Wordless Wednesday: Rushdie's Satanic Verses at 20

"A man who sets out to make himself up is taking on the Creator's role, according to one way of seeing things; he's unnatural, a blasphemer, an abomination of abominations. From another angle, you could see pathos in him, heroism in his struggle, in his willingness to risk: not all mutants survive. Or, consider him sociopolitically: most migrants learn, and can become disguises. Our own false descriptions to counter the falsehoods invented about us, concealing for reasons of security our secret selves.

"A man who invents himself needs someone to believe in him, to prove he's managed it. Playing God again, you could say. Or you could come down a few notches, and think of Tinkerbell; fairies don't exist if children don't clap their hands. Or yhou might simply say: it's just like being a man."

--From The Satanic Verses (1988).

There's never, ever been anything wordless about Salman Rushdie (luckily for us) except, chillingly, for those months in early 1989 following the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa declaring Rushdie fair game to any Muslim willing to murder him or anyone else connected with the publication of The Satanic Verses. Rushdie went into hiding for the next decade, but he wasn't silenced.

Friday marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of The Satanic Verses in Britain. It was published in February 1989 in the United States. Brace yourselves. Over the next several days, I'll be celebrating the anniversary here with a series of pieces re-visiting the book, the Rushdie affair, its implications for the West and the Middle East, its meaning in the context of what proved to be, in the Ayatollah's fatwa, Islamism's opening shot against the West.

What wasn't clear then is very clear now, 20 years later. The Prophet Muhammad was never insulted in that book. Nor was he the prophet at the center of the controversy. The prophet on trial, the prophet proven right by the last 20 years, was Rushdie himself.