RedHanded - Episode 245 - ‘The Satanic Verses’: Fatwas & Faux Pas

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

Starting point is 00:00:38 I'm Sruti. And welcome to Red Handed. I don't think we have that many things to tell you other than that merch is back. Back, back, back again. Back in the house. Back on the streets. Back in the town. Everywhere. to Red Handed. I don't think we have that many things to tell you other than that merch is back. Back, back, back again. Back in the house. Back on the streets.

Starting point is 00:00:48 Back in the town. Everywhere. Back in the hood. Back on your back. Back on your back, exactly. So get yourself over to redhandedshop.com for all of your spooky bitch merch needs. I feel like I'm on, like, late night radio. I know, you've got quite a sultry tone to your voice today.

Starting point is 00:01:04 Because I have a sinus infection and we are on a very long flight tomorrow so I will be in a lot of pain I think. But before that, before the glory of the painful flight begins, we've got a case for you. We certainly, certainly do. One that we have pondered doing for quite some time and we've decided to just fucking fuck the police and get on with it. Exactly. No one can stop us. No one can stop us unless they fat war us.

Starting point is 00:01:29 I was going to say, unless we get cancel cultured. Yeah, right. I was talking to my sister about this case. And I was like, oh, well, I've still got to clean up the script. Because, you know, as it is at the moment, we know. And she was like, well, I don't think anything actually happened to Salman Rushdie, who obviously this whole episode is about. I was like, he went into don't think anything actually happened to Salman Rushdie, who obviously this whole episode is about. I was like, he went into hiding for nine years.

Starting point is 00:01:48 Yeah, and a bunch of other people got murdered. Exactly. So with that, hopefully we will still be walking the streets next week, but we won't find out until we do it. So let's get on with it. You cannot, listener, open your eyes these days or even your ears without being smacked in your beautiful face with cancel culture.

Starting point is 00:02:08 It's almost all we think about. Maybe that's because we're content creators and we have to deal with it every day, but it's a very pervasive topic, I would say. And a very real one. John Ronson's got a whole podcast series about it for fuck's sake. Societally speaking, I think everyone is, has plumped for this is a new phenomenon, right?

Starting point is 00:02:24 It's a new thing. It's a millennial problem. It's a Gen Z problem. Which I do think, I don't think we're at peak yet. Oh, no. And I certainly don't want to ruin your intro, Hannah, that it isn't a modern day development. But I would say this group of people right now who currently exist on the internet are maybe the best at it. Yes, I think you are probably right. And you can't say anything nowadays, Contingent, would have you believe that the weaponising of offence, which we're going to be thinking about a lot this week, is a post-millennium syndrome.

Starting point is 00:02:55 But maybe, just maybe, cancel culture has been around a lot longer in a slightly different guise than we may think. And I'm going to tell you, listener, to your disbelieving ears, that maybe the first ever cancelling, global cancelling in the modern world, happened in 1988. Ooh, the year before I was born. What a dark time. The dark ages before the advent of Barla. So to explore that ambiguous statement from Hannah Hannah that the first ever cancelling in the modern world was the year before I was born, let's look at a cluster of violence and murders

Starting point is 00:03:32 that happened all over the world, seemingly at random. Unless, of course, you know the secret connection between all of them. But we're not going to give you that just yet. We're going to make you work for that. Yeah, this is not a instant gratification. No, you're not getting a medal for taking part here. You've got to do the work. Yeah, this is the anti-modern millennial episode. Delayed gratification and no medals just for taking part. In July 1991, 61-year-old Ettore Capriolo was assaulted by a man in his Milan apartment. The assailant snuck into Ettore's house and stabbed him in the neck, chest and straight through his hands as he tried to defend himself. Then the attacker fled and no one has ever managed to identify him. Ettore described

Starting point is 00:04:20 his attacker as an Iranian man and that's basically all we know. Just days later, all the way in Tokyo, Hitoshi Igarashi, one of Japan's only Islamic scholars who'd studied in Iran, was found dead in his office at the University of Tsukuba Ibaraki. He had been repeatedly stabbed in the face and arms. Face stabbing. Yeah, stabbing people in the head. Unlike Ettore in Milan, Hitoshi died. He was just 44. But just like his Italian counterpart, we have absolutely no idea who did it. The investigation into Hitoshi's murder was officially closed in 2006, not really any closer to identifying individual suspects. And I know it's shit, and I know everyone hates it, but I can't help but feel like this case is a bit Dan Brown.

Starting point is 00:05:14 Oh, come on. Yeah, like just because the newspapers don't know who these people are doesn't mean nobody knows. But like in the interest of journalistic integrity, all anyone will say is probably Iranian, but that's all we know. And it's just like these academics getting stabbed in various different countries. Yeah, bit Dan Brown. Yeah, by a monk with a barbed wire garter. And the attacks just kept coming, because a couple of years later, in Norway this time, on the 11th of October, William Nygaard was shot three times outside his home in Oslo and left to die.

Starting point is 00:05:52 William actually made it to hospital and thankfully survived. And the three hunting rounds that he'd been shot with, which, by the way, expand when they're in the body, miraculously missed Nygaard's spine and every single one of his vital organs. William Nygaard's doctor said that the gunman was either the best shot in the world or the worst. Which I thought was a very funny thing to say. What a quick-witted doctor. And yet again, authorities don't know who this gunman was, and they probably still don't. Or so they say. But everyone knew what the motive was. In fact, the motives for the attacks on Itori, Hitoshi, and William Nygaard were the same. So what did all of these far-flung men have in common? They had all been involved in

Starting point is 00:06:41 the translation or publication of a book called The Satanic Verses, written by Salman Rushdie. And that might sound harmless. How bad can a book be, you might be asking? In this case, pretty bad. All three men had openly said in the press that they had no problem in translating or publishing the book. In fact, after he was shot, William Nygaard ordered a reprint. Yes, William. Yeah, Salman Rushdie, who obviouslygaard ordered a reprint. Yes, William.

Starting point is 00:07:05 Yeah, Salman Rushdie, who obviously we will explain a lot more about him as we go on, he contacted William Nygaard after he was attacked and he was like, I'm so sorry, I feel so responsible. And William Nygaard was just like, don't worry about it, mate. We ordered a reprint. Paperbacks? Yes. Excellent. Love it. Don't fucking bow down to the mob. No.

Starting point is 00:07:23 Take it. Buy yourself a reprint. And the uproar and subsequent violence that followed the publication of the Satanic Verses is now referred to as the Rushdie Affair. And it was so explosive that you might expect that the book would be full of vitriol, racism, violence, spiritual assaults, and perhaps even a call to arms. That's absolutely what I thought. I remember, obviously this happened before I was born, but I remember on the news when people would refer to the satanic verses and knowing a reasonable amount about the outrage it caused, I really, really thought until I started looking into it

Starting point is 00:08:01 that it would be like an anarchist cookbook of how to take down Islam and like all of the problems with Islam as a religion and like in no way veiled some sort of like like a call to arms like that's what I thought it was but it's not it's not even close I think the name possibly also misleads a lot of people yeah and we're going to get into why it's called that later on and there's actually going to get into why it's called that later on, and there's actually a very good reason why it's called that. But yes, I thought it was probably a line-by-line takedown of the Quran, is what I thought it was. But yes, the Satanic Verses isn't any of those things. It isn't even a radical critique of religion.

Starting point is 00:08:40 It's not a manifesto. It's not a battle cry. It's not even set in reality. It's a battle cry. It's not even set in reality. It's a novel. So let's just let that sink in. It is not a piece of non-fiction. It is not some sort of attack on a particular religion or religion as a whole. It's not even a philosophy.

Starting point is 00:08:59 No, it's a story. Possibly some people might say it's a dog whistle laced into a story, but I don't know. To us, it doesn't even really fit that description either. So let's have a look at the man behind the mania. A man whose name most of you will probably be familiar with, not least because we've said it at least five times today already. It is, of course, Mr Salman Rushdie. Salman Rushdie was born into a Kashmiri Muslim family in Mumbai, back when it was still called Bombay in 1947. His mum was a teacher and his dad was a lawyer who went to Cambridge. The Rushdie family lived a very comfortable life in India. And then, like his dad before him, little Salman was sent off to

Starting point is 00:09:42 school in England. It's worth pointing out here that although the Rushdie family were Muslim, Salman went to the mosque maybe once a year on Eid, and that was about it. Yeah, supermarket Muslims, I think. Culturally, yes. Ideologically, possibly less so. Salman went to rugby, which is a public boarding school founded in 1567, where the sport rugby was famously invented. I did not know that. So this is one of my favourite public school facts

Starting point is 00:10:11 and also the most pathetic. So rugby was invented at rugby and their rival school is Winchester. And Winchester don't play rugby, they play Winchester football. Isn't that pathetic? To today? Yes, to today. Oh, fuck off.

