If my memory serves me right, I first saw Salman Rushdie standing next to his ex-wife Padma Lak-shmi in a photo that was published in a magazine. Padma Lakshmi looked otherwor-l-dly beautiful in a knee-length dress and along with her was a middle--aged man with a rotund belly and a receding hairline. He had his hand comfortably gripping the dainty wai-stline of this model with a sheepish smile on his face. My reaction to the photograph was that of any teenager: how on earth?

Many years later while studying in England, I found his book Midnight’s Children, a powerful saga of postcolonial India through the eyes of a boy, Saleem, who is born at the time of Ind-ia’s independence. Rushdie’s language and the use of incredibly imaginative prose lay the development of the generational shift that took place in independent India for the large audience outside of it. In a sense, Midnight’s Children is a story of a young, modern country that is licking its wounds while it wades ahead into a future of possibilities (though not bereft of violence).

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Midnight’s Children has since become a des-criptive phrase for a generation of children that grew up with India. A generation that was brought up with stories of slavery of their ancestors, stories of India’s historic indep-e-n-d-ence movement with the fresh pride of being a young autonomous state that holds a promise for its citizenry. The book sold millions of copies worldwide and won the Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981. It was awarded the Booker of Boo--kers in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize’s 25th and 40th anniversary, respectively.

However, his infamous work, The Satanic Verses, will remain the rea-son for his global notoriety. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini put Rus-hdie on the front pages of newspapers acr-oss the world by issuing a fatwa against him in the year 1989, ironically choosing the day of love, February 14. In conceited explanation, various Muslim scholars who justified the iss-uing of the fatwa, mentioned the apparent ins-ults to Prophet Muhammad and his wives in the book. Curiously, Khomeini never read the book, as was revealed by his son Ahmed to Rob-in Wright, a former Washington Post journalist. This fatwa against the British American writer was a case of political opportunism to exploit the carnage that was unfolding in Pak-i-stan, India and beyond, over a fictional dream sequence involving the Prophet Muhammad.

The book’s passages, which portrayed human weaknesses and undermined the Prophet’s cre-dibility as a messenger of God, were considered an act of blasphemy by Muslims. Since the ear-ly 90s, the word blasphemy has been violated innumerable times in Pakistan and the alleged cases of blasphemy against infirm religious minorit-i-es have put the nation to shame. The outrage over Prophet Muhammad’s honour can’t be summarised better than the Persian hemistich, “Ba Khuda Dewana basho, Ba Muhammad Hos-hiyar (Say what you want about God, but be careful about your utterances about Prophet Muhammad).” It is compelling to note that throughout the history of poetry in the subcontinent and in Arabia, there have indeed been many verses written against the might of the Almighty but almost none against Prophet Muhammad. This famous couplet by Kabir is one notable example:

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Kankar pathar jod ke, Masjid laye banay
Taa chadh mulla baang de, kya behra hua khudaey.

(Using stones and pebbles was mosque made,
The mullah then climbs up on it to give azaan.
Has God turned deaf)

In religious Muslim societies to opine that a ‘man’ could have fallibility in his character is considered a sin that merits death by chopping the head of the sinner. Muhammad has been called al-Kamil (The one who has achieved perfection). The Quran describes Muhammad as a prophet who was given the Quran to spread God’s message.

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The recent murderous attack on Rushdie in New York is another in a series of attacks that have been executed against Muslims and non--Muslims for allegedly mocking the Isl-a-mic Pro-phet. However, this spate of viole-nce in Mus-lim societies is a post-modern phenomenon and has mostly received tutelage from quasi-dictatorial nation-states that have appl-auded such acts. In the recent case, in a matter of few hours post the attack on Rushdie, the Iranian media praised the attacker. Kayhan, whose editor is appointed by the Ayatollah, dec-l-ared, “A thousand bravos to Hadi Matar the brave and dutiful person who attacked the apostate and evil Salman Rushdie in New York.”

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It is quite ironic that while the citizens of cou-n-tries such as Iran and Pakistan look to settle in secular countries like England and USA due to their tolerance for diverse ethnicities and relig-ions, even the slightest remark attributed to the-ir Prophet becomes a matter of life and dea-th. The idea that Allah and the Prop-het’s honour needs to be saved and upheld at any cost, has firmly made a home in the Mus-lim mindset. It simply reeks of the fragility of such a doctrine that its followers perhaps need constant reaffirmation to stay relevant in modern times.

The 2019 Netflix comedy, The First Tempta-tion of Christ, describes Jesus as a gay man caught in the whirlwind of protests. Since homosexuality is considered a grave sin by the Roman Catholic church, to term Jesus as a gay man—albeit in a comical sense—is simply unacceptable to dev-out Christians. However, even in the deeply con-servative Christian societies, the response to the film was that of peaceful protests and tweets that rubbished the film. In a modern world, whe-re the role of religion in society is constantly evolving, Muslim conservative sections want Isl-amic jurisprudence to be arrested in the 14th century.

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This isn’t a clash of civilisations that we are witnessing before our eyes, nor is it a battle for free speech. Human civilisation is at a pivot that will decide whether the idea of religion will comply with the understanding of mod-ern life, or pave the way for its very degener-ation. As for Rushdie, the magical world of his stories will live on, and so will their magician.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Protecting the Perfect One")

(Views expressed are personal)

Amit Bamzai is a Kashmiri entrepreneur and an avid cricket buff who has played the game at club level in India and England