ABSTRACT
The controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, has been a major flashpoint in the tensions between Muslims and Westerners in recent years. This chapter considers how the affair touches on vital nerves by setting against each other two foundational cultural concerns or sacralities'. Most Muslim governments and some others banned the book; protests and demonstrations continued, along with violence and threats of violence, especially against bookshops stocking the book. Westerners were generally horrified by the Muslim reaction and the perceived attack on freedom of speech. Many Muslim leaders, of course, called for something less than Rushdie's death, and many non-Muslims sought to understand the Muslim position while also affirming Rushdie's freedom of expression, but the shriller extremes tended to dominate for some time. Rushdie's treatment of Islam is comparable to the teenage daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants in The Satanic Verses who describes her parents' homeland as Bungleditch'.