Starting point is 00:10:24 Oh, fuck right off. It's true. Look it up. But it's the exact same game. I mean, I don't think they're allowed to play the exact same game. I think some of the rules might be slightly different, but it looks pretty similar, yeah. So Winchester don't have a rugby team? No, they have a Winchester football team.

Starting point is 00:10:37 So they only play themselves. I was going to say, so who have they got to play against? Oh, you fuck it up. What a bunch of tosspots. That's so ridiculous. Yeah, that's quite literally it. Yeah, so it's pretty terrible. It genuinely felt like word association.

Starting point is 00:10:50 When you said that, I was like, tosspot is the word to say. Fuck off. My God. Yeah, it's pretty bad. Rugby is one of the original public schools in this country. It's a very prestigious place to go. Its most famous alumni include epic peace misunderstander Neville Chamberlain, mega pedo Lewis Carroll, and the inventor of Australian rules football, William Webb Ellis. So maybe he didn't like rugby either.

Starting point is 00:11:12 I don't know how different Australian rules is to rugby rugby. I think, and I don't know this, but one of my neighbours when I was growing up was in the Navy and he spent a lot of time in Australia and he was like, we would play the Australian forces and we would play rugby and they would play Australian rules. And so you could kind of you could kind of get through it. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death.

Starting point is 00:11:55 The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new

Starting point is 00:12:46 journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Starting point is 00:13:32 So Salman, perhaps predictably in this wonderful country of ours as a foreign, brown, unathletic and intelligent child, didn't love his time at the super white, super elitist establishment of rugby school. He's never spoken fondly of his time at the super white, super elitist establishment of rugby school. He's never spoken fondly of his time at rugby. And he left it behind to read history at King's College, Cambridge, where it seems that he had a much easier time of it. I highly recommend listening to Salman Rushdie's Desert Island Discs because it gives a bit more of an insight that you're not going to get anywhere else. And he says on Desert Island Discs, he was like, I feel like if I hadn't have been brown, or if I hadn't have been brown or if I hadn't have been unathletic, if I just had one thing that I could do, but because I was the quadruple whammy,

Starting point is 00:14:10 I was just the easiest target. Oh yeah. But I feel like most people hated their time at school and probably most people who went to public school hated their time at public school unless they were the fucking top bloke. And even still, they probably all still get a job in Parliament. Exactly. I just think it's the typical kind of place that I can imagine a very rich Indian family in 1947 having sent their son. But I feel like everybody was probably having a fucking shit time of it. So, fair enough. You went to Cambridge, Salman.

Starting point is 00:14:39 You turned out all right. Apart from the fatwa. Apart from the fatwa. I think it's much easier to go to Cambridge when your dad went there, but, you know, never mind. So Sal mind so salmon a natural academic flew through his studies at cambridge and even found the time to do some occasional acting he mainly stuck to straight plays but he did make the occasional appearance on the famous footlights stage which is of course the comedy arena isn't it exactly yeah so cambridge Footlights has launched, you know, Stephen Fry,

Starting point is 00:15:09 Hugh Laurie, they're all Footlights boys. I'm pretty sure, like, I don't know if Olivia Coleman, but definitely David Mitchell as well. Yes, absolutely. So yeah, it's the place. It's the place. And when he did turn his mind to his studies, Salman thought a lot about just how much information we have about the origins of his native religion, Islam, compared with, for example, Christianity. We know much more about the life of Muhammad than we do about the endeavours of everybody's favourite carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth. I was talking to you about this in the office when I was writing this. I knew next to nothing about the life of Muhammad until now,

Starting point is 00:15:41 but it is very interesting and it's very different to the doctrine that I grew up with in Christianity because there are literal treaties that have his signature on it, like he absolutely definitely was a historical figure. But is it because the church tries very hard to, and this is not a hot take, but the church tries very hard to remove christ from humanity like he is a divine being whereas muhammad is a human he is just a prophet and in touch with the almighty kind of

Starting point is 00:16:15 like giving too much of a backstory to jesus makes him too human uh no because i think the church have always been completely obsessed with proving that he did actually exist. And a lot of people question that, myself included. But maybe that's again it. You give too many details, people can poke too many holes in it and be like, he didn't. But like, if they existed, they would exist. Yeah. Those 600 years is a big gap. Oh, yeah. So they got much better at writing things down in those 600 years. Now, as much as we do know about the life of Muhammad, there are, of course, many things that we don't know about the Prophet. And those plot holes stayed on Rushdie's mind for his entire life. Once he graduated with a second class degree, he went to Pakistan, where his family had

Starting point is 00:16:56 actually moved to. And those eagle-eared among you will have figured out that it is, of course, because he was born in 1947 which is the year that india got independence from britain he goes to school in england goes off to university during that time obviously partition happens he had the cheeky little mass movement i believe it is still to this day the largest human migration in history during which time millions of people that might be overblown, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, moved from what is now India into what is now Pakistan. I recently learned that Pakistan is an acronym. Oh, is it? Yeah. Punjab, Afghan,

Starting point is 00:17:38 border states, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan. Oh, interesting.'t know that and of course India I suppose in there is no Indian language but in the original naming of it was of course Hindustan. Yes I didn't know that. Which is land of the Hindus to be like fuck everybody else which is why understandably Salman Rushdie's family being Muslims left Mumbai to go live in Pakistan, which is where he heads to. But he doesn't stay there very long because London was calling and he soon moved back to the UK to follow his dramatic dreams. Like all of us in our early 20s, Salman had absolutely no idea where he would end up.

Starting point is 00:18:17 He always hoped that he would be a writer, but he decided that he needed a backup plan. So when he was back in London, he tried his hand at acting professionally. And when that didn't go according to plan, and he was by his own words starving to death, he entered the ultra competitive world of advertising. Yeah, because I'm guessing his rich dad was not going to be sending his son money so that he could try be an actor in London. I don't think so, no. And to Salman's surprise, he was very, very good at advertising.

Starting point is 00:18:49 There are more taglines attributed to a young Salman Rushdie than you may realise. Naughty but nice being the most famous. Do we know where he used that first? It's like tea cakes or something. Oh, interesting. And there was another, he did one for American Express that was like, that'll do or something like that.

Starting point is 00:19:06 Oh. Yeah. So there's like quite a lot that you would recognize that are like the Salman Rushdie. Wow. Is it Tonex tea cakes? Tonex tea cakes. Yes. Naughty but nice.

Starting point is 00:19:15 Yes, I think it is. I think, again, 100% yeah. Do you know what they are? They are. They absolutely are. You know what, Salman, you got that one right. They absolutely are. I love a Tonex tea cake.

Starting point is 00:19:25 So now he'd figured out that he was good at writing taglines for things. He was making enough money to work just a few days a week. And the young Rushdie now had time on his hands. So he decided to follow his literary heart and penned his first ever novel. This first try was not particularly successful. It was a semi-sci-fi children's book called Grimace, and almost everyone, including critics, ignored it. But what do we do when we don't succeed? No, we don't lie down and cry. We don't even shout at the top of our lungs,

Starting point is 00:19:55 that's showbiz, kid! That's what I do every time something goes wrong. We try again, and that's what Salman Rushdie did. And his second work of fiction, Midnight's Children, was an international sensation, met with clamouring acclaim, and it even won a Booker Prize in 1981. Midnight's Children is about India gaining independence, it's about partition, etc., and it's about two children in particular

Starting point is 00:20:19 who were born within the first hour of independence in India. It was very much like speaking to the experience of a lot of brown people at that time. Which is why he gets so popular so fast. Absolutely. And it's interesting that his first book was a sci-fi because Midnight's Children isn't a sci-fi, but it is what is described like, magical realist literature. Mystical realism is very much his vibe. And of course, this book, given how incredibly popular it was,

Starting point is 00:20:52 pushed Salman Rushdie into the spotlight. Now he was cool, a ladies' man even, a far cry from the foreign dork that he'd been at rugby. And what's more, he was a hero to the Asian community in Britain. There was an enormous diaspora to Britain from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh from the 60s all the way through to the 90s. And for the first time during that mass migration, there was a brown man telling brown stories. And also it was a brown man telling brown stories in a way that was consumable not just by brown people in the West, but by other people.

