Satanic Verses Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses incident, known as "qissat al-gharaniq" ("Story of the Cranes"), is the name given to the occasion on which the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, is said to have mistaken the words of "satanic suggestion" for divine revelation. Narratives involving the alleged verses (or verse) can be read in, among other places, the biographies of Muhammad by al-Wāqidī, Ibn Sa'd (who was a scribe of Waqidi) and Ibn Ishaq (as reconstructed by Alfred Guillaume), as well as the tafsir of al-Tabarī. The majority of Muslim scholars have rejected the historicity of the incident on the basis of the
The Satanic Verses controversy attack the book, the book does include an eleven-page sketch of Khomeini's stay in Paris that could well be considered an insult to him. It describes him as having "grown monstrous, lying in the palace forecourt with his mouth yawning open at the gates; as the people march through the gates he swallows them whole". In the words of one observer, "If this is not an insult, Khomeini was far more tolerant than one might suppose", John Crowley has noted that the section of the book depicting the Khomeini-like character was selected to be read publicly by Rushdie in the