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!
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Also
Read: Salman Rushdie's Indian Mullah
Critics, Listen To the Message of Satanic Verses
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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
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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.
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Also
Read: The Attack on Salman Rushdie Is Symptomatic Of the
Malady of Intolerance Islam Suffers From
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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.
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Also
Read: Revisiting Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses
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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
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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.
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Also
Read: Afterthoughts On Salman Rushdie Episode
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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.
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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.
URL: https://newageislam.com/radical-islamism-jihad/reasons-muslims-condemning-rushdie-/d/127765
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