
and individual values, just as literature does. Religion becomes a kind of literature.) This understanding of religion is clearly very different from
that of religious faiths themselves, which continue to make exclusive claims to
ultimate truth. To what degree does
this difference explain Rushdie's novel and the controversy over it? Are values of religious tolerance and respect
for the religions of others based on the modernist notion (all religions articulate
socially useful values) rather than the religious notion (one religion
represents the divinely-ordained truth)?
If religion and literature represent very different ways of thinking
about the world, is religion even an appropriate subject for literature? [Many
people who write about the novel (e.g., Todorov) discuss this issue, which
Rushdie himself addresses in the last four essays of Imaginary Homelands. The Rushdie File contains a brief
sections on “Truth and Fiction” (179-84) and “Writers and Religion” (pp.
185-94); see also Benslama and Jones (packet).]
12. Good and Evil. In The
Satanic Verses Rushdie proposes the idea that good and evil are
inextricably mixed, that there is no good without evil or evil without
good. This idea has been severely
attacked by Shabbir Akhtar and others.
Consider the idea that good and evil are mixed--as a social criticism,
as an element of personality, as a philosophical idea, and as a threat to
religion. If good and evil are mixed,
what basis do Rushdie and his defenders have for criticizing Islamic
fundamentalism, for attacking British society, or even for making personal
moral choices? Is the mixture of good
and evil related to other kinds of mixture that are of interest to Rushdie, his
defenders, and his attackers (for example, multiculturalism). [In addition to
looking at The Satanic Verses and various statements by Akhtar, essays
on this topic might want to consider essays by Rushdie and Benslama, and
various defenses f the novel, including Todorov and possibly Kundera.]
13. Contradictory
Positions. The Satanic Verses satirizes not only religious belief but
a variety of other offenses--sexual, sexist, racist, greedy, imperialist,
liberal, and so forth--that defenders of Islam would argue are perhaps inevitable
consequences of the relativist, skeptical, unbelieving, hedonistic culture that
now defends Rushdie's book. Is Rushdie
trying to have it both ways by attacking both religious values and valueless
behavior? Are his defenders similarly
contradictory in defending a book that seems to attack values that most of them
may support? (The fact that Mrs.
Thatcher's government had to protect Rushdie seems to exemplify such a
contradiction.) Are Western Muslims
having it both ways by benefiting from freedoms that they then attack? Almost every position on the Rushdie case
seems to involve real or apparent contradiction. Discuss one or more of those contradictions.
14. Multi-ethnic Identity. Saladin
Chamcha, or Salahuddin Chamchawala, seems to be a negative character insofar as
he seeks to reject his Indian identity and to replace it by an English
one. Ethnic identity seems to be
important to Rushdie, but so does multi-ethnic identity: "Having been
borne across the world, we are translated men.
It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation;
I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained" (Imaginary
Homelands 17). Consider Rushdie's
position on ethnicity, migration, translation, and cultural mixture, in both The
Satanic Verses and his essays. Does
the Rushdie controversy suggest that his position is naive, that some matters
cannot be "translated" or carried across cultural borders? [Most
literary discussions of The Satanic Verses consider this issue, as
Rushdie himself does in a number of essays.
Opponents of The Satanic Verses such as Akhtar (see File 227-30)
also argue on the grounds of multi-culturalism. Peter Jones concentrates on the issue of ethnic identity.]
15. The Role of the Press. Khomeini
issued his fatwa not after reading The Satanic Verses but after
watching a televised report of the deaths of rioters against the novel. His fatwa itself was issued as a
radio bulletin. Consider the roles of
the media (the press and television news) in the Rushdie controversy. To what degree was the controversy created,
inflamed, and perpetuated by the media?
Consider, for example, the difference in reaction to the Bolton burning
of The Satanic Verses (to which the press was not invited) and the
Bradford burning (to which it was).
What tactics did both angry Muslims and Rushdie supporters (including
Rushdie himself) use to manipulate the press, and how successful were
they? To what degree can the press be
seen as an independent factor in the crisis?
Your discussion should include both commentaries on the role of the
press and examples press reports and statements. [Parekh discusses the role of
the press in detail; some commentaries he mentions, as well as others, can be
found in The Rushdie File and the course packet.]
16. Reading the Novel. Many of
Rushdie’s attackers and some of his defenders assert that they have not read
his novel–that the offenses against Islam are so obvious that they do not need
to read, or that the threat to free speech is so serious that the novel needs
to be defended even if it is as insulting as Muslim readers claim. Others, such as Tzvetan Todorov, claim that
reading the novel clearly reveals the injustice of the charges against it and
the importance of having it published.
How important is reading the novel?
Is the claim that it should not be censored independent of the contents
of the novel itself? If so, why isn’t
the Islamic complaint against the novel equally valid even if the novel has not
been read? What positions depend on
reading the novel (and why do they do so)?
What positions can be reasonably argued even if the novel has not been
read? [Todorov and Kundera argue the importance of reading the novel. A number of Islamic critics–Shahabuddin is
perhaps the most obvious–refuse to read the novel, even though they criticize
it. A number of the Western liberal
statements included in The Rushdie File do not suggest that their
authors have read it.]
17. The Third Force.” In mapping
the various positions in the controversy, we have seen the development of a
“third force”--a position rejecting both eastern and western approaches. What is the nature and importance of that
third force? What does it share with
Islamic criticism of The Satanic Verses and with liberal insistence on
the importance of free speech? If one
eliminates the alternatives of an absolute insistence on free speech or and
absolute insistence on the sacredness of Islam, does a credible position remain
in the middle? Does this “third force”
represent a strong positive approach to the novel and the controversy about it,
or does it merely amount to a criticism of both sides? [In mapping the relation
of the “third force” to other vices in the controversy, one might consider
Akhtar on the Islamic extreme, Waldron on Western liberalism, and Bhabha, Said,
and others on the middle position.]
18. The Controversy as
Politics. To what extent is the uproar over The Satanic Verses the
result of political rather than cultural or religious issues? How did international politics play into the
equation? Did the situation of American
prisoners in Lebanon affect the decisions of America? Did the similar situation of British prisoners affect England's
decisions? Did Iran's loss of its war
with Iraq and its subsequent loss of political respect influence Khomeini? Has Islam been manipulated to serve the
interests of people in power? Do
attacks on Rushdie and The Satanic Verses serve those interests (and
why)? Do defenders of Rushdie similarly
have political interests? If the
controversy is seen as essentially political rather than religious or cultural
in nature, how does its significance change? [In addition to the material on
the fatwa in The Rushdie File, one might want to consider Rushdie’s
comments on politics in “Outside the What” and “In God We Trust,” the
statements of Shahabuddin and Rushdie on the India banning, the comments of
Bhabha and Said, the argument of Mazrui, the response of Ahmed, and other
material.]