a feminine name, was a nod to Islamic misogyny and proposals to overcome it. Arguably, part IV was the most enigmatic chapter of The Satanic Verses. It was composed of two seemingly disparate stories except that they both included an Ayesha character. The first of these was the story of the Imam, who vaguely corresponded to Ayatollah Khomeini of the Iranian revolution—and perhaps this explained Khomeini’s notorious death threat against Rushdie. The Imam was a religious purist, a dogmatic religious leader with an ahistoric perspective on his faith, who was hate-laden and lusted for revenge. His archenemy was Ayesha. He succeeded in returning to Desh and ending her rule. But the Imam’s violent revolution and triumph contrasted with the peaceful return of Mahound to Jahilia later in the novel. The second story in part IV was that of a fictional Islamic prophetess, also called Ayesha. In contrast to the hate-laden Imam, she was an erotic figure who evoked love and inspired hope. She peacefully convinced fellow villagers in India for foot-pilgrimage to Mecca, the sacred heartland of Islam in Arabia, and—practically—to their doom. Of note, Ayesha’s attempted pilgrimage was loosely based on the 1983 Hawkes Bay case in Pakistan. Although Ayesha’s prophetic career eventually corresponded to a suitable path for Islamic reformation, part V was more so a device for showcasing the third-world condition, including rural poor in the fringes of modernity and internal divisions of the modernizing elite. The rural poor basically all joined the ranks of Ayesha’s mobile congregation, and a prominent wealthy urbanized couple effectively broke up because of her: Mishal became her foremost disciple and the Mirza her foremost opponent. Part V included the novel’s only reference to Nietzshe, the principal philosophical critic of modern rationalism, and this reference was a key to grasping The Satanic Verses’ epistemological standpoint and final word on supernaturalism. Or succinctly stated, despite his opposition to Ayesha, the Mirza was a Nietzsche reader, and his intellectual background might have subtly facilitated his gradual opening to the possibility of Ayesha’s supernaturalism by the end of the story. Finally of significance in part IV were Gibreel’s services to the contrasting religious leadership of the Imam and Ayesha, which further attested to his angelic malleability.
Part V, titled A City Visible but Unseen, concerned the lives of ethnic immigrants in London. In it, chapter V.1 focused on prevalent racism and racist violence in England, and it included repeated references to Enoch Powell. After some deliberation with his ethnic friends, it dawned on Saladin that racist ideology rather than magic accounted for his satyrical transformation. However, in all fairness, racism was not simply an affect of the host nation or its dominant white population. Chapter V.1 equally displayed racial prejudices and exploitative relations among ethnic immigrants and dark-skinned people. Notably, faced with rejection by his English wife and professional abandonment, Saladin could not help but accept that his lifelong attempt at anglicization hit a dead end. And the kindness of the Bengali family that took care of him in that moment of immense personal despair innerly prepared Saladin to question his categorical rejection of ethnocultural ties and lack of solidarity with vulnerable migrants and minorities. Chapter V.2 switched to the relatively mild tribulations of white immigrants, specifically with reference to Gibreel’s lover Alleluia’s Eastern European Jewish heritage. In addition, it dwelt on Gibreel’s struggle with his mental state, ranging from an attempt to fight back against possible paranoid schizophrenia to an embrace of his archangelhood, divine mission, and growing religious zeal, which contrasted with his original Indian cultural eclecticism. Gibreel’s newly assumed task against Satan somehow paralleled Saladin’s seething envy for his apparent romantic success with Alleluia in the previous chapter, and these developments paved the way toward an ultimate confrontation between angel and devil.
