Salman Rushdie Haroun Quotes

In 1989 Salman Rushdie became Muslim enemy number one after “the publication in 1988 of The Satanic Verses ” . In this book Rushdie made several veiled and open references to the Islamic religion that depicted it in what many Muslims perceive as a negative way. In response Muslims around the world protested the book and in some cases publicly burned it. In several Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, India, and South Africa the book was banned. All of this culminated in the issuing of a fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Muslim religious leader of Iran. A fatwa being a ruling based on the teachings of Islam, in this case a death sentence. This forced Rushdie to have to go into hiding least he be killed by anyone hoping to carry out the fatwa in order to gain both religious reward, and monetary reward from the two million dollar bounty that had been placed on him. Considering all this one might believe as his name suggests, that he was in a rush to die when he continued to wright and publish his books even though he was living with the threat of being killed at any moment. One of the books he wrote during this time was Haroun and

One of the most obvious allusions to censorship being the land of Chup, of which Haroun’s father said “But, sir, you all know the stories about chup! That it is a place of shadows, of books that wear padlocks and tongues torn out;” just before this quote he also tells Haroun that cult members who are led by Khattam-Shud take vows of lifelong silence and sow their mouths shut, and how schools and courts are shut down in Chup because of silence laws. All of these characteristics are used to show how Chup is an evil place where all the citizens are under heavy censorship. Unlike the land of Gup where there is always light, books are the very theme of their army, and people can say whatever they want even if it is offensive to public