Religion and Blasphemy Theme Analysis

Doubt.

The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allahgod and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God’s will one day they hid muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: antiquestions. Is it right that. Could it not be argued. Freedom, the old antiquest. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills à la god. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, of the salvationdamnation of man, all the usual etcetera. And hey presto, end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Angels are easily pacified; turn them into instruments and they’ll play your harpy tune. Human beings are tougher nuts, can doubt anything, even the evidence of their own eyes. Of behind-their-own eyes. Of what, as they sink heavy-lidded, transpires behind closed peepers. . . angels, they don’t have much in the way of a will. To will is to disagree; not to submit; to dissent.

Gibreel: the dreamer, whose point of view is sometimes that of the camera and at other moments, spectator. When he’s a camera the pee oh vee is always on the move, he hates static shots, so he’s floating up on a high crane looking down at the foreshortened figures of the actors, or he’s swooping down to stand invisibly between them, turning slowly on his heel to achieve a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree pan, or maybe he’ll try a dolly shot, tracking along beside Baal and Abu Simbel as they walk, or hand--held with the help of a steadicam he’ll probe the secrets of the Grandee’s bedchamber. But mostly he sits up on Mount Cone like a paying customer in the dress circle, and Jahilia is his silver screen.

He returns to the city as quickly as he can, to expunge the foul verses that reek of brimstone and sulphur, to strike them from the record for ever and ever, so that they will survive in just one or two unreliable collections of old traditions and orthodox interpreters will try and unwrite their story, but Gibreel, hovering-watching from his highest camera angle, knows one small detail, just one tiny thing that’s a bit of a problem here, namely that it was me both times, baba, me first and second also me. From my mouth, both the statement and the repudiation, verses and converses, universes and reverses, the whole thing, and we all know how my mouth got worked.

“First it was the Devil,” Mahound mutters as he rushes to Jahilia. “But this time, the angel, no question. He wrestled me to the ground.”

One man’s breath was sweetened, while another’s, by an equal and opposite mystery, was soured. What did they expect? Falling like that out of the sky: did they imagine there would be no sideeffects? Higher Powers had taken an interest, it should have been obvious to them both, and such Powers (I am, of course, speaking of myself) have a mischievous, almost a wanton attitude to tumbling flies. And another thing, let’s be clear: great falls change people. You think they fell a long way? In the matter of tumbles, I yield pride of place to no personage, whether mortal or im—. From clouds to ashes, down the chimney you might say, from heavenlight to hellfire. . . under the stress of a long plunge, I was saying, mutations are to be expected, not all of them random. Unnatural selections. Not much of a price to pay for survival, for being reborn, for becoming new, and at their age at that.

The other scrambled to his feet and stood pulling at his fingers, his head bowed. “What I want to know, sir,” he mumbled, “is, which is it to be? Annihilation or salvation? Why have you returned?”

Gibreel thought rapidly. “It is for judging,” he finally answered. “Facts in the case must be sifted, due weight given pro and contra. Here it is the human race that is the undertrial, and it is a defendant with a rotten record: a history-sheeter, a bad egg. Careful evaluations must be made. For the present, verdict is reserved; will be promulgated in due course. In the meantime, my presence must remain a secret, for vital security reasons.” He put his hat back on his head, feeling pleased with himself.

I am the incarnation of evil, he thought. He had to face it. However it had happened, it could not be denied. I am no longer myself, or not only. I am the embodiment of wrong, of what-we-hate, of sin.

Why? Why me?

What evil had he done -- what vile thing could he, would he do?

For what was he—he couldn’t avoid the notion—being punished? And, come to that, by whom? (I held my tongue.)

For Blake’s Isaiah, God had simply been an immanence, an incorporeal indignation; but Gibreel’s vision of the Supreme Being was not abstract in the least. He saw, sitting on the bed, a man of about the same age as himself, of medium height, fairly heavily built, with salt-and-pepper beard cropped close to the line of the jaw. What struck him most was that the apparition was balding, seemed to suffer from dandruff and wore glasses. This was not the Almighty he had expected.

Mahound had no time for scruples, Salman told Baal, no qualms about ends and means. The faithful lived by lawlessness, but in those years Mahound— or should one say the Archangel Gibreel? — should one say Al-Lah? —became obsessed by law. Amid the palm-trees of the oasis Gibreel appeared to the Prophet and found himself spouting rules, rules, rules, until the faithful could scarcely bear the prospect of any more revelation, Salman said, rules about every damn thing, if a man farts let him turn his face to the wind, a rule about which hand to use for the purpose of cleaning one’s behind. It was as if no aspect of human existence was to be left unregulated, free.

‘In the old days you mocked the Recitation,’ Mahound said in the hush. ‘Then, too, these people enjoyed your mockery. Now you return to dishonour my house, and it seems that once again you succeed in bringing the worst out of the people.’

Baal said, ‘I’ve finished. Do what you want.’

So he was sentenced to be beheaded, within the hour, and as soldiers manhandled him out of the tent towards the killing ground, he shouted over his shoulder: ‘Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can’t forgive.’

Mahound replied, ‘Writers and whores. I see no difference here.’

“‘Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan,’” Chamcha replied. “It means, ‘My darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty.’ Nabokov.”

“Him again,” Gibreel complained. “What bloody language?”

“He made it up. It’s what Kinbote’s Zemblan nurse tells him as a child. In Pale Fire.”

“Perndirstan,” Farishta repeated. "Sounds like a country: Hell, maybe. I give up, anyway. How are you supposed to read a man who writes in a made-up lingo of his own?”

“They are going to die,” Saeed replied.

It was too late. The villagers, whose heads could be seen bobbing about in the distance, had reached the edge of the underwater shelf. Almost all together, making no visible attempt to save themselves, they dropped beneath the water’s surface. In moments, every one of the Ayesha Pilgrims had sunk out of sight.

None of them reappeared. Not a single gasping head or thrashing arm.