Salman Rushdie and the “war on terror”

Abstract

My aim here is to explain the topicality of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in the midst and aftermath of the so‐called “war on terror”. The principal merit of the novel is that it sees fundamentalism not only in militant Islamism but also in the West’s unselfconscious belief in its own social and economic practices. It engenders a kind of migrant sensibility that moves between and casts doubt on fixed cultural and ideological positions. Alas, the extraordinary torrent of literary writing and punditry about 9/11 and the subsequent “war on terror” has often failed to combine a vehement critique of Islamism with an equally penetrating appraisal of other forms of fundamentalist belief. Indeed, the enduring significance and salutariness of The Satanic Verses has not been matched by the tendentiousness of Rushdie’s own media‐based analyses of Islam, terrorism and western power. The article is also therefore a defence of literature as an efficacious form of political engagement.