Salman Rushdie In Good Faith Summary

Jean Ellen Petrolle describes the postmodern as being ‘associated with the depthless, the insubstantial, the spiritually exhausted’ . Highlighting the exhaustion of belief, this brings forward the evident theme of religion in the titles of The Satanic Verses and Hey Nostradamus!. The ‘Satanic Verses’ is related the occasion where the Islamic prophet Muhammad is blamed to have mistaken the words of satanic suggestion for divine revelation. Nostradamus made prophecies that require some extent of misinterpretation or mistranslation in order to make them to come true. Both titles stress on words and interpretation, or rather, misinterpretation, illustrating the engagement of language in religion and the secular. Madawi Al-Rasheed and Marat Shterin point out that ‘dying for faith is undergoing a revival in the contemporary world’. The power struggle of religion is ongoing, shifting, and with examples such as the Bible and the Quran, one may argue that language is privileged in religions.

Texts such as The Satanic Verses and Hey Nostradamus!

may not establish a privileged language for a religion, but through words and ideas linked to both religion and the secular, space is provided for one to analyse and rethink the struggle within religion. In Salman Rushdie’s In Good Faith, he stresses on ‘questioning and re-imagining’ in the novel. This leads to a reading that does not decide what is right or wrong. Texts that may be filled with questions and notions of ‘maybe’, which readers will have to figure out by themselves. When the purity of the sacred is challenged, one may take notes of the use of the description of violence, doubt and hypocrisy in Hey Nostradamus! and The Satanic Verses, and question how these eventually led to religion or

secularity.
To Al-Rasheed and Shterin, violence is a plea to reinstate religious narrative in ‘a world increasingly seen as secular, disenchanted, and lacking moral values’. When religion becomes an explanation for violence, violence can to a certain extent become justified or even encouraged. Petrolle describes religious violence as ‘the rhetorical trappings used to sell wars’. From the description of violence, one may find religion profiteering from violence to a certain extent. Characters may find violence against fellow humans acceptable as they justify their actions by their beliefs. In The Satanic verses, death and violence are like supplements when God is absent. With the ‘the death of God’(16), the God-shaped hole has to be filled up, and characters may turn to death or violence to fill the emptiness. Gibreel stresses that to be born again, ‘first you have to die’(3). He is found ‘stuffing the dead pigs into his face’(30), a violent gesture to ‘prove to himself the non-existence of God’(30). The fascination in death, a word repeated in The Satanic Verses often, portrays how closely linked violence and religion is and how violence is often a way to express both the sacred and the secular. In contrast of Gibreel using violence and death to achieve a sense of fulfillment, to others, violence can be more than an expression. Violence may be a way to nurture one’s faith, to confirm religion through destruction. For Tavleen, her actions are justified as it is a quest for ‘religious freedom’(79). She straps onto herself ‘grenades like extra breasts’(81), and as a result of the hijacking, the ‘aircraft cracked in half’(4). In the illustration of hijacking and bombing for religion, such actions portray the relationship between belief and conviction. To readers, such actions are acts of terrorism in the name of God, yet Tavleen believes that her deeds are correct, that ‘Martyrdom is a privilege’(86). The way she describes her actions elevates what she did, acknowledging the sacred, the act of hijacking, being closely followed by violence and death. She shows vehemence in dealing with non-believers and even her fellow hijackers, the frenzy of blowing up herself and the plane an impactful scene. The sacred is sold through the deaths of the victims and the hijackers, from which the event becomes a proclamation of faith.
Similarly in Hey Nostradamus!, violence and death reinstates the sacred. From the question ‘Hey Nostradamus! Did you predict that once we found the Promised Land we’d all start offing each other?’, the meaninglessness of violence in the world is portrayed in relation to secularity and the sacred. The use of death again plays an important part for the religious, those who strongly believe would look forward to ‘the grave’(111) as kids would look forward to Disney World. The insanity of almost suicidal thoughts in faith may distance readers from the sacred, but through violence and death, especially regarding the massacre, various characters in Hey Nostradamus! start to find their own stand regarding sacredness. Unlike in The Satanic Verses, faith gradually emerges through the traumatic void posed by the violent deaths during the unexpected massacre. Cheryl relives part of her life, particularly the massacre, in a state that is ‘neither dead or alive’(41). Her prayers to God prevail throughout the killings, and her turn to faith in her last moments highlight how belief can fill a traumatic void. God becomes welcomed in times of trouble, an attempt to move away from negativity. Ambiguous as to whether her faith is truthful, Cheryl asks if God can ‘torture those evil bastards who did the killings’(22). Showing negativity towards the sacred in the bloodshed by wondering why is God absent, she questions if it is God who ‘organized a massacre just to make people have doubts’(24). However, her non-stop one-sided conversation with God until her death depicts her final turn to believing that the sacred is present. The ugliness of bloodshed, along with anger, trauma and doubt, allows a search for religion. Cheryl indicates that God is reality just before her death, her note allowing Jason and others around her to start their own journey in discovering or rediscovering faith. From the plane hijacking in The Satanic Verses to the massacre in Hey Nostradamus!, the sacred is surrounded by violence and death. Instead of encompassing the secular through tragic events, one may to move away from secularity and revisit the sacred within bloodshed and brutality. The sacred fills the emptiness and trauma after tragic events, rendering violence and death a path to reach God.