The world looked to us—and now I speak as an American—to uphold a holy image, or as holy as it gets in this age of enlightenment. We have been the earthly garden, the abundant idyll, the productive Arcadia of the world’s pastoral dream. Between our shores has gleamed a realm of refuge and renewal—in short, the only reliable escape from history

the original Companions of the Prophet recast as sex-crazed purveyors of snuff films whom even Rushdie’s satirical genius could not have imagined.

The Satanic Verses was my first experience of both magical realism and metafiction.

Picking through that disgusting orientalist history, disgusting tales the Christians told to make the Prophet out as some sex-crazed cult leader,

interpretation has more to do with the one interpreting than the one being interpreted.

Orientalism.

(For Muslims, to speak of Muhammad as the author of the Quran is a surpassing blasphemy; only God could have authored such a miracle, we are told; Muhammad was just a holy stenographer, if you will, taking divine dictation.)

appurtenances

What I heard as I listened with new ears was fear.