Many people became familiar with this rule in 2015, when two men attacked the office of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons of the prophet and killed a dozen people. As it turned out, this rule was much more modern than I thought, but back then it seemed unbreakable. No attempts to paint him, or cast lookalikes. It’s an arduous way to stage a scene, but it was out of fidelity to an important rule: The likeness of the prophet should never be shown in any way. Instead of a reply from the beam of light, the actors would repeat what the prophet had said so the audience would know his answer. When presenting scenes where Muhammad would speak to his followers, many programs opted to show actors speaking to a beam of light. I grew up watching dozens of shows that chronicled the prophet’s life, and none of them dared to display him.
The ban was intriguing and the fatwa was fascinating, but it was this last revelation that shook me to my core. The book, my parents said, was about the Prophet Muhammad, and it described him doing things he would never do. The fatwa came with a bounty attached to it. Worse than the ban, some sheikhs had issued a fatwa about Rushdie, an edict that he was to be killed for his book.
Here’s what I remember them saying: In 1988, a man with a very Muslim-sounding name (Rushdie comes from a nonpracticing Muslim family) had written a book that offended so many Muslims that it had inspired protests in the Muslim world and had been banned by a number of countries. Actually, perhaps “warned me” is a more accurate description. I had to see the danger for myself.Ī few days earlier, my religious parents had told me about The Satanic Verses. I had no real interest in reading it, and, at north of 500 pages, the novel was far too long for my teen taste. I must have been 13, or maybe 14, when I borrowed Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses from my local library.
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