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covered in miraculous albino sand. As you climb you hear the desert doves calling your name, and the rocks greet you, too, in your own language, crying Mahound, Mahound. When you reach the cave you are tired, you lie down, you fall asleep.

But when he has rested he enters a different sort of sleep, a sort of not—sleep, the condition that he calls his listening , and he feels a dragging pain in the gut, like something trying to be born, and now Gibreel, who has been hovering-above-looking-down, feels a confusion, who am I , in these moments it begins to seem that the archangel is actually inside the Prophet , I am the dragging in the gut, I am the angel being extruded from the sleeper’s navel, I emerge, Gibreel Farishta, while my other self, Mahound, lies listening , entranced, I am bound to him, navel to navel, by a shining cord of light, not possible to say which of us is dreaming the other. We flow in both directions along the umbilical cord.

Today, as well as the overwhelming intensity of Mahound, Gibreel feels his despair: his doubts. Also, that he is in great need, but Gibreel still doesn’t know his lines . . . he listens to the listening-which-is-also-an-asking. Mahound asks: They were shown miracles but they didn’t believe. They saw you come to me, in full view of the city, and open my breast, they saw you wash my heart in the waters of Zamzam and replace it inside my body. Many of them saw this, but still they worship stones. And when you came at night and flew me to Jerusalem and I hovered above the holy city, didn’t I return and describe it exactly as it is, accurate down to the last detail? So that there could be no doubting the miracle, and still they went to Lat. Haven’t I already done my best to make things simple for them? When you carried me up to the Throne itself, and Allah laid upon the faithful the great burden of forty prayers a day. On the return journey I met Moses and he said, the burden is too heavy, go back and plead for less. Four times I went back, four times Moses said, still too many, go back again. But by the fourth time Allah had reduced the duty to five prayers and I refused to return. I felt ashamed to beg any more. In his bounty he asks for five instead of forty, and still they love Manat, they want Uzza. What can I do? What shall I recite?

Gibreel remains silent, empty of answers, for Pete’s sake, bhai, don’t go asking me. Mahound’s anguish is awful. He asks : is it possible that they are angels? Lat, Manat, Uzza . . . can I call them angelic? Gibreel, have you got sisters? Are these the daughters of God? And he castigates himself, O my vanity, I am an arrogant man, is this weakness, is it just a dream of power? Must I betray myself for a seat on the council? Is this sensible and wise or is

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