Starting point is 00:21:25 Absolutely. I think I've listened to a lot of people's sort of first-hand accounts of like, when they first heard about Salman Rushdie, like a lot of British Asian migrants speaking about it. And they were like, you know, it was a brown man telling brown stories, but he was sat at the white table and that had never happened before. Absolutely. And while a lot of people did love Salman Rushdie at this point and loved Midnight's Children, not every brown person was enamoured with him. Mrs Gandhi actually sued him for libel,

Starting point is 00:21:54 and Midnight's Children really, really, really pissed off the leader of Pakistan. But Rushdie didn't let any of that faze him. He took all of the criticism and even the lawsuits in his stride, boldly proclaiming that art happens at the edge. Salmon. It's true, though. I think it's just, again, I don't want to make this whole episode about cancel culture,

Starting point is 00:22:18 but like... Too late. Too late. It's, again, that art happens at the edge. Like, what an important and poignant sentence to say because these days people like losing their shit because somebody made a joke that they didn't like or saying something that they didn't like it's a joke it's art it's somebody trying something it's a performance and even if it's not we only move forward and things only happen and things only get

Starting point is 00:22:45 agitated and reshaped if you're pushing it to the edge absolutely i could not agree more and Salman Rushdie wasn't just trying to be edgy he was really trying to make a change he was a fixture at anti-racism rallies the british asian community united behind. And this is a difficult thing to do because Asian, Asian, like, what does that mean? Again, it's like, so monolithic, like it doesn't really mean anything. There's also not a lot of unity between various Asian communities. And it certainly doesn't change just because they all happen to be in Britain and be brown. Yeah, I think that the theme we will see through this episode is that is absolutely true. That is not how the white establishment saw it.

Starting point is 00:23:30 But back to this, Salman Rushdie is doing a great job of rallying and uniting the British Asian community. He was one of them and he had made it, which is all anybody ever wants. They want one of their tribe to succeed. And when they do, everyone's like, oh yeah, oh yeah, now we know. And this love that all the brownos had for Mr. Salman Rushdie was exactly why What Happened Next was hailed as such a blood-curdling betrayal by many. That betrayal would take five years to rear its head and that's because Salman took that long to write his next novel, the famous, the infamous, Satanic Verses. I mean you always feel like your second book is it going to be ever as good. Oh the difficult second album yeah absolutely. It's like it gets you fatwood. I also just don't think that Salman Rushdie ever thought he wasn't going to smash it.

Starting point is 00:24:26 I think that's another thing that's so haunting about his Desert Island discs. It's recorded in 88, so it's his press tour for Satanic Verses, basically. And obviously at the end of Desert Island discs, they talk about what you would take with you on a desert island, and they ask him how he would do with Solitude. And he's like, oh, I think I'd be all right. And I'm like, oh, little do you know, Salmon. Little do you know, you're going to have a lot of that in six months.

Starting point is 00:24:49 The confidence of having a killer first novel and also having grown up in an incredibly wealthy family. After the raging success of Midnight's Children, Salmon had no issues getting an £850,000 advance for his book from Penguin. In the 80s? Oh, yeah. And at the time, that is a staggering amount of money, and for his book from Penguin. In the 80s? Oh, yeah. And at the time, that is a staggering amount of money,

Starting point is 00:25:07 and for a book advance also. Wow. And then the Satanic Verses hit the shelves in 1988. So let's ask the annoying question that you ask your friends when they're reading their book on holiday. What's it about? Crucially, and please hold on to this with your grubby little fingers for this

Starting point is 00:25:26 whole episode, the Satanic Verses is a novel. Here are the basics. Two main characters, they're called Gabriel and Saladin, and you don't need a PhD in Islamic studies to figure out who is the goody and who is the baddy. These two men sit next to each other on a plane that's hijacked by Sikh terrorists and then blown up. As the pair speed toward the earth and certain death, Gabriel transforms into an angel and flies them both to London. Back to that mystic realism. He loves a mystic realism, does Alman.

Starting point is 00:25:57 Gabriel becomes more and more angelic as the book progresses and Saladin has a worse turn of luck and becomes more and more like his name suggests, like the devil. He grows goat legs and gets bad breath, for example. And like we've said, mystical realism or magical realism is very much Rushdie's whole vibe. So throughout the book, the reader is never really sure whether these things are actually happening or if it's just something that's happening in the character's

Starting point is 00:26:25 mind. And he does this all as a reflection of the immigrant experience. Yeah I think that's actually if you take all of the politics out of it which I never successfully do but if you do as a reader going through the story you're never sure whether it's a metaphor, whether it's a dream sequence, whether it's actually happening, whether it happened a dream sequence, whether it's actually happening, whether it happened, you know, it's all, you're on unsteady ground the whole time. And that's basically what magical realism is. As a form of literature, it's meant to feel like surreal things happening within a very realistic context so that you can't tell the difference between the two. I'm no literary graduate, but that's what my understanding is. And these dream sequences in the book are incredibly difficult to extract from the base

Starting point is 00:27:12 story itself. So you might be thinking, that sounds perfectly fine. What could possibly be upsetting about any of that? It's just a bit of a challenging read. It's just a bit trippy, maybe. Yeah, it should be long too. Well, lots was apparently very upsetting and difficult about this particular form of writing and this particular book. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

Starting point is 00:28:27 Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA

Starting point is 00:29:10 and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. Let's start with the title, the Satanic Verses. So this is actually a myth surrounding the Quran, which most Muslims now consider to be totally made up. But here's the gist of it. When Muhammad was downloading the Quran from the angel Gabriel, he had a scribe called Abi Sa, who copied down everything Muhammad said, and also, according to the legend, added some bits in himself, meaning that the Quran was not entirely

Starting point is 00:29:59 the word of God. So the Satanic Verses isn't a title that Salman's pulled out of the air. It is the name of this myth surrounding the Quran. And the Quran being verbatim is a pivotal belief in Islam. The Quran is not up for interpretation. It is word for word dictated by Allah himself through Gabriel to Muhammad. So suggesting in any way, shape or form that some of the Quran may not be 100% the word of God is going to get some backs up. Oh, yes, indeed. We've talked about this before. I can't remember which episode, but there is a very good series that's put together by Al Jazeera.

Starting point is 00:30:36 And you can watch all of them on YouTube. It's called Head to Head. And most of them are hosted by Mehdi Hassan, who I'm not a fan of Mehdi Hassan, but he's there and being loud. But his guests are mostly fantastic. And there is an excellent, excellent, excellent author who is a Muslim woman. She's also a lesbian. I cannot remember her name for the life of me, but I'll find that particular episode and leave it in the episode description and she comes on and talks about how she believes in the Quran she's a Muslim she believes in Islam she follows it but

Starting point is 00:31:13 she also says that she doesn't think word for word that the Quran is the word of God and that it has been interpreted by man it's been written down by a man, and men are fallible. And therefore the Quran is not a perfect, verbatim, infallible text. And Mehdi Hasan looks like he's going to have a meltdown. And he says that flies directly in the face of what Islam is. Like the belief that the Quran is the word for word, verbatim doctrine of Allah is the pivotal belief. So absolutely, someone saying that, her saying that in the 2000s caused some people to be upset. This was way back when.

