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Salman Rushdi's Satanic Verses At aboutislam.netfirms.comWe did not post the book in one part so that you don't download it since if you like what you are reading we think you should support the author of this book by buying it, it is a great book that took years to write, the author deserves the money |
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baboon. Just as he, the businessman, felt when he first saw the archangel: thought he was cracked, wanted to throw himself down from a rock, from a high rock, from a rock on which there grew a stunted lote-tree, a rock as high as the roof of the world.
He’s coming: making his way up Cone Mountain to the cave. Happy birthday: he’s forty-four today. But though the city behind and below him throngs with festival, up he climbs, alone. No new birthday suit for him, neatly pressed and folded at the foot of his bed. A man of ascetic tastes. (What strange manner of businessman is this?)
Question: What is the opposite of faith?
Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief.
Doubt.
The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allahgod and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God’s will one day they hid muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: antiquestions. Is it right that. Could it not be argued. Freedom, the old antiquest. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills a la god. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, of the salvationdamnation of man, all the usual etcetera. And hey presto, end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Angels are easily pacified; turn them into instruments and they’ll play your harpy tune. Human beings are tougher nuts, can doubt anything, even the evidence of their own eyes. Of behind-their-own eyes. Of what, as they sink heavy-lidded, transpires behind closed peepers. . . angels, they don’t have much in the way of a will. To will is to disagree; not to submit; to dissent.
I know; devil talk. Shaitan interrupting Gibreel.
Me?
The businessman: looks as he should, high forehead, eaglenose, broad in the shoulders, narrow in the hip. Average height, brooding, dressed in two pieces of plain cloth, each four ells in length, one draped around his body, the other over his shoulder. Large eyes; long lashes like a girl’s. His strides can seem too long for his legs, but he’s a light-footed man. Orphans learn to be moving targets, develop a rapid walk, quick reactions, hold-yourtongue caution. Up through the thorn-bushes and opobalsam trees he comes,