The Reasons Why Muslims Aren't Condemning Salman Rushdie Episode

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 22 August 2022 Kudos to Arshad Alam's fearless article, " Murderous Attack on Salman Rushdie: Why are Muslims Not Condemning It?” Well, not just Muslims, Indian government and all political parties' deafening silence is indeed perplexing. But then, politics and all politicians, whichever country they may be from, have a different agenda and ulterior motives. Imran Khan condemned the attack on Rushdie and immediately faced the backlash from the zealots back home and now he's having to say that his statement was taken out of context and he indeed approves of the assault on Salman Rushdie for his alleged blasphemy! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Also Read: Salman Rushdie's Indian Mullah Critics, Listen To the Message of Satanic Verses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An ex-Muslim friend of mine, now settled in Geneva, wrote to me (I'm quoting him verbatim): " World's nearly seventy five percent Muslims, irrespective of their denominations and spiritual affiliations, are happy that Rushdie was brutally stabbed by a 'Ghazi', but they are also unhappy that he survived miraculously. Kameena Bach Gaya is the general lamentation among most of the Muslims. I'm indeed ashamed of being a Muslim at some point in time. " Author Salman Rushdie/Photo: The Economic Times ---- I agree with him in toto. I know very many Muslims who sympathise with Hadi Matar and call Rushdie, the enemy of Islam. Unreformed Islamic theology lies at the root of this problem. I also agree with Alam that the Koran expressly derides anyone who doesn't accept its message. A book which's understood and interpreted diametrically differently by 'sane' and 'insane' Muslims cannot be god's word. In the last three days, blast in a Sufi mosque in Afghanistan, blast in a market in Syria and 26/11-type attack on a hotel in Somalia were perpetrated by Muslim extremists. They were all motivated by the Quranic verses and Muhammad's spurious, dubious, borrowed and flawed teachings (Hadees). They justify their heinous crimes by quoting verses from al-Furqan. They're also right because Quran does speak of violence. Apologists may interpret them differently. But the fact remains that Islam's Holy books encourage bloodshed and elimination of those who speak a word against Muhammad and Allah. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Also Read: The Attack on Salman Rushdie Is Symptomatic Of the Malady of Intolerance Islam Suffers From -------------------------------------------------------------------- If Wasim Rizvi left Islam because of the 26 potentially dangerous verses in the Quran, one must say that the very book needs editing and re-editing to eliminate the extremely ambiguous verses in it. First of all, the scattered and discrete verses were compiled into a book years after the death of Muhammad. What Muhammad received as 'revelations' were jotted down by his companions on whatever object they could lay their hands on. Arabic script was in its infancy at the time of Muhammad. None of his companions was an erudite scholar as to write correct Arabic coming via Muhammad, who was an Ummi (unlettered). Did Muhammad have an eidetic or photographic memory as to repeat and dictate the same revelations mutatis mutandis? Agreed for a split second that Muhammad was 'divine'. Were his companions also infallible as not to make an error while receiving messages from Muhammad who directly received from someone up there, sending down verses when Muhammad needed them? Don't we say, to err is human? That's why, Quranic Arabic is flawed and when you follow something faulty and equivocal, you're bound to indulge in actions and activities that have a debilitating effect on society and your fellow humans. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Also Read: Revisiting Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses -------------------------------------------------------------------- When Muslims say that the Arabic of the Quran is impeccable as Allah speaks flawless Arabic, it becomes imperative to analyse Quranic Arabic from a linguistic perspective. The great German scholar and orientalist Theodor Noldeke pointed out the stylistic weaknesses of the Koran long ago: 'On the whole, while many parts of the Quran undoubtedly have considerable rhetorical power, even over an unbelieving reader, the book aesthetically considered, is by no means a first rate performance..... Let's look at some of the more extended narratives. It has already been noticed how vehement and abrupt they are where they ought to be characterized by epic repose. Indispensable links, both in expression and in the sequence of events, are often omitted, so that to understand these histories is sometimes far easier for us than for those who heard them first, because we know most of them from better sources. Salman Rushdie ---- Along with this, there's a good deal of superfluous verbiage; and nowhere do we find a steady advance in the narration. Contrast in these respects the history of Joseph (xii) and its glaring improprieties with the admirably conceived and admirably executed story in Genesis. Similar faults are found in the non-narrative portions of the Quran. The connection of ideas is extremely loose and even the syntax betrays great awkwardness. Anacolutha (want of syntactical sequence; when the latter part of a sentence doesn't grammatically fit the earlier) are of frequent occurrence and cannot be explained as conscious literary devices. Many sentences begin with a "when" or "on the day when" which seems to hover in the air, so that commentators are driven to supply a “think of this" or some such ellipsis. Again, there's no great literary skill evinced in the frequent and needless harping on the same words and phrases; in xviii, for example “till that" occurs no fewer than eight times. Muhammad in short, is not in any case, a master of style. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Also Read: Afterthoughts On Salman Rushdie Episode -------------------------------------------------------------------- Further, In verse 162 of Sura 4, which begins, “But those among them who're well-groomed in knowledge, the believers....and the performers of the prayer and the payers of the alms-tax," the word for '' performance '' is in the accusative case; whereas it ought to be in the nominative case, like the words for " well-grounded", " believers ", and " payers." In verse 9 of Sura 49, “If two parties of believers have started to fight each other, make peace between them," the verb meaning " have started to fight" is in the plural, whereas it ought to be in the dual like its subject " two parties." (In Arabic, as in other languages, verbs can be conjugated not only in the singular and plural, but also in the dual, when the subject is numbered at two). In verse 63 of Sura 20, where Pharaoh's people say of Moses and his brother Aaron, " These two are magicians," the word for " these two" (hadhane) is in the nominative case; whereas it ought to be in the accusative case (hadhayne) because it comes after an introductory particle of emphasis. Iranian ex-Muslim scholar and now an atheist, Ali Dashti concludes this example by saying, Othman and Aesha are reported to have read the word as hadhayne. The comment of a Muslim scholar illustrates the fanaticism and intellectual ossification of later times: " Since in the unanimous opinion of the Muslims, the pages bound in this volume and called the Qur’an are god's word, and since there can be no error in god's word, the report that Othman and Aesha read hadhayne instead of hadhane is wicked and false." Ali Dashti estimates that there're more than one hundred Quranic aberrations from the normal rules and structure of Arabic (Courtesy, ' The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever ') The problem with most of the Muslims is that they read and recite Quranic verses (the way Hindus parrot Sanskrit hymns) without understanding the Arabic language and even those who know a smattering of it, think that their Allah follows different rules of grammar! Muslims will have to make considerable alterations in Quran to make it in synch with the modern world. If they continue to believe that the Quran cannot be altered, extremists will continue to behead those who dare criticise their Muhammad and Allah. ----- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. 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