Starting point is 00:31:53 Exactly. So the story that Saroo just told, the scribe adding some bits in, is one version of this myth, right? But there's another one which actually causes a bit more issue. So the capturing of Mecca was no easy task for Muhammad and the first Muslims because the taking of Mecca, it's many, many polytheistic groups and then Muhammad unites them all under Islam under one God. But in the beginning, allegedly, there is a story that he was like,

Starting point is 00:32:20 oh, in the beginning, it's okay to pray to Allah and then also three others, three other deities are okay and the thinking behind that is that he's trying to get more people on his side right you can't just jump from having a whole host of people believing in a polytheistic series of religions people living almost like quite probably tribally living in believing in various different polytheistic religions, to suddenly saying, you're all now going to believe the same thing. And you only believe in one now, that would be an incredibly difficult thing to swallow. Yeah. And one could argue that it's actually quite a tolerant policy. However, so Muhammad

Starting point is 00:33:00 proclaims that it's okay to pray to Allah and also these three other female deities, right? Then either the angel Gabriel appeared to him, or Muhammad came up that it's okay to pray to Allah and also these three other female deities, right? Then either the angel Gabriel appeared to him or Muhammad came up with it himself. That couldn't possibly be true. It couldn't possibly be true that you can only worship one God, but actually three other ones. I love how you're like, maybe the angel Gabriel came to him and said that. Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe. But that's the story. It's either the angel did it or Muhammad came up with it himself. This idea must have come straight from the devil to trick him, which is why they're called the satanic verses and why they had to come out of the Quran. So the verses about polytheism were deemed to be satanic and they were taken out of the Quran. that had originally said, allegedly, that Muhammad had said that God was totally chill

Starting point is 00:33:45 with you still praying to three other female deities is the part that's referred to as the satanic verses. But whether they existed at all, ever, anyway, is also up for debate. Yes. Okay, got it. And interestingly, it doesn't just stop at it being debated. In fact, all versions of this story are now widely considered to have been totally made up as part of an anti-Islam smear campaign. And it's considered impossible that Mohammed could have made such a mistake, even if it was to appease some people he needed to be on his side. All's fair in love and war. It's very interesting that people would say that this

Starting point is 00:34:26 was an anti-Islam smear campaign and that's why this story was created. It's weird to me because it's only highly impactful, that story, if you already believe in the Quran and believe that it is the word of God. So for it to be an anti-Islam smear campaign, that story is not going to make a bunch of people who don't believe in the Quran be like, oh, do you know what I mean? Like, I feel like it already posits the belief that you would have to believe and hold the Quran to be the word of God for that to be that impactful. Maybe. I think that's true. I think the generally what people point to of why the satanic verses is, you know, something that everyone would like to sweep under the rug, is that it indicates exactly what that lady was saying on head-to-head, is that maybe the Quran isn't 100% and maybe Muslims are just following something that is not the word of God.

Starting point is 00:35:15 Sure. So they're basically saying you don't need to believe in it, but it's basically saying this satanic verse's hearsay is saying that the Quran is fallible. Exactly. Okay. Saying in this episode that Salman Rushdie was not trying to be provocative. And again, I'll come back to saying the thing that he himself said, art happens on the edge. And he knew that.

Starting point is 00:35:36 And I think that again, it comes back to just because somebody is making a joke or saying something and they're trying to be provocative, that doesn't mean that they deserve to get cancelled or fatwored or murdered or attempted to be murdered. I think that's the thing that I've just been thinking about so much is like offence being aligned with violence or offence being aligned with therefore that means action needs to be taken or offence meaning anything at all quite frankly. The fact that you think you, the proverbial you, this person who's being offended and demands action be taken, the idea that that person

Starting point is 00:36:11 thinks that they are so special that their feelings must be protected at all costs. I'm sorry. So what? You were offended. Stop reading, stop listening, stop watching. It's as simple as that. But clearly not, otherwise we wouldn't have a rest of this episode to tell you about. So yes, we know Salman knew that he was being particularly provocative with this title. After all, it is a direct reference to a story about the Prophet, which is considered now to be untrue and to some an actual smear. And Salman was not ignorant he was a Muslim he would have known that so some find it difficult to believe that he wasn't being deliberately

Starting point is 00:36:52 inflammatory and again even if he was so fucking what and we're not even close to being done guys there's loads to come because the book is massively long, as Hannah said, and impossible to summarise. So let's strip it back to what we absolutely need to know. Every subplot in the book, in some way, examines or even questions Islam. Let's look at some examples. In part five of the Satanic Verses, a young girl claims to be receiving divine messages from Allah, telling her to lead her followers to Mecca through the Arabian Sea, which would part, just like the Red Sea did for Moses and the Jews as they left Egypt. And that might seem like a reasonably harmless parable, but it could be interpreted to mean that Allah and the Judeo-Christian God are the same one. Which is something you can argue over for hours hours and we just do not have time. Every

Starting point is 00:37:45 religion has a different perspective. I'm not even going to try. Let's just move on. That tale didn't cause too much of a problem, but it pricked some people's ears up. And it did set the scene for upcoming outrage. The next details were the real troublemakers. In the Satanic Verses, there is a character called Mahound, and the reader follows Mahound through his life, which is a satirical rewrite of the life of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Mahound was a name used by Christian crusaders to defame Muhammad. It's actually considered a huge insult to the prophet. And Salman, being at the very least culturally Muslim, definitely knew that it was an inflammatory moniker. Oh, absolutely. I mean, the fact that he uses it. Yeah, he knows, my auntie. But art happens at the edge. Exactly. And next up is the bit that really pissed people off. The actual satanic verses bit. Gabriel, who fell out of the plane and turned into an angel, starts to get messages in his dreams from Mahound. Gabriel, who is a fictional character, let's remember,

Starting point is 00:38:54 is not totally convinced that he believes these messages from the equally fictional character, Mahound. This theme of a person being told to believe something that they're not quite sure of Pervades the entire book And some argue that it implies the entire story And therefore the Quran is actually narrated by the devil Salman, as we know, loved looking into what we know

Starting point is 00:39:18 And thereby what we don't know about the life of the Prophet Muhammad Which pokes Islam in some very touchy places. Now, like any holy book, the Quran has lots of holes and lots of contradictions, and Rushdie presses on many of these in his works. Orthodox Islamic understanding of the lifestyle of Muhammad, his multiple wives, for example, are recognised to be a part of a divine plan. But anti-Muslim polemicists argue that Muhammad was just a human man with a lot of power who just so happened to want a lot of wives. So polygamy, which is prevalent in Islam, is either God's intention,

Starting point is 00:39:59 which is what the majority of Muslims believe, or if it is just because Muhammad was a man who just so happened to want a lot of wives and it wasn't actually to do with anything God said, then generations of Muslims have been influenced by the fallibility of man. I'm uncomfortable, but let's keep going. And this divisive idea is pushed even further in the Satanic verses. There's a bit in the story where the characters come across a brothel and this brothel is called the curtain. And curtain is the direct translation of the Arabic word for veil slash headscarf.

Starting point is 00:40:33 So essentially he's calling this brothel the hijab, right? And inside this brothel are sex workers and they are all named after the wives of Muhammad. So that really pissed people off. Yeah, I mean, obviously, not being a Muslim, I don't feel uncomfortable by that, but I can understand the controversy. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:40:55 And he sure as fuck would too. Absolutely. Now so pissed off were the masses that as soon as the book was published by Penguin, or Viking Penguin as it was called in 1988, it was met with widespread protest from the British Muslim community. Their main gripe was the disrespect of the Prophet and the insinuation that the Quran is not completely and utterly the word of God. The bit about Muhammad's wives being sex workers certainly didn't help either.

Starting point is 00:41:26 And the insinuation that Muhammad was making things up as he went along didn't do Salman Rushdie any favours. Death threats soon poured in and quickly Salman Rushdie was under 24-hour armed guard protection. A mosque in Leicester even photocopied the offending pages of the novel and stuck them up on their own walls and sent them to other mosques all over the country. Muslims wrote impassioned letters to their MPs and held peaceful protests, but no one really took any notice. Until a protest in Bradford, during which they burned a copy of the Satanic Verses, and of course, that photo made it into the papers. We always get there. Get there in the end. Book burning.

Starting point is 00:42:09 Yeah. And before anybody's eye, well, we would never do that now. Or my side would never do that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sure. This is the thing that I found the most fascinating about this case, is that in the 80s, Salman Rushdie was as far left as you could get. And now the left wouldn't side with him, I don't think. So after the book burning, what's the phrase,

Starting point is 00:42:32 burn the book, burn the man? I keep thinking of spare the rod, spare the child. So it makes the papers, and one publication ran the headline How to Spot a Mad Muller, Muller being like an elder in Islam, like a scholar, essentially. And the Daily Mail also stuck their oar in, who asked muslims to run our lives i know and they also followed up that stonker of a headline with the accusation that muslims were taking bradford back to the middle ages later in 1989 there was a protest on parliament square attended by 15 to 20 000 people,000 people. 20,000 people?

