As such, according to Teverson (2007, 148), Rushdie promoted a third way against extremes. For a comparable assessment, see Kuortti (1997a). Afzal-Khan (1993, 166–73) claimed, Rushdie was against binary oppositions and categories, including those that sustained colonial patterns of domination and impeded freethinking, such as race and religion. Kortenaar (2008, 343) regarded Rushdie’s postcolonial hybridity as a challenge to categories. For Sanga (2001, 7, 94–96), the author celebrated hybridity.
22. According to Kimmich (2008, 171), Islam’s dominant principle, singularity, was in discord with Rushdie’s preference for ambiguity and hybridity. For a comparable view, see Ranasinha (2007, 54). For Hassumani (2002, 88), Rushdie rejected binaries for hybridity, but (2002, 72) Islam was problematic because its singularity contradicted Rushdie’s principle of hybridity. Mann (1995, 301–02) too remarked on the incompatibility of postmodern indeterminism and grand Islamic narrative. Whereas Morton (2008, 67) argued, “The Satanic Verses also seeks to interrogate this reductive dichotomy between the civilisations of the West and the so-called Islamic world by exploring the experience of the postcolonial migrant in the Western metropolis.” In contrast, Mondal (2013, 432–33) claimed, for all his reputation, Rushdie imposed orthodoxies on Islam, and he blamed Rushdie for his secular fundamentalism. Elsewhere Mondal (2013b, 70–71) claimed, The Satanic Verses corresponded to a secularism that rejected an accommodation with religion and it was, therefore, an ethical failure; Rushdie’s characterization of Islam as unhybrid precluded a third way. It imposed “a secularist orthodoxy” (ibid., 67–71). In parallel, Booker (1994, 249) noted, Islam is “a symbol of monologic thought” in Rushdie’s fiction; “Islam is the religion of one God, a monotheism that forms a particularly striking symbol in the context of heteroglossic, polytheistic India.”
23. Kortenaar (2008, 341) observed, there was more magic in Britain than in Jahilia. Khan (2005, 67) noted, the novel is “a mix of contemporary-historical and mythical-religious concepts”; it “melds fiction and history, the magical and the real” (ibid., 44). Whereas Bardolph (1994, 216) argued, Rushdie utilized an unsuitable secular European genre to represent God and mysticism.
24. Based on Rushdie’s treatment of British racialism, François (1994, 315, inspired by André Comte-Sponville) concluded, “All ideologies are religious.”
25. Goontellike (1998, 83) characterized Powell as the spokesman of British racism in the 1960s. Asad (1990, 240) claimed, Powell’s preferred policies were now British policy. Cundy (1996, 65) noted, book burning due to The Satanic Verses controversy fulfilled Enoch Powell’s conflictual vision. For Parashkevova (2012, 84), Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher were “racist politicians” in the novel.
26. Wheatcroft (1994, 26–27) maintained that a critic of racism, Rushdie is a natural “hate figure for British conservatives. . . . Everything about Rushdie’s history and personality make him obnoxious to many Englishmen.” In parallel, Khan (2005, 67) claimed, “Rushdie consciously explores a radical sense of otherness, which is heightened for immigrants as a consequence of displacement.” For Rushdie’s broad advocacy for immigrant issues in the UK and The Satanic Verses, see Teverson (2007, 90), Jussawalla (1996, 60), Ruthven (1990, 12–13), Kimmich (2008, 147), Mann (1995, 288), Bardolph (1994, 210), Clark (2000, 147), Sanga (2001, 15), and Fischer and Abedi (1990, 112). For Brennan (1989, 151), The Satanic Verses facilitated religious questioning for Islamic immigrants in England, not necessarily in a negative way. For The Satanic Verses as a novel against immigrants, see Asad (1990, 259) and Mondal (2013b, 63), who wrote that the novel represented Muslims as “Other” and it was reminiscent of Orientalist discourse. And Mazrui (1990, 117) blamed Rushdie for “treason to the faith.” Whereas Grant (1999, 92) saw no grounds for real offense for Muslims, and Engblom (1994, 299) remarked, Thatcher’s portrayal in the novel was “extremely harsh and perhaps tasteless.”
