Salman Rushdie, Blame YourselfSo maybe the critics of this "scientific Quranism" are the real extremists... who knows...By S. NOMANUL HAQ
AMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Dear Salman Rushdie, A few years ago, when I read your ''Midnight's Children,'' I was overwhelmed. It was not the exuberance of your narrative and stylistic craft, nor the threads of your rich imagination woven with such effective intellectual control that engulfed me. Rather, it was your formidable grasp of history and, through that, of the psyche of a complex culture in all its variations that formed the substratum of your tale.
And yet it is this question of your knowledge of history that I shall raise in connection with your seriously and alarmingly controversial ''The Satanic Verses.''
Let me say at once that I do hold you as an artist, not as a historian or a psychologist - nor, indeed, as a theologian. But, at the same time, you do make use of what are facts of history and psychology, giving them your own distinct treatment.
No writer, you will agree, writes in a historical vacuum. But then, a responsible artist does not, without powerful grounds, mutilate history. Nor, unless there exists a mammoth justification, does he disregard the sensibilities and sensitivities of his own milieu, especially when it forms both the subject matter and the bulk of his or her audience.
Strangely, what I am saying is something that I learned from none other than yourself. You might recall your telling criticism of Sir Richard Attenborough's celebrated film ''Gandhi.'' You enraged Sir Richard, but in the controversy I remained your passionate supporter.
You censured the film for disregarding or minimizing certain important historical facts. And you said that in a work of an artistic nature, one cannot say everything, that there has to be a choice - but that there has to be a rationale of choice. One selects not to mislead but to make the story more meaningful. Ironically, this has precisely been your lapse in the ''The Satanic Verses.''
Most of your Western audience are unable to gauge the acuteness of your blow to the very core of the Indian subcontinental culture. They cannot estimate the seriousness of the injury because they do not know the history of the aggrieved.
You do know it and therefore one feels that you foresaw, at least to some extent, the consequences.
There is in your book, for example, the phantasmagoria of your own namesake Salman's corruption of the revealed word by his erroneous rendering of the words of Mahound.
Here the veil is too thin to cover the identity of Mahound: he can be understood in no other way than as a caricature of the Muslim Prophet. You do know that Islam is consistently, acutely and uniquely sensitive to its scripture. Ordinarily, Arabic is written without short vowels, but no copy of the Koran today is vowelless: Muslims insist that it should and can be read only in one way. The Muslim view is that even incorrectly reading the Koran is a cardinal sin. The Koran is neither read nor recited in translation for the very reason that translation might introduce alteration.
This matter is deadly serious and to make it a subject of insensitive fantasy is equally serious.
There is a further issue that your Western reader does not sense: that your corrupt Salman is the namesake not only of you in your book but of a historical personage who was a Persian companion of the Prophet, a companion who has been accorded a particularly elevated status by the Shiites. Given the militancy of the Shiites, when you made Salman the polluter of the revelation, you knew that you were planting your hand in the cluster of bees!
Your response to the uproar has been wavering and inconsistent, and your defense has the odor of self-righteousness. You say that people who have not read your book have no right to criticize it. But do you really think that reading the book will drastically alter their opinions?
Then you talk about freedom of expression. Free speech is a tricky issue and cannot be taken too literally. What do you think the response of black Americans would be if you were to mock the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? Or the reaction of the Jewish community if you were to eulogize Hitler? Or the anger of a pious Hindu if you were to present a graphic description of the slaughtering of a cow?
And to say that the Muslim world has demonstrated a total lack of dignity and tolerance is to utter a historical irrelevance. The Muslim nations have not gone through the turmoils of the Enlightenment and they have seen no scientific revolution; their sensibilities are different. Often, a peaceful demonstration is not their way and we cannot change them overnight. The best thing is to avoid hitting their most sensitive chords. And, Mr. Rushdie, you knew that. As for your waverings, you started out by expressing regret over the fact that you did not write even a more controversial book. You accused the leaders of the angry demonstration in Islamabad of exploiting a religious slogan for secular and political ends: They may have done so, but what about the innocent and ignorant people who died in the violence? You expressed no sympathy for them.
And now you issue a three-sentence statement that, at best, has the semblance of regret. Quite honestly, Mr. Rushdie, your heart does not beat in this statement, your expression is glaringly perfunctory.
I am saddened that a bounty has been placed on your head and that a great writer like you, rather than presenting himself to the public, is in hiding. You have elicited the rage of entire nations. This is a pity. But, Mr. Rushdie, you have cut them and they are bleeding: Do something quickly to heal the wound.
S. Nomanul Haq is a tutor in the history of science at Harvard University.