Part VI, titled Return to Jahilia, chronicled Mahound’s triumphant comeback home after long exile. It included passages that gave most offense to Muslims and attracted violent protests worldwide. Above all, it dealt with Mahound’s misogyny and the notion of feminist revenge, questions about the authenticity of Submission or its revelation, and the irreconcilable tension between theocracy and intellectual freedom. That said, Mahound’s peaceful return home as the glorious founder of Submission, merciful and sparing reconciliation with former enemies, and relative tolerance—at least initially—contrasted favorably with other leading religious visionaries of The Satanic Verses, including the unbending and self-destructive Tavleen, violently hateful and murderous Imam, and even prophetess Ayesha, whose dogmatic zeal would be directly responsible for the senseless murder of an innocent infant. Arguably, critique of misogyny and prevalent occupation with the notion of feminist revenge in part V was the novel’s final groundwork for proposals for feminist Islamic reform as symbolized by the prophetess Ayesha story line. Since the demise of Submission’s Mahound was artfully related to two women, Hind and Al-lat, by implication, it could be claimed, Islam’s reconciliation with femininity, or feminist reform, was imperative for its fortunes. The most conspicuous exception to the aura of mercy upon Mahound’s return was the case of writers, thus pointing to the irreconciliable tension between theocratic establishment and freedom of conscience and expression. One writer, Salman the scribe, who had earlier tested Mahound’s theological hypocrisy and fled to Jahilia, saved his neck undignifiedly, through betraying the other, Baal the satirist. In hiding, Baal and his female company gradually came to embody a philosophical mirror image of Mahound and his family, and thereby supported a pocket of resistance for the people. In time, as Mahound’s theocracy tightened its grip on society, rather than abandon them, Baal choose to die for his muses.
Part VII, titled The Angel Azraeel, depicted the embodiment of Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech through a race riot and fire in the imaginary London neighborhood of Brickhall. Rushdie left little doubt that his narrative was inspired by the 1981 riots in Brixton, South London. But the title of part VII referred to angel Gibreel’s magical realist involvement in fueling the inferno. In it, chapter VII.1 was devoted to Saladin’s soul-searching, including his love for London, English culture, English wife, unfulfilled wish for fatherhood, and final attempt to regain enthusiasm for total assimilation. However, his attendance at a community event against racism, which among other things made him recall Enoch Powell’s rhetoric, inadvertently caused him to accept his demonic immigrant identity and, arguably, by implication a more radical strategy for integration. On the supernatural level, Saladin’s embrace of devilhood precipated a heinous encounter with the angel, Gibreel. Chapter VII.2 chronicled the way in which Saladin gained the trust of Gibreel and Alleluia and utterly ruined their relationship. Saladin’s playful telephonic utterances for the purpose were explicitly described as satanic verses and, thereby, reinforced the parity between the novel’s worldly and religious story lines. And the contrasting linkages between Saladin’s trademark attempt to disown his origins and remake himself and his devilry, on the one hand, and Gibreel’s recent obsession with cultural purity or wish to remain constant and his angelhood, on the other, further served to unite the novel’s secular and metaphysical dimensions. Chapter VII.3 described riot and fire in Brickhall, due to entrenched prejudice, police racism, and brutality against minorities. Yet in accord with Rushdie’s magical realism, a Gibreel with angelic-religious motives and in delirium because of his break up with Alleluia apparently started the deadly fire by supernatural means. As events unfolded, Saladin, in the role of the devil, risked his life to save the Bengali family that had previously sheltered him, and Gibreel saved his life. Hence in a roundabout way, these highly unconventional actions, or devil sacrificing his life to save humans from fire and exterminating angel saving devil, expressed The Satanic Verses’ case against strict epistemological dichotomies and preference for cultural hybridity.
Part VIII, titled The Parting of the Arabian Sea, was The Satanic Verses’ last section specifically devoted to Islam. Its title referred to Ayesha’s promise of a miracle on their foot-pilgrimage, but it served to put the novel’s all other religious chapters into comparative perspective. Accordingly, it was by and large The Satanic Verses’ final word on Islam. Despite her noticeable flaws that ultimately wasted a village people collectively, increased dogmatic hardness, and some vicious cruelty, Ayesha was still the best available contemporary alternative for her faith. This was because of the openness she promoted on three levels: openness to feminine leadership in a distinctly misogynistic religious tradition, openness to diversity and inclusion, or the erotics of her prophecy that accounted for a diverse fold in a society otherwise defined by intercommunal tensions, and openness to supernaturalism, as exemplified
