of material enjoyments as a counterweight to spiritualism, or its excesses, and the nature of miracles. Like elsewhere in the novel, it proposed intersubjectivity as a measure of veracity, and it warned against the tendency to confuse random natural phenomena, however timely, with supernatural miracles.
Part IX’s title, A Wonderful Lamp, referred to Saladin’s childhood belief in magic, possibly relegating supernaturalism to the nonage of humanity. Indeed as The Satanic Verses’ concluding chapter, part IX carried messages about both philosophy and religion, and immigration and identity. Saladin came back to Bombay to accompany his ailing father, Changez, and they made peace. And his blooming romance with a devotee cultural eclecticism in India, Zeeny Vakil, transformed his visit to a permanent return. A telling gesture, he reassumed his original name, Salahuddin. His sterility was arguably not an overwhelming concern for Salahuddin in Bombay, because he was deep-rooted there, whereas the affirmation that came with fatherhood was essential to psychologically secure his hold on to England or Englishness. As distinct from Salahuddin’s newfound eclecticism, Gibreel had totally succumbed to his archangelic phantasmagoria, religious dogmatism, and concurrent msygony. Evidently a reflection of the novel’s ultimate cultural political prefence, Gibreel, now madly dogmatic, committed suicide in front of Salahuddin, who—having reconverted to Indian eclecticism—survived. In parallel, part IX emphasized Salahuddin’s complete admiration for Changez, due to his philosophical attitude in the face of death, without seeking refuge in imaginative hope or religious illusions. The supreme dignity accorded to Changez suggested that the philosophical worldview—perhaps only for the brave few—was superior to its alternatives, even when reformed according to Rushdie’s recommendations. Seen in this light, the postcolonial and cosmic politics of The Satanic Verses were in full accord, as they both rejected dogmatism and exclusionary paradigms.
NOTES
1. For The Satanic Verses as religious blasphemy and secular blasphemy, the latter corresponding to cultural heresy, see Suleri (1992, 189–94), Bhabha (1994, 225–26), and Sanga (2001, 7). In parallel, Kimmich (2008, 167) wrote, The Satanic Verses subverted dominant discourses on race and religion, and it was a blasphemous novel (ibid., 162). Said (1994, 260) wrote, The Satanic Verses “overturns not just religious orthodoxies, but national and cultural ones as well.” As such, what Rushdie did was to “speak out against power” (ibid., 261). Phillips (1989, 344) claimed, “There is no doubt that it is an attack on Islam. It is also not very friendly toward the social norms of the Thatcher government in Great Britain.” In contrast, Mazrui (1990, 133, 136–38) claimed, The Satanic Verses was racist hate literature against Muslims, comparable to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
2. Accordingly, Brennan (1989, 146–47) characterized The Satanic Verses as a novel on both England and Muhammad. Ruthven’s (1990, 20) perspective bridged The Satanic Verses’ thematic divide by claiming that it presented religion as cultural baggage for immigrants.
3. See Fisher and Abedi (1990, 108) and Werber (1996, 55), who considered The Satanic Verses’ publication “a historic ‘event.’”
4. See Morton (2008, 80) and Easterman (1992, 119–20).
5. See Morton (2008, 80). In contrast, Hitchens (2003) argued that lack of a religious hierarchy made the possibility of Islamic reformation unlikely.
6. See Al-Azm (1994, 257) and Almond (2003, 1140). Yet for Trousdale (2013, 154), Rushdie’s engagement with serious religious doubt rendered him more like St. Augustine than Voltaire. Al-Azm (1994, 261) likened Rushdie to Voltaire, Joyce, and Rabelias. Like Rabelias, his “healthy cyncism” did not degenerate “into fashionable pessimism and/or nihilism.” Werber (1996, 57) likened Rushdie’s cause to “the same battles against dogma fought by writers and philosophers of the Enlightenment.” In parallel, Sanga (2001, 125) argued, The Satanic Verses’ juxtaposed Western Enlightenment against Eastern dogmatism.