Starting point is 00:43:05 Yeah. Fucking hell. Yeah. And it was at this protest that an effigy of Salman Rushdie was burnt in front of the Palace of Westminster. This is one of the few things that I think does unite the Asian diaspora. Burning of effigies. Love a burning of effigy.

Starting point is 00:43:23 Absolutely mad for it. You see it all the time. And with the protests and the burnings of books and or effigies. Love a burning of effigy. Absolutely mad for it. You see it all the time. And with the protests and the burnings of books and or effigies, any middle ground vanished. Members of the public, Asian or not, who wanted to support Rushdie's right to free speech kind of had nowhere to go because what the press were doing, well, what was happening was a war against all Muslims and therefore in the white British understanding, all brown people. It was tricky to align with anyone.

Starting point is 00:43:50 It became very polarised, very binary. Like, are you with us or are you against us? Are you Western or are you not? And this is the problem. you cannot support his right to have freedom of speech. Because if you do, it means you're against all of the Muslims and all of the immigrants and all of the brown people. And it must be because you're a racist. And it's like, well, no, you can be not a racist and be like, people should be allowed to write what they want and say what they want. And I think this whole argument of freedom of speech, again, we're talking about a case from the 80s and I feel like it feels like a pasto case in many ways.

Starting point is 00:44:28 But it also does not feel at all like a pasto case because now so many people very insidiously, I think, say anybody who argues for free speech must just be doing it so they can say horrible racist things. And I'm like, well, no, if anything anything minorities are the people that benefit the most from the freedom of speech so shutting down freedom of speech and saying that anybody who's calling for freedom of speech must only be doing it so they can say horrible vicious things is fundamentally missing the entire point people can say what they want and then you can decide it's also this kind of brainwashing or like babyifying that's not the right word that's not a word infantilizing infantilizing of the public this idea that somehow if you hannah hear a nazi speak tomorrow that you're suddenly going to be like i'm a nazi you're right i agree with everything and you're allowed

Starting point is 00:45:17 to do that what i mean is like this infantilizing of people being told you can't listen to this joke you can't listen to this person speak we must must de-platform this person, because it might make you change your mind. What a bizarre thing for us to think in this day and age. And also the argument that people make, which is like, well, what if they're inciting violence? Well, there are laws in this country and in most countries that will protect from people who are inciting violence. They can be prosecuted under different laws if they're inciting violence. It's not a freedom of speech issue. I think people don't understand it so they just throw it about when they don't know where else to go. Anyway, where was I? Up until the Rushdie affair, the South Asian diaspora in the UK had been understood by

Starting point is 00:46:03 the predominantly white population of Britain to be a pretty homogeneous, pretty monolithic, like I was saying before. It didn't really matter where the brown people were from. Bangladesh, India, South Africa, Saudi, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. If they were brown, then they were just the P word. The P word, which, I don't know, people get offended. I can say it. Can I say it since i get called it fucking packy there you go i've been called it so i'm gonna say it this word was pretty ubiquitous

Starting point is 00:46:31 in the 70s and 80s in britain and it was often featured on prime time bbc television programming along with lots of other brown people stereotypes yeah i think like the brown people stereotypes in this country that were all over the television it's like if you're brown your dad runs a corner shop you leave your shoes outside your door. Which you do. I'm trying to think of other ones. Lots of brown people's dads do run corner shops. Yeah. I remember when I was growing up obviously wasn't in the 70s or 80s but we used to watch Goodness Gracious Me. And do you know what?

Starting point is 00:47:07 People might look back at that now and be like, it's so offensive, blah, blah, blah. Like you'd never do that now. Like almost like it was like Indian Little Britain or something. I'll tell you, as a family of brownos, we fucking loved that shit. We watched it every week when it was on. If you don't believe us that the P word was bandied around on the BBC in the 70s and 80s, there's a BBC sound series called Fatwa

Starting point is 00:47:32 and in that they have clips, they have like a supercut essentially of loads of uses of that word and also stereotypes of brown people in Britain that were primetime television. And yeah, it's no secret that England has propagated decades of racism. Some would argue it still does. I don't know. Are there elements of racism in this country? There are elements of racism in every country. Try going to India. It's one of the most racist places on earth and everyone's brown. But under Thatcher here in the UK, when she closed the mines, she crushed the mills, the unemployment levels of male Asians was at 50% in the north of the country. Unsurprisingly, this had a plethora of negative effects.

Starting point is 00:48:13 But let's focus on the most obvious. The rampant, casual and violent racism in the UK that meant that South Asian diaspora was very angry. This is the thing. It's kind of the perfect storm, isn't it? It was just the destruction of many working-class communities in the North thanks to many decisions that were made and also the racism that people felt. There's no doubt about that. I think what annoys me is when people still pretend like the racism

Starting point is 00:48:39 is as bad as it was in the 70s and 80s. It undermines what people then went through. Absolutely. And that's the thing I don't like and this was never more clearly highlighted to me than what my dad once said to me my parents came to this country in the 90s as white collar workers my dad came here and worked in a bank our next door neighbor when I was growing up is Punjabi family and the husband of that family born and brought up in this country. And he's older than my dad, or maybe around the same age, so he must have grown up in the 70s and

Starting point is 00:49:10 80s. And he was always very, very, very distanced from white people, let's say. So for example, two of my closest friends when I was growing up were these two white boys who lived on my street, and I used to walk to school with them, and I used to walk home with them every day. My parents never saw a single issue in that. He used to tell my dad that he shouldn't let me be friends with them. And I was like, what the hell? He grew up here. How can he think that? And you don't. My dad was like, he grew up here and faced a shitload of racism from white people when he was growing up. I moved here in the nineties and I've never faced any racism. So of course I don't feel the same way. I think that's the thing is like let's not pretend

Starting point is 00:49:45 like it's as bad let's focus on how bad it was then and how it shaped this situation so unsurprisingly like we said this kind of thing led to a lot of very angry people and civil unrest that had been bubbling for some time especially in places like Bradford which was a cotton milling town that hide millions of South Asian migrants in its factories, were really struggling. And the Rushdie affair gave the Muslim contingent of the South Asian population something to hang their anger on. As a group, they had been mistreated and looked down upon for years,

Starting point is 00:50:16 and then after Thatcher, suddenly they had no fucking jobs. And the country, the UK, had promised them a better life, and they didn't feel like they were getting it. And I think that the reason that the vitriol that comes out against Salman Rushdie happens is not something that won't have occurred to most people, but it's the idea of we're facing racism from the white people in this country. We feel like the government is now fucking us by shutting down all the textiles, factories, the cotton factories, the mining, the coaling, all of that, the industries that we were working in. And now you, as a browno, but who happens to be Cambridge educated and public school attending, you've turned on us too. It's the traitor within

Starting point is 00:50:58 the ranks, quote unquote, is always going to provoke more hatred than somebody you already expect it from. Exactly. So British Muslims, obviously, we are generalising, but we have to generalise to tell the story. So let's go. British Muslims saw the Rushdie affair not only as proof of their long held suspicions that the government didn't give a single shit about them, but as salt in the wound too. And again, it's difficult. And maybe people will disagree with me, but you're allowed to disagree with me. I don't disagree with me. But this idea of Salman Rushdie coming to this country and writing a book that was directly provocative is a book that would have never been published in many other countries because those countries would have prioritized religion over freedom of speech. To me, one of the main British values that I will always value is the idea of we're meant to represent a country that supports freedom of speech. And it's like, he was doing something that should be applauded for being British, which was being provocative, being a bit eccentric, writing a book that challenged things, but people didn't like it.

Starting point is 00:51:59 No. And there was a bit of a narrative within the British Muslim population that if they just took it, which I think some people felt like was expected of them and had been expected of them for decades as their jobs left and as they sustained racist abuse and bricked through corner shop windows, etc. There was a narrative of like, oh, well, if we just take it, if we stay passive, then we could end up like the Muslims in Bosnia and Palestine, mistreated, overlooked, abused, and just expected to take it forever. And after the book burning and the effigy burning, there was a significant increase in racist attacks in the UK against the South Asian community, with breaking windows, death threats, etc, etc. Bradford had recently elected its first brown mayor, and he was doing things like campaigning for halal school meals blah blah blah so there was a rhetoric amongst white people of being like go back to brown land though if you love it so much yeah and this reaction was not just UK specific the satanic verses was banned in a number of countries, including Bangladesh and Venezuela.

