‘The Satanic Verses is the rude contrary of the authoritarian lie’

The Spectre

Hanif Kureishi

THERE IS A spectre always haunting the world. Sometimes it is further away, other times it is close. But it is always present, always a possibility, and always has to be fought.

This spectre is the political and religious idea called fascism. This contamination is, as we know, common in the world, and becoming ever closer and more common, leaving the liberalism and democracy we like to take for granted in its wake.

And fascism, like literature, is personal as well as political; it is inside the human being, as well as outside, as ideology. It can, as we know, become a state of mind, even of our own minds, of course.

And what a mind it is that fascism creates. An arid, one-dimensional place, a terror state stuck in the past, where there cannot be any complexity or doubt, and which separates the internal population into ‘us’ and ‘them’. Nothing new can be taken in. It claims to know everything already. It is a simplified, purged, antiseptic and childish idea of the world which requires the annihilation of all opposition, as well as, in its public dimension, the destruction of journalism, universities, and free thought.

If fascism is all noisy slogans, flags, propaganda and the idealisation of fatuous leaders; if fascism is a dehumanising patriarchal monologue that never ends, The Satanic Verses is the rude contrary of the authoritarian lie. It is resistance to God, who is the ultimate fascist, along with his sycophants, because the novel is, in itself, a debate, a conversation, an argument worth having. The Satanic Verses is a rollicking, whirling, kaleidoscopic book of upsidedownness, and of through-the-looking-glass-ness. It is rich with jokes, wit, dreams, reversals and questions. It is as real and difficult and complex as the world, as it celebrates the importance, necessity and beauty of blasphemy.

In a way, you could say that it is freewheeling literary madness that keeps us sane in this ‘out of joint’ time, and that literature, made from the alchemy of reason and the imagination, reminds us that there always is an alternative, that we can be creative, that we are not at the end, that we can make new things, bringing, as Rushdie puts it, ‘newness into the world’.

In the face of the horror and sadness of what has occurred, we should recall that The Satanic Verses is an essential book, an always urgent and crucial novel which prompts us not to forget that our colleague and friend, Salman Rushdie, has devoted his life to struggling with the spectre of authoritarianism on our behalf.

He has taken responsibility as we all must. And we give him thanks here today, for his bravery and heroism. We wish him well in his recovery. Thank you, Salman, for what you have given us.