7. For comparisons between The Satanic Verses and Ulysses, see Harris (1998), Kane (2006, 434), Majumdar (2010), Booker (1991, 196), and Sanga (2001, 124). For comparisons to Finnegan’s Wake mainly as a critique of patriarchy through religious myth, see Booker (1991, 199) and Harris (1998). For broader comparison to Joyce and Finnegan’s Wake, see Majumdar (2010, 99–118).
8. Fischer and Abedi (1990, 110) described Rushdie as the first postmodern comic novelist from the Muslim world. For Almond (2003, 1142), The Satanic Verses was the first postmodern Islamic novel. For a comparable view, see Grant (1999, 23). However, apart from Booker (1994), Rushdie’s philosophical affinity to Nietzsche in The Satanic Verses was by and large ignored. For a passing reference to Nietzsche and The Satanic Verses, see Fischer and Abedi (1990, 147).
9. See Nyla Ali Khan (2000, 88, 91, 94) and Sanga (2001, 63).
10. Concerning Rushdie’s postmodern artistic technique and postcolonial liberation, Mishra (2009, 407) observed “a recognition of a colonial inheritance, as well as a transcendence over it.” For a wider commentary on artistic technique and postcolonial liberation, see Teverson (2007, 44), Mann (1995, 282), Mishra (2009, 387, 407), and Brennan (1989, 66). In addition, Afzal-Khan (1998, 138–39) noted, Rushdie’s characteristic combination of different novel genres, such as comic, mythic, and surreal, was another postmodern liberation strategy. Engblom too, took note of different narrative styles and liberation in The Satanic Verses: “[C]arnivalization and dialogicality . . . ” (1994, 295), “to break of the imperial containments of official, metropolitan, monologic versions of the Western novel” (1994, 303). For another account of contrasting narrative modes in The Satanic Verses, see Majumdar (2010, 109).
11. For Rushdie and Hobson-Jobson, see Mishra (2009, 385–90).
12. For the novel’s alleged failure, see Kuortti (2007, 128). For a broad statement on Rushdie’s art, containing too much, and its failure therefore, see Afzal-Khan (1998, 138).
13. According to Gray (1989, 82), the international attention and controversy evinced “that some people still care about serious fiction after all.” For Al-Azm (1994, 255) too, The Satanic Verses controversy proved that literature still mattered.
14. For a comparable view, see Clark (2000, 4), Brad Leithauser quoted in Ruthven (1990, 15), Grant (1999, 19), and Morton (2008, 67).
15. For a comparable view, see Kimmich (2008, 176), Morton (2008, 76), and Assad (1990, 240).
16. See Strauss (1959, 221–32).
17. Booker (1994, 252) noted, “Rushdie is an apostle of freedom . . . he has become more and more concerned with the oppression of women in Islamic society. After all, the male-female distinction is among the most important of the dual oppositions that Rushdie consistently attacks, and as long as women are oppressed, men cannot have true freedom either.” For Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, and his critique of patriarchy and support for feminism, also see Booker (1994, 199), Mann (1995, 292), Bhabha (1994, 228), Ruthven (1990, 25), Hussain (2002, 12), and Hassumani (2002, 68). And for a remark on support from women for the author of The Satanic Verses in the Muslim world, see Fischer and Abedi (1990, 115).
18. For the broad principles of a comparable methodological approach, see Bardolph (1994, 215–17) who remarked that the novel lacked a logical linear structure, it was a puzzle with similar bits and no mode d’emploi, and it demanded active reader participation. Suleri (1992, 194–95) argued, the novel was a divisible subcontinental narrative with convolutions of several autonomous stories. And Engblom (1994, 295, 303) remarked, The Satanic Verses responded to the imperial containments of monologic Western novel through carnivalization and dialogicality.
19. Accordingly, Grant (1999, 86) argued, The Satanic Verses was not anti-Islam but anti-closure. For a comparable view, see Afzal-Khan (1993, 168).
20. For a similar reformist-feminist recommendation for Islam