Starting point is 00:53:06 Bangladesh, I can understand. Oh, yeah, all right. Yeah, sure, never mind. Never mind. There were riots in Mumbai, and the bookshops of Liberties in London and the Penguin Store in New York sustained explosions. Sir Barnes and Noble also refused to stock the book until, and I love this, Stephen

Starting point is 00:53:27 King threatened, saying, quote, if you don't sell the satanic verses, you don't sell Stephen King. Oh, yeah. What a man. What a man. What a man. What a man. And of course, sales will always prevail. They certainly will. With such a globally volatile reaction, you do have to wonder why no one saw this coming. And Penguin UK certainly had no idea. Cultural sensitivity training, which I despise, was still decades away. But one Penguin employee did ring the bell of doom before publication, because he knew that if this book was published in India,

Starting point is 00:54:05 then there would be no more Penguin India left. Still, Penguin India, or even straw versions of himself being burned in Westminster, were the least of Salman Rushdie's problems. On the 14th of February 1989, the then Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, issued a fatwa. And that fatwa went like this. I would like to inform all the intrepid Muslims in the world that the author of the book titled The Satanic Verses, which has been compiled, printed and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet and the Quran, as well as those

Starting point is 00:54:38 publishers who were aware of its contents, have been declared madr al-dam, which means those whose blood must be shed. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly wherever they find them so that no one will dare insult Islam again. And in case that didn't make it abundantly clear what a fatwa is, a fatwa is a declaration of a death sentence to be carried out by literally anybody in the name of Islam. Yeah, there's a very good podcast that Hannah and I have talked about many times before. It's called Conflicted. If you haven't listened to it, go listen to it. We love it. And on there is a man named Eamon Dean who has a fatwa against him. And he's now a banker in London, but he talks a lot in the podcast about how sometimes he'll just be standing waiting for

Starting point is 00:55:22 the tube and he's like, is that man looking at me? And's like yep he's gonna try kill me and he like will leave i think that's something that i only very recently started to fully understand about fatwa like i assumed that it was like ayatollah khomeini was gonna send like a muslim ninja to come and then it's no it's like literally any muslim who hears this call go and kill him open source exactly and this fatwa wasn't just on salman's head, it was anyone involved with the publication or translation of the satanic verses. They were all under threat, which is realistically hundreds of people. Now it might be tricky to get your head around the idea that killing someone is fine, but writing words is not. But I would say that that is a lot of how I

Starting point is 00:56:01 feel like people who love a bit of cancel culture think they seem to think this person isn't allowed to say the things that they did because it's offending somebody but I can now act with any level of vitriol in cancelling them yeah because now that they have said that thing they are no longer human and therefore deserve no respect or anything and all of the virtue I'm screaming about, I can throw all that out the window. And I could even physically hurt them. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:56:29 Or dox them. Or threaten them. Or say whatever the fuck I want about them on the internet. So, yes, maybe you feel like it's a leap with the killing, but I don't feel like it's that big of a jump. No, it's a bit of a hop. But let's keep going. A bounty of 7 million US dollars was placed on Rushdie's head.

Starting point is 00:56:49 So, who exactly was this Ayatollah Khomeini character? Well, he was instrumental in the overthrowing of the Iranian Shah, widely regarded as a puppet of the West, and Khomeini was the true leader of Iran for many. The Iranian revolution is a topic for another day. Don't worry, we've already got a case in mind for it. But you have probably seen the pictures of women in bikinis in a pre-revolution Iran, compared with the full niqab required by law in a post-revolution Iran. After Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power, Saddam Hussein, dictator of neighbouring nation Iraq, attacked Iran.

Starting point is 00:57:27 And this war lasted eight years. And eventually, Iran lost. After the war was lost, some say that Ayatollah Khomeini never smiled again. Oh, the world's saddest man. Don't kill me. He's dead. Don't worry about it. He may not have been smiling. That doesn't make me. He's dead. Don't worry about it. He may not have been smiling. That doesn't make me feel any safer.

Starting point is 00:57:47 But he was more bitter and more radical than he had ever been before, and he was doing a lot of killing. He executed 5,000 of his own people and even wanted to annihilate all of his army leaders after the end of the war. He was dissuaded, though, when some bright sparks suggested that now was probably not the best time to have no army at all, given the Saddam Hussein lives next door problem. Yeah, maybe don't murder your entire army yourself.

Starting point is 00:58:13 We might need some generals. Oh, my God. So he's upset. He's upset. He's getting older. There's some speculation that he was maybe going a bit senile. He's not in a good place. No. And then... Uh-oh. He's not in a good place. No. And then... Uh-oh.

Starting point is 00:58:26 He heard about the satanic verses, which sent him into an unstable fatwa-issuing frenzy. But not all of the Muslim world leaders threw themselves in support of the fatwa. Actually, quite a lot of them condemned it, not just because it seemed like an overreaction to the novel, but actually because it violated the Prophet's teachings of mercy. Yeah, again, that's the thing with this whole thing. It's not like as much as maybe some articles from the time in the UK and in other western parts of the world may have made

Starting point is 00:58:56 it seem like it was all the brown people, it was all the Muslims. It wasn't. It was a lot of them, a lot of them very unhappy. But Ayatollah Khomeini really stood head and shoulders above everybody else. He was doing the most. Oh, yeah. Another example of someone who didn't agree, Sheikh Mohammed Hassan al-Din of Cairo went as far to say that the fatwa made Islam look, quote, brutal and bloodthirsty. And he thought that a much more reasonable course of action was to ban the book and give Rushdie, a Muslim himself, let's remember, a chance to repent.

Starting point is 00:59:27 Is Islam bloodthirsty or have we just weaponised offence? Weaponised offence is kind of, we sort of accept it now. But has it always been like that? Sort of, kind of, yes, no, maybe, grey area. I would say weaponised offence has always been the remit of religion. But now weaponized offense in our post-religious modern world has become the remit of anything that anybody finds offensive within the world of what people are trying to force to be the new moral code by which we all live. And that's what I don't like. But I feel like I've made that abundantly clear. So what the protesting British Muslims wanted

Starting point is 01:00:10 after the advent of the publication of the Satanic Verses was an extension of the blasphemy laws in England to cover other religions in addition to just Christianity. Like most things Christian in English law, the blasphemy laws are Henry VIII's fault. When he fell out with the Pope back in 1534, blasphemy became a crime. And that is absolutely not even remotely to do with King Henry VIII's beliefs. It was so he could establish a Protestant church in a predominantly Catholic country.

Starting point is 01:00:41 What it means is being Catholic was illegal. It doesn't mean he got really upset when you said Jesus Christ. Yeah, it was just like you couldn't challenge him as the divine leader of the Church of England. He was now the head of the Church of England. And anybody saying that he wasn't, aka the Catholics, you were doing a blasphemy. Yeah. Get in the tower. Yeah, it has quite literally been hundreds of years since the blasphemy laws have been used for literally anything in this country. So an extension of them is going to be just as useless. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:01:11 So blasphemy being illegal isn't new, but one has to admit that it is antiquated. Like Hannah just said, it wasn't even really an anti-blasphemy law. It was an anti-challenging Henry VIII law. And I would also say that it's also just not anything that's been used in this country for a long time. Anti-blasphemy laws do exist in other countries. For example, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, they have anti-blasphemy laws. And so basically, the people protesting this were saying we should have the same sort of thing here to protect Islam. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:01:42 And they're not really a thing. Unless, of course, fun fact, you happen to be the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens. I vaguely knew about this. I had no idea. I had no idea. Because when I used to work at the Shaftesbury Theatre, there's a roof where people used to have barbecues

Starting point is 01:01:59 in the summer and Cat Stevens used to go to those barbecues. Wow. Anyway, Cat Stevens, if you don't know, British multi-instrumentalist and rock and roll hall of famer has been known by the name Yusuf Islam since 1977. In 1989, he told students at Kingston University that Rushdie, quote, must be killed. The Quran makes it clear if someone defames the prophet, then he must die. Oh, well, great. As long as it says it in that book that's thousands of years old, there's no reason for us to think about what that actually means.

