Excerpts from The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West

Excerpts from The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West

In the Arabic-speaking countries, Mu‘ammar al-Qadhdhafi, the Libyan leader, provided a remarkable instance of sustained public blasphemy. He changed the Islamic calendar so that it begins in 632, the year Muhammad died, instead of the standard date of 622, the year he moved to Medina. Like Mahmud Muhammad Taha, he held that Islamic law governs only the private sphere, touching on such matters as personal morality and the afterlife, but offers no guidance in public matters. Qadhdhafi then replaced many of the Islamic laws with his own precepts, published in The Green Book. He ridiculed pilgrims to Mecca as “guileless and foolish,” rejected as invalid reports about Muhammad’s life (whose authority in Islam is second only to the Qur’an), criticized the Prophet Muhammad, and even expressed doubts about the veracity of the Qur’an’s contents. Majallat Rabitat al-‘Alam al-Islami, December 1980.

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