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 to death). The book was banned in India as hate speech directed towards a specific religious group. "The Satanic Verses" consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism, interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The frame narrative, like many other stories by Rushdie, involves Indian expatriates in contemporary England. The two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are both actors of Indian Muslim background. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar who specialises in playing Hindu deities. (The character is partly based on Indian film stars Amitabh Bachchan