Starting point is 01:02:30 Naturally, that meant that Cat Stevens, or Cat Yusuf Islam Stevens, was invited to speak about Rushdie quite a lot, because that's how television views work. Oh, yeah, famous rock and roller, who's now saying that we should murder this author. Get him on! So there's quite a few appearances of kat stevens talking about the fact why you can youtube all of them which i would recommend because this is just bonkers there's a notable one who's on australian tv he said that he would only go to an effigy burning protest if they were actually burning

Starting point is 01:03:00 rushdie alive yeah i haven't got any time for these part-timers just burning cardboard cutouts of the man. Fucking hell. Yeah, there's another one where it's a British panel show and there's like multiple different talking heads, including a police officer quite high up in the Met and Cat Stevens is there. And I know I should be calling him Yusuf Islam, but I'm not going to.

Starting point is 01:03:19 And he is literally saying, you know, he should be murdered. And there's this woman there being like, excuse me, police officer of the law, are you going to stop this man from talking about actually murdering someone? And the police is like, no. Please don't drag me into this. Fucking hell.

Starting point is 01:03:35 Cat Stevens, his career never really recovered from these comments. Really? No, not really at all. After he did the rounds on all the Sunday morning shows. His introduction to the Hall of Fame happened after all of this. Well, you know, you can't fight progress. So apparently, he says this on the radio, I think, on Radio 4. He says, I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie,

Starting point is 01:03:56 nor backed the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khamenei, and I still don't. Still, the words that he actually spoke with his mouth still follow him around like the rancid stench of burning human flesh that he called for on tv it's very interesting to me that like he's just like no i never said that when there's actual footage of him saying it yeah roald dahl weighed in too obviously i am a an expert in roald dahl he wrote a letter to the times calling rushdie an opportunist who was stoking anti-Islam sentiment to sell books, which coming from a raging anti-Semite like Roald Dahl is a bit rich.

Starting point is 01:04:32 Also, I am not a Roald Dahl expert like you, although I am and remain to the point that I am dead, I am sure, a massive Roald Dahl fan. His work. Yeah. I didn't know he was a giant wife beater as well. Yeah, yeah, bad guy, bad guy. Didn't know that, didn't know that.

Starting point is 01:04:49 If you are unfamiliar with Roald Dahl's anti-Semitism, I'll give you a quickie. He once said about Jewish people that even a stinker like Hitler wouldn't have picked on them for no reason, and that is a direct quote. Oh, oh, fucking hell. Yeah, it's bad stuff.

Starting point is 01:05:05 But again, I can separate the artist from the art love the books hate the guy there's actually a whole documentary i believe called the dark side of roald dahl that the bbc made so you can check that out yep also died with no eyebrows oh why do you have no eyebrows so he was very heavy smoker his whole life and um when he was in hospital dying, essentially, they were like, you can't smoke, you're dying. And he was like, well, fuck you, I'm rolled, I'll do whatever I want. So his wife at the time, Lissy, smuggled in some cigarettes, didn't bring him a lighter. So he went down to the kitchen of the hospital and lit a cigarette off the gas burning hob and it burned his eyebrows off and he died like a couple of days later with no eyebrows so yes we've heard about some famous people involved in this notably cat stevens roald

Starting point is 01:05:53 dahl and stephen king three some i never thought i would pull together it's like one of those rounds on have i got news for you and it's like cat ste Rushdie. What do these have in common? But what about the less famous people, those who weren't making it onto the news or making it down to the protests? Well, the BBC podcaster Hannah mentioned earlier, Fatwa, does do a good job of answering this question. They spoke to a British-born second-generation Pakistani Muslim named Ayalaz Kamani, who tells a reporter,

Starting point is 01:06:24 also a British Muslim, that until the fatwa, he was easily accepted by white people. He actually preferred to spend his time with white people. Until the Rushdie affair, when he found that he was being asked over and over again whose side he was on, and why his lot had put a bounty on Salman Rushdie's head. They were asking him, did he agree with the fatwa, or did he hate the West? There didn't seem to be a whole lot of in-between. Elias actually had no religious beliefs at the time,

Starting point is 01:06:53 but his mother certainly did, and he found it difficult to stand by something that upset his mum so much, like the satanic verses. So he found himself supporting the fatwa and distancing himself from his white friends. I really would recommend listening to him speak because he does sound very impassioned about it. But not a great understander of irony, he got himself into some cancellation trouble when he released a song encouraging violence and repeating bomb-making instructions

Starting point is 01:07:18 straight out of the anarchist's cookbook. Well, that's A-OK then, isn't it, Elias? He was completely outraged by the treatment he received for this song He said that it was a political statement Which is not the same thing as a religious insult Which... Again it's just again it's like This is religion's oldest trick isn't it?

Starting point is 01:07:39 It's like you can't insult this belief that I have Because I believe it Because it's a sincerely held belief. So what? And again, in this godless postmodern world that we're in, people have just decided arbitrary other rules of morality that now also can't be questioned. But this is the same thing.

Starting point is 01:07:58 It's like, it's fine if it's political, if it's fine this, that and the other, but you can't say it about my religion. Yeah, and I would argue that religion is probably one of the most political things on the planet. Of course it is. Always has been. Absolutely. So while Elias was writing bomb instruction songs, things for Salman Rushdie were only getting worse. The beginning of the 90s were quite possibly the worst time ever to be Salman Rushdie. A film called International Guria was produced in Pakistan. And in this film, Salman Rushdie is the baddie

Starting point is 01:08:25 who's hell-bent on disrupting Muslim unity and he is eventually defeated at the climax of the film by some flying Qurans that shoot him with lasers. What I can't get my head around. Please tell me. Drawing a picture of Muhammad. Death sentence. Flying Qurans shooting lasers. Celebration. Yeah I mean I think the rule is you're just not allowed to draw anything living maybe okay i believe that's what it is i think it's that you can't make likenesses of like animals plants and people because only god can do that but i don't know for certain. I'm pretty sure that's true.

Starting point is 01:09:07 But what do I know? I'm a fucking failed Hindu. We love nothing more than a brazen object, than an idol, a deity, an idled deity. A gold calf. We're fucking mad for gold calves. They're everywhere. You see a gold calf, do you know what you're meant to do? Or any type of calf.

Starting point is 01:09:24 You go whisper in its ear what you want to happen. Oh, that's quite nice. Cute, isn't it? Yeah. The story's not so cute. It's about a calf that, I think this is the story. It's like, oh God, yeah, this is fucking brutal. My grandma used to tell me.

Starting point is 01:09:38 So it's like a cow who has a baby who has a calf. And then the king's son is riding around on his chariot and he hits the calf and kills it. And so the cow runs over to this bell and rings the bell to tell the king what's happened. And the king comes out, gets in his son's chariot and runs his own son over to show his justice, basically. And then when he does that, the gods look down and bring the calf back to life. And then now you go whisper in that calf's ear and tell it things you want to happen. Cow justice. Magic cow justice.

Starting point is 01:10:08 Hindu style. So let's get back to The Flying Qurans. This film was a mega hit and it was banned in the UK. Not that that made much difference because pirate copies had been handed around so fast that no one actually bothered to see it in the cinema anyway. And the film lost loads of money even though everyone had seen it. Again, yet another irony of people being so bothered to see it in the cinema anyway and the film lost loads of money even though everyone had seen it. Again, yet another irony of people being so desperate to see it they watched it on pirate and then didn't pay for it.

Starting point is 01:10:31 So it lost a tonne of money. In the end it was only banned for about five weeks in the UK because the film's producers hired the same defence team as Salman Rushdie. That guy's fucking cleaning up. Now they might have solved the problem for the producers of International Guerrilla, but Rushdie's lawyers had a harder time diffusing the fatwa. Rushdie publicly said that he had been taking the fatwa very seriously and was questioning how many days he had left to live.

Starting point is 01:11:00 And then he vanished into protective custody at the age of 41. And this next bit is unbelievable because Salman Rushdie, aged 41, goes into hiding, stays there for nearly a decade. During this time he was escorted from house to house by a team of special agents, often only spending one night in each place. Honestly, that sounds like the fucking worst thing imaginable. And if you're expecting him to have lived in a Bin Laden

Starting point is 01:11:33 star cave hiding existence in total solitude, then I'm afraid you couldn't be more wrong. In true high society style, Rushdie managed to keep up quite the social life. He held and attended dinner parties and even smoked weed in front of his special forces protectors, mainly because one of them had no sense of smell. He's like just having dinner at Ian McKellen's house while he's in hiding. This is the thing. It's outrageous that he was in hiding for nearly a decade. Outrageous. But he is rich enough to do what he wants.

