“We are different, we are no longer what we were before yesterday’s calamity. » Signed by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, this quote sits at the opening of Salman Rushdie's new work, The knife (Gallimard), in bookstores since April 18. Since 1989 and fatwa of Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who sentenced him to death, the life of the American-British writer of Indian origin took a curious direction.
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Physically weakened and contested by part of the Iranian people, the architect of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 attempted a political coup at the time by finding a new scapegoat. His frail voice then records this call for murder on a cassette: “In the name of Almighty God, I want to inform all Muslims that the author of the book titled The Satanic Verses, which was written, printed and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet and the Quran, as well as those who published it and are familiar with its contents, were sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they are. »
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Islamists around the world then focus on a few pages of the novel which refer to the title. Salman Rushdie describes a fragment of the history of the Prophet and Islam. This contested but very instructive passage introduced the notions of doubts and imperfection in Muhammad. Marianne had detailed this famous passage which caused the writer to be sentenced to death.
