Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses addresses much more than the infamous controversy within Islam. It is about nationalism, migration, religion, postmodernism, politics, rebirth, hybridization, transformation, compromise, and Islam. However, the great controversy of the Satanic verses, as portrayed in Rushdie's novel, serves as the template from which all the other issues can be examined. Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa, likewise, can be seen as an expected response that seems to fit the themes addressed in the novel. The typical Western opinion that the Ayatollah's reaction is representative of "backwards" Islam is also an ironic manifestation of the novel's themes.
Rushdie is best described as a chef who concocted an elaborate recipe for controversy. Like a bitter apostate Christian who attends church to ask blasphemous questions, he even intended to cause this controversy in order to bring more public attention to the themes he addresses in his novel.
It never......
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