The Rushdie Affair: The Novel the Ayatollah and the West

by Daniel Pipes

In The Rushdie Affair, Daniel Pipes explains why the publication of The Satanic Verses became a cataclysmic event with far-reaching political and social consequences.
Pipes looks at the Rushdie affair in both its political and cultural aspects and shows in considerable detail what the fundamentalists perceived as so offensive in The Satanic Verses as against what Rushdie's novel actually said. Pipes explains how the book created a new crisis between Iran and the West at the time - disrupting international diplomacy, billions of dollars in trade, and prospects for the release of Western hostages in Lebanon.
Pipes maps out the long-term implications of the crisis. If the Ayatollah so easily intimidated the West, can others do the same? Can millions of fundamentalist Muslims now living in the United States and Europe possibly be assimilated into a culture so alien to them? This volume provides a full understanding of one of the most significant events in recent years. Koenraad Elst's postscript reviews the enduring impact of the Rushdie affair.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Religion, Islam, Terrorism, Middle East, Cultural

269 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1990

About the author

Daniel Pipes (born September 9, 1949) is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the president of the Middle East Forum, and publisher of its Middle East Quarterly journal. His writing focuses on the American foreign policy and the Middle East. He is also an Expert at Wikistrat.

After graduating with a PhD from Harvard and studying abroad, Pipes taught at a number of universities. He then served as director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, before founding the Middle East Forum. His 2003 nomination by U.S. President George W. Bush to the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace was protested by Islamists, Arab-American groups, and Democratic leaders, who cited his oft-stated belief that victory is the most effective way to terminate conflict. The Bush administration sidestepped the opposition with a recess appointment.

Pipes has written a dozen books, and served as an adviser to Rudolph Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign. He was in 2008-11 the Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

(Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE RUSHDIE AFFAIR is Daniel Pipes' analysis of the uproar by Muslims over Salman Rushdie's novel THE SATANIC VERSES from mid-1988 to March 1989, with especial attention on Ayatollah Khomeini's death fatwa and the resulting diplomatic fallout. Though the book was published in early 1990 and so lacks a long-term view of the matter, it is still a valuable and informative historical document.

Pipes explains how the novel is offensive to Muslims, explicating its references to the founding of Islam which the average Western reader wouldn't grasp, as well as Khomeini's edict and voices of support and dissent with it. The second part of the book is an examination of larger issues evoked by the novel's reception, namely the relationship between Iran and the West, the efficacy or lack thereof of censorship and, quite pertinent to our times sixteen years later, the matter of Muslim communities living in the West. Pipes asks if perhaps the greatest danger against speech isn't far-off pariah states like Iran, but rather Muslim communities in Europe which refuse to integrate and wish to eradicate all opposition to Islam and its sharia law in the society around them.

It is clear right away that Pipes has little sympathy for Rushdie. In the short biography of the author, Rushdie is described as a haughty intellectual, an elitist, an a nihilistic Leftist. I thought this was unfair, and showed the author to have little understanding or appreciation of the literary art. However, Pipes' low view of Rushdie allows him to consider in greater depth the question of whether Rushdie deserved the criticism and fatwa. Ultimately, what Pipes feels about the matter is simple bafflement, because the Muslim world during the 20th century tolerated writers and intellectuals who said far worse things about Islam than Rushdie, and there's no real reason why Rushdie should have been singled out for such a great outcry.

The book is informative, but more on its coverage of international relations than any insights on the literary world. If you haven't read THE SATANIC VERSES yet, don't try Pipes' book, because you've been missing out on an entertaining and truly marvelous novel, and it will be baffling to read about a controversy over a book you know nothing about yet. The book may be worth flipping through if you're curious about why Rushdie's novel sparked such a reaction.

[Rena Sherwood]

The introduction states that this book was written in three months, and it shows. It reads like a first draft -- albeit a heavily footnoted and annotated first draft. The prose is drier than the Sahara. At first I thought, "Okay. So, it's a journalist on Quaaludes. I can deal with that." But then on page 49, out of nowhere, the author starts to personally attack Rushdie, calling him a spoiled intellectual and a hypocrite.

That's when I could see where this was going. I wasn't going along with it, so I gave up.

No stars for this crap.