"satanic Verses": The Word Made Fresh

GRAFFITI

"SATANIC VERSES":  THE WORD MADE FRESH

by Jim Jones

In contrast to our cynicism and disdain for mere words, the Islamic fundamentalists, who do not separate secular from religious, and apparently, as we see in the case of "Satanic Verses," fiction from sacred text, hold all words as meaning what they say. There is something admirable, even enviable about this. Commercial TV, politics, and literary theory could certainly use a healthy dose of this kind of "word truth."

Just when we were beginning to forget the Ayatollah Khomeini, the world's enfant terrible, the furor over Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" has allowed Americans to rekindle their love of Iran-bashing. As we gleefully waste newsprint and pollute outer space with our broadcast waves condemning the "barbarism" of the Ayatollah and the Islamic Republic, we pat ourselves on the back for being so "civilized" and rational. After all, when was the last time America condemned a writer to death for attacking Christianity, or our way of Government (the two are hard to divide in the Islamic Republic)? Certainly a few centuries.

While we concentrate on this obvious example of our tolerance and their evil, everyone, so far, has failed to look at a fundamental difference between contemporary American and Iranian culture that underlies this crisis. Fundamentalist Islam, like fundamentalist Christianity holds sacred the word. If Muhammedans believe every word of the Koran is divinely inspired and true (as opposed to metaphoric), then an attack against the Koran and Muhammed, its recorder, is an attack against God.

There can be no argument in this case that Rushdie blasphemes Islam, just as surely as a number of our writers have blasphemed Christianity (one strong example that comes to mind - Michael Moorcock in his 1967 novel "Behold the Man" depicts Mary and Joseph as ignorant peasants and their child Jesus as retarded). The religious of the West deal with writers such as Moorcock in a more civilized way, attacking the work, not the man. They stage book-burnings, picket book stores, write to the publishers, and until the 1950s, the Pope put the book on the index of forbidden works. But such events occur rarely, and even then are lucky to be deemed worthy of a mention on the evening news.

Today books are rarely seen as important in mainstream culture. In a bizarre circling of our history, the image has supplanted the word. Our TVs flickering in darkened living rooms are the modern equivalents to the bisons painted by our ancestors on the caves at Lascaux. One third of American adults have difficulty reading. We must face the fact that we are now a post-literate culture. And it has been a long time since a mere book like Rushdie's "Verses" has had the impact to make the TV news give the written word back its power with over a week of coverage.

And this gets to the heart of my point. The West long ago gave up its belief in the word. One need only look to advertising to see once precious cultural ideas mocked: "Freedom equals 7-11." One need only look at our last presidential race to see the devaluing of words to such an extent that even the media, the masters of word debasement, commented on it. Unfortunately this debasement is taken for granted by most people today.The French Post-Structuralist philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, current hero of the avant-garde, has even developed a literary theory that revels in our cultural disregard for the integrity of the word.

In contrast to our cynicism and disdain for mere words, the Islamic fundamentalists, who do not separate secular from religious, and apparently, as we see in the case of "Satanic Verses," fiction from sacred text, hold all words as meaning what they say. There is something admirable, even enviable about this. Commercial TV, politics, and literary theory could certainly use a healthy dose of this kind of "word truth." That is not to say I applaud Iran's ransom on the life of Rushdie, although it certainly makes more sense to kill the source of the blasphemy than to enrich him by buying up his books and burning them!

I can't help but feel our attitude toward this latest Iranian spectacle is due partially to envy. We envy a culture which believes so strongly in anything. We have lost our faith in religion, go government, even our precious TVs. If only someone could write a book as explosive to the West as "Satanic Verses" is in Iran, India and Pakistan, it would prove that words still counted, that something still mattered. We would feel so good building that gibbet.