27. See Kimmich (2008, 141), Asad (1990, 247), Weber (1991, 372), Kuortti (2007, 125), and Bakshian (1989, 44).
28. See Roger Ballard in Werbner (1996, 70–71), Gray (1989, 82), Fischer and Abedi (1990, 117), and Asad (1990, 247).
29. See Roger Ballard in Werbner (1996, 70), Bakshian (1989, 44), and Trousdale (2013, 152).
30. Works mainly focused on The Satanic Verses and the right to free expression include, Hitchens (2003), Ruthven (1990), Pipes (1998), Gardner (1990), Weber (1991), Trousdale (2013), Wheatcroft (1994), Clarke (2013), DeCandido (1989), For (1994), Said (1989), and Ranasinha (2007). For a contrary perspective, which considered the novel hate literature and recommended a ban, see Mazrui (1990, 116–39).
31. For a comparable assessment of scholarship, see Clark (2000, 129), Teverson (2007, 5), Kuortti (1997b, 89), Sanga (2001, 107), Cundy (1996, 65), Trousdale (2013, 151), Suleri (1994, 221), and Werbner (1996, 67).
32. See Asad (1990, 248) and Parashkevova (2012, 71).
33. See Suleri (1992, 222), Jussawalla (1996, 53–54), Afzhal-Khan (1993, 168), Almond (2003, 1130), and Werbner (1996, 65). For Hussain (2002, 12), the novel was pro-Islam but anti-Muslim. In contrast, Kortenaar (2008, 340) claimed, Rushdie’s Muhammad fought corruption but ushered in intolerance and misogyny. And for Hassumani (2002, 68), Islam and monotheism was problematized in the novel through dreams.
34. See Suleri (1992, 190).
35. See Almond (2003, 1142), Teverson (2007, 158), Jussawalla (1996, 56–7, 63), Fischer and Abedi (1990, 109), and Morton (2008, 61–62). For Al-Azm (1994, 279–80), Rushdie re-energized Islamic thought through the novel. For Mufti (1992, 278), the novel was engaged “in the cultural politics of contemporary ‘Islam.’” Webner (1996, 55) argued, the novel presents “a serious modernist vision of Islam as a universal, liberal, and tolerant tradition”; it is “a serious attempt to explore the possibility of a liberal more ‘open’ Islam” (ibid., 69); “[T]he central project of the book: to reclaim Islam as an ethical religion for secular Muslims, a new breed. Rushdie does so by exploring the central ethical values of Islam as he understands them but also by rejecting Islam’s current stress on extreme purity and ritualized praxis at the expense of ethics” (ibid., 65, italics in original).
36. For Jussawalla (1996, 54), the historically tolerant Islamic tradition that Rushdie built upon was Indian Islam. In contrast, according to Ruthven (1990, 9), when compared to Arab Islam, Indian Islam was unsure of itself and, therefore, more aggressive. Fischer and Abedi (1990, 150) claimed, the novel reflected Persian sensibilities not Arab Islam.
37. For a comparable view, see Clark (2000, 4, 130), Kimmich (2008, 177), Asad (1990, 240), Grant (1999, 71), Ruthven (1990, 15), Kuortti (1997b, 129–30), Kuortti (2007, 125–26), Mann (1995, 281), Sanga (2001, 68), Mann (1995, 281), Majumdar (2009, 48, 100, 118), Morton (2008, 67), Booker (1994, 242–43, 251), and Engblom (1994, 298).
38. An exceptional genre of analytical argumentation on the novel concerned the voice of its narrator, or its alleged satanic narration. Clark (2000, 134) forcefully argued, the novel’s narration alternated between the voice of its Godlike author and Satan. However, his literature review (136–41) was a case in point that even for a narrowly confined debate on narration, a confounding array of viewpoints were inevitable: According to Knönegel (1991), it was difficult to identify the novel’s narrator, although a satanic point of view constituted its ideological core; on the contrary, Harrison (1992) claimed, Rushdie must have toyed with the idea of satanic narration, eventually abandoning it, with vestiges left behind; Brennan (1989) regarded the whole novel as a rival to the Quran with Rushdie as its prophet and Satan as its supernatural voice, even though this Satan may have actually corresponded to tricky opportunists who used and abused the name of God to justify their own and unjustifiable ends; Booker (1994) pointed out, although Satan was the novel’s narrator, its narrator might actually be God or archangel Gabriel, as they were intertwined and virtually indistinguishable; Corcoran (1990) noted, satanic narration, albeit plausible, was basically in chapter two;
