The Satanic Verses controversy to one observer, "almost all the British book reviewers" were unaware of the book's connection to Islam because Rushdie has used the name Mahound instead of Muhammad for his chapter on Islam. In Islamic communities, the novel became instantly controversial, because of what some Muslims considered blasphemous references. Rushdie was accused of misusing freedom of speech. By October 1988, letters and phone calls arrived at Viking Penguin from Muslims, angry with the book and demanding that it be withdrawn. Before the end of the month, the import of the book was banned in India, although possession of the book is
The Satanic Verses Verses" "Rushdie's largest aesthetic achievement". Timothy Brennan called the work "the most ambitious novel yet published to deal with the immigrant experience in Britain" that captures the immigrants' dream-like disorientation and their process of "union-by-hybridization". The book is seen as "fundamentally a study in alienation." Muhammd Mashuq ibn Ally wrote that ""The Satanic Verses" is about identity, alienation, rootlessness, brutality, compromise, and conformity. These concepts confront all migrants, disillusioned with both cultures: the one they are in and the one they join. Yet knowing they cannot live a life of anonymity, they mediate between them both. "The Satanic Verses" is