LETTER: Call for Rushdie's assassination illustrates `dark face' of Islam

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I affirm Hadi Tabbaa's right to discourage people from reading The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie ("`Satanic Verses' recommendation misrepresents Islamic religion," Jan. 17).

However, it is clear Mr. Tabbaa does so not from judgment of the literary merits of the book (despite the plea to the authority of Julian Samuel), but from a profound distaste for subject matter that he finds offensive. Even so, I respect his right to discourage the reading of the book on such grounds.

What offends me in Mr. Tabbaa's letter is the assumption that support for Salman Rushdie or The Satanic Verses is given out of either ignorance of or spite toward Islam. I doubt I am alone among Rice students in feeling I have reasonable knowledge of Islam and respect for it and its practitioners, but absolutely support the world-wide publication and dissemination of The Satanic Verses .

I am aware that Islam is a monotheistic faith. Its core beliefs, as I understand them, are the unity of God; communion with God through prayer, fasting and pilgrimage; and compassion for and giving to the less fortunate.

I am also aware of the positive achievements of cultures influenced by Islam in the fields of medicine, mathematics, science and philosophy: I know who Avicenna (ibn-Sina) and Averroës (ibn-Rushd) were, and I know the etymology of the words chemistry, algebra and Aldebaran.

A thousand years ago, when my ancestors were illiterate peasants in Central Europe, the cities of Spain under Muslim rule were bustling and cosmopolitan, with street lights and sewers -- a tolerant haven for Jews, a place where Christian scholars translated Aristotle into Latin and sowed the seeds of the scientific revolution in Europe.

On the other hand, I am aware of a dark face to the practice of Islam, a face manifested by the controversy that surrounds Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. When the book was published, the most influential religious leader in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, not only condemned the book and the author but also called for Rushdie's murder.

The most analogous work in recent memory in the Christian world is the film version of Níkos Kazantzákis' novel The Last Temptation of Christ . It was widely reported that the film contains a scene in which Jesus of Nazareth, while being crucified, fantasizes a sexual encounter with one of his female followers, Mary Magdalene.

Many conservative Christians would view such a scene as "blatantly false" and "infuriating," and would accuse director Martin Scorcese and actor Willem Dafoe of "propagation of negative literature concerning" Christianity. The distinction between The Satanic Verses and The Last Temptation of Christ is that no influential Christian leader -- neither the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Metropolitan of Constantinople, nor the heads of mainstream Protestant denominations in the United States -- urged followers to kill Scorcese or Dafoe.

Did they discourage their congregations from reading the novel or viewing the film? At least some did, which I disagree with but cannot view as evil. But to re-emphasize my point, no influential Christian leader publicly urged violence as a response to The Last Temptation of Christ , unlike Khomeini with regard to The Satanic Verses and Salman Rushdie.

Again, this is not to paint Islam or individual Muslims as terrorists or fanatics. I merely wish to point out to Mr. Tabbaa that Islamic fundamentalism has advocated acts which are, by any objective standard, evil.

If he wishes to show the West the positive face of contemporary Islam, he would be better served by condemning the call for Rushdie's death and showing tolerance for the expression of views that he might view as heretical or blasphemous.

Raymund Eich

Graduate Student

Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the January 24, 1997 issue.

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