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What makes the story of the goddesses particularly offensive to Muslims is the fact that it was a standard argument hurled against Islam by 19th century Christian missionaries. Similarly, the name that Rushdie gives his prophet, Mahound, is one that Christians mockingly used in their medieval religious plays for a satanic version of Muhammad. (Rushdie's character explains that he has purposely adopted the name "to turn insults into strengths.") Some Muslims were similarly upset that Rushdie gave the holy city of Mecca the name Jahilia, meaning darkness, but the author seems to use the word to signify the spiritual ignorance that reigned there before the Koran was revealed to Muhammad. Believers are also angry because Rushdie ridicules various rules of daily life that the faith in fact never taught.
The most sensational episode of Satanic Verses takes place in a brothel and bestows on prostitutes the names of Muhammad's wives. This is outrageous to Muslims, since they revere the Prophet's spouses as the "mothers of all believers." Contrary to many press reports on the book, Rushdie does not present Mahound's wives as fallen women. Rather, the prostitutes borrow the names and then gradually take on the identities of the wives to mock Mahound. Nonetheless, Hasan Abdul-Hakim, a British Muslim convert, likens this episode to "presenting the Virgin Mary as a whore." Nor did Rushdie endear himself to Islamic readers by naming his brothel Hijab, the Arab term referring to the modest veiling of Muslim women.
Defenders of the book point out that, as in the brothel scene, scurrilous material is often not Rushdie's own characterization of Muhammad and his followers. Instead, it is the calumny of the idolaters whom the prophet was seeking to overthrow. The pagans, for example, call the prophet's companions "scum" and Ibrahim (Abraham) a "bastard."
Even if Muhammad had been portrayed with more respect, explains Amir Taheri, a Paris-based Iranian journalist, the mere fact of making him a fictional character would strike Muslims as a transgression against hodud -- the limits of propriety. "Islam does not recognize unlimited freedom of expression," says Taheri. "Most Muslims are prepared to be broad-minded about most things but never about anything that even remotely touches on their faith." In ignoring that fact, Rushdie has made himself the bane of Islamic society -- and the target of Khomeini's death squads.