Starting point is 01:12:08 After four years in hiding, Rushdie had a meeting with the Home Office. And the Home Office, whatever faceless drone they send down to have a meeting with him, that drone was just like, you've got five minutes. And Rushdie said, it's going to take a bit more than five minutes. They're trying to kill me. Yeah. And it's not just random people. It was ordered. It's an ordered hit by Ayatollah Khomeini, so a leader of another country. The British government weren't exactly enamoured with Rushdie. He'd always been a vocal critic of Thatcher and had compared Britain to Nazi Germany in some of his previous works. He was seen by the Iron Lady establishment as a troublemaker. And let's face it, Thatcher was never that bothered about protecting brown people, as evidenced by her entire political career and her attitude towards apartheid. So there was no

Starting point is 01:12:49 help coming from the government. And Rushdie decided, at his lowest ebb, that his only option was to revert to Islam. Huge mistake. He gave a press release in which he said that he had always had a God-shaped hole in his life where Allah once was. He added that he had no problem with the central tenets of Islam. This conversion apology did not go well. The Muslim community took it for exactly what it was, a desperate last-ditch attempt that didn't work. Oh, once again, just so reminiscent of the many, many failed celebrity apologies over the years. And after all that, we still live with the consequences. The Rushdie affair meant that the far right saw Islam for the first time. And the alt-right narrative in the UK

Starting point is 01:13:39 has been all about Muslims ever since. A lot of how Muslims are now perceived in Britain has a lot to do with Salman Rushdie and a novel that was published 33 years ago. In the late 80s, in the liberal echelons of society that Rushdie spent his time smoking weed with liberal elites, religion was perceived to be the enemy of intellect and to be avoided entirely, especially when it came to the oppression of women, art and minorities, which, let's face it, they all do. If you read just one article about this, we really, really recommend an article called Islam After Salman by a guy called Bruce Fudge,

Starting point is 01:14:14 who is not a character from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He's a professor in Arabic at the University of Geneva. And what he says is this, is that Rushdie's critique of religion in general, but specifically of Islam, is really not that different to an 18th century Enlightenment critique. The Enlightenment critique is an attitude that thousands, if not millions of people have adopted. Religion being oppressive and bad and science being liberating and good. And let's not forget, provable. But Rushdie's critique timing couldn't have been worse. The assertion of Islam as an

Starting point is 01:14:46 identity rather than just a religion was on the rise in the 80s, especially in Britain. And when you look at the satanic verses and Rushdie's rhetoric as a critique of identity, then it becomes an insult to a marginalised group. And then we get into trouble that's the thing that's so so key about this is if you can't separate yourself from your religion of course critiquing it is going to upset you and in his day Rushdie was the king of the left like we said earlier he was anti-racist and when the Sun newspaper came out in support of him he actually scoffed saying I'd rather be with the rats he was anti-colonial too yet people on the left today wouldn't side with Rushdie's newspaper came out in support of him, he actually scoffed, saying, I'd rather be with the rats. He was anti-colonial too, yet people on the left today wouldn't side with Rushdie's representation of Mohammed. The world has changed, and religion has become impossible to critique. Is that where

Starting point is 01:15:35 we want to be? A fatwa, a million dollar bounties, and killing a Japanese translator isn't exactly live and let live. Abu Hamza said that Salman Rushdie should be minced. And still today, coming out in support of Salman Rushdie might just get you labelled an Islamophobe. It's interesting, isn't it, how famous old one-hand Abu Hamza can call for Salman Rushdie to be made into mince. But this is the thing I think it's, I also think it's interesting that during the current sort of culture wars or whatever you want to call them, that people find themselves in bed with uncomfortable people that they may disagree with other things on, but suddenly they're saying the same things you like about one specific topic. I don't know. I

Starting point is 01:16:22 wouldn't say that we live in a world that is live and let live. I feel like people say that we are, but I think things have always been polarised. We've always weaponised offence specifically when it comes to religion. But I think it's the worst it's ever been. And it's interesting, and I would be interested to know what a modern audience's view is of Salman Rushdie and what he did. Because, in my opinion, I'm on Salman Rushdie's side, but that's because I believe in freedom of speech and not in the weaponising of offence. But what do I know?

Starting point is 01:16:55 After nine years, Salman Rushdie came out of hiding. But even when Ayatollah Khomeini died, the fatwa stayed alive. Although Iran has officially stated that they weren't going to send any commandos to go and kill Rushdie, they didn't say they wouldn't send anyone. And the million-dollar bounty has never been removed either. Actually, it's increased, with the last addition to the money pot coming as late as 2016. Even still, Rushdie has made a return to public life. He's continued to write and has even

Starting point is 01:17:26 made an appearance on Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's such a good episode. Basically, what happens is he helps Larry David to write Fat Weather Musical, which is wonderful. I think what we've been trying to say for the last hour and a half is the real question that we're trying to not answer, but inspect. Is it possible to critique the beliefs, doctrine, rituals, and ideology of a marginalized religion without causing offense? And if that isn't possible, if people are inevitably going to be offended, how bad can offense really get? Is offense a call for violence?

Starting point is 01:18:06 We don't have an answer for that, but we do have an answer for another question, and that question is, would anyone write or publish the Satanic verses today? And that answer is a resounding no. No. They would about Christianity, but not about any other religion.

Starting point is 01:18:25 I mean, Modi's going full hog on Hinduism, throwing comedians in jail for making jokes about Hinduism. The man's fucking on one, and he's running the country. But if you're talking about the culture as it stands in the West, no, I don't think that this book would be accepted. So I think although we're looking at this as like a case that happened 33 years ago, how much have things changed since? If anything, I would say it's gotten worse. And, you know, is that where we want to be? Do we want to get to a place of, because, you know, it always comes down to who defines offence, who defines what is

Starting point is 01:19:00 offensive? It's not even just who defines offensive, but it's also this thought process we've got into, which is that it depends on who you're offending. And actually, Eamon Dean, coming back to Conflicted, he puts this really, really well, which is we kind of have this misguided notion now, and I don't know how modern this is, but that anybody who has power or anybody who's in the majority must automatically be bad,

Starting point is 01:19:24 and anybody who's in a minority and doesn't have power must automatically be seeking power and therefore must be pure. And therefore, I think it's not about this idea of causing offense or not causing offense. I think in the modern day, we're very happy to cause offense and say horrible things about people. But as long as they are perceived to be people who are white and male and have power and are Christian because it doesn't matter but if you're causing offense to anybody who might be deemed a marginalized group or a minority group then their offense is more dangerous or is worse and therefore we shouldn't do that and I think that I'm not saying we should go out and seek to commit offense that's not what I'm saying what What I'm saying is critique. We can critique anybody as long as they're deemed powerful. We can't critique anybody if we deem

Starting point is 01:20:08 them to be less so. And I think that's where we are. But that's just my two cents on it. And on that bombshell, that has been probably the most political red-handed of all time, if you can believe it. But there you are. Just have a think about it. Have a think about it. Or don't. I'm not the boss of you. I'm just your dad. So we'll see you next time for something else. If you just can't wait for next week,

Starting point is 01:20:36 you can hop on over to Spotify for Sinister Societies, which is our exclusive show where we talk about cults and all sorts of other stuff. Sometimes fisting so you can hop on over to that if you feel so inclined and head on over to patreon.com slash red handed if you're not yet a patron where you can sign up at any tier you fancy and then get your hands eyes ears all of it on some delicious weekly bonus content from us and if you still haven't got any merch for your back head on over to

Starting point is 01:21:05 redhandedshop.com where you can find a very limited edition of a vast array of red-handed merch very limited edition rod for your own back they're precise signed by both of us none of them are signed but check that out and we'll see you next week bye guys bye week. Bye, guys. Bye. He was hip hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose,

Starting point is 01:22:09 it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up, and I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses.

Starting point is 01:22:24 I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone.

Starting point is 01:22:58 We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts.

RedHanded - Episode 245 - ‘The Satanic Verses’: Fatwas & Faux Pas

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.