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I just finished reading "The Satanic Verses" by Sir Salman Rushdie, and I really don't know what to think. I do know now why Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced him to death for it, though. If you think that Muhammed is so sacred a topic that his name can only be mentioned while mumbling spiritual platitudes, and even drawing a cartoon figure and calling it Muhammed is worthy of death, then this book is worthy of death ten times over.

But I'm not quite sure what to make of the book itself. As a novel it wasn't the easiest read, though I did find myself sucked into it more and more as I went on. I approached the novel under the assumption that it "meant" something, or had a specific message that it wanted to present, but I'm struggling to figure out what that is. If I think of it as just a novel with no particular intended take-away message, I'm even more at a loss to explain it.

What was Rushdie really trying to say using Chamcha and Farishta? Why was Pimple Billimoria in there? What's the ending (which I won't spoil here) supposed to be telling us, especially as it relates to whatever Chamcha and Farishta's messages are?

At one point, God has a little cameo, and I'm not talking about where he appears to Farishta, but rather just a little thing where in a paragraph or so he's talking to the reader, and I sort of got the message that Rushdie was telling us that God is real, but he's behind all of the religious traditions, not just a particular one (like Islam or whatever). There was another hint of this when that one character recognized that the butterfly girl (that particular Ayesha) had the exact same face as one of the Hindu goddesses that was depicted on a calendar hanging up at his office.

This is my first book of Rushdie's that I've read, and I'm not quite sure I get it. Anyone have any thoughts to add?

I read it about 5 years ago. I suppose it's because I lacked cultural context that I didn't understand the book as well as others did. Knowing what I know now about the trials he and his publishers/translators have to suffer, his comment on the "thank you page" of the book is chilling: "Dedicated to the individuals and organizations that have supported this publication." Knowing what I know now about the nature of Islam and Islamic history, that statement carries far more weight than I wish it did. The day has come where the freedom to write and publish books like this is in very serious danger of not happening.

Anyway, back to my to the book. The bits about pre-Islam Arabia and how Mohammed came to be were very fascinating. I had no idea that Allah was a moon god*, that there was polytheistic worship, and that female deities were venerated in pre-Islamic Arab religions. I wonder how it is that men have completely managed to erase the feminine from god-worship? Maybe the Catholics have it right with the Virgin Mary.

* I think Islamic apologists say something to the effect that Allah isn't a moon-god, but rather was the god-of-everything and that it was one of the female gods that was the moon god. I think it's up for a great deal of debate.