Over a few months I've done some preliminary research into the murder of Rashad Khalifa in Tucson 20 years ago. In today's paper I wrote a short story about the process of extraditing the chief suspect.
The broader story is a complicated, sad and interesting one, but a tangential detail keeps jumping out at me: "satanic verses." It's a concept that brings together author Salman Rushdie and Khalifa, but not the only coincidence involving those two.
Khalifa led a Muslim sect here called "The Submitters," a group that continues to exist. Much attention has focused on Khalifa's use of a computer to find a numerical structure in the Quran, based on the number 19. Having found that pattern, Khalifa concluded that two verses of the Quran were inserted by Satan because they did not conform to the pattern. The verses, 9:128-129, read:
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There has certainly come to you a Messenger from among yourselves. Grievous to him is what you suffer; [he is] concerned over you and to the believers is kind and merciful. But if they turn away, [O Muhammad], say, "Sufficient for me is Allah ; there is no deity except Him. On Him I have relied, and He is the Lord of the Great Throne."
The India-born British author Rushdie is perhaps best known for writing a novel called The Satanic Verses. The subject of that title, I understand, is this passage (53:19-22):
So have you considered al-Lat and al-'Uzza? And Manat, the third - the other one? Is the male for you and for Him the female?That, then, is an unjust division.
Some refer to these verses as Satanic because they represent a compromise made by Muhammad in a moment of weakness, in which he recognized locally important goddesses, not just the one God.
However, an interest in allegedly satanic verses of the Quran is not the only place where Khalifa's and Rushdie's lives intersected. It happens that a religious council issued death sentences against the two of them on the same day, Feb. 19, 1989. Rushdie was also sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran, and, as a writer, his death sentence received more attention.
Rushdie went into hiding, but Khalifa did not, and he was dead within the year.
I've tried to contact Rushdie about this, but so far no luck.
