SOURCE: Almond, Ian. “Mullahs, Mystics, Moderates, and Moghuls: The Many Islams of Salman Rushdie.” ELH 70, no. 4 (winter 2003): 1137-51.

In the following essay, Almond examines Rushdie's portrayal of Islam throughout his body of work.

One Kashmiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Aadam Aziz hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray. Three drops of blood plopped out of his left nostril, hardened instantly in the brittle air and lay before his eyes on the prayer mat, transformed into rubies. … At that moment … he resolved never again to kiss earth for any god or man.¹

There is a cinematic quality to this opening scene from Salman Rushdie's novel—one can imagine it filmed in ironic, gently understated terms: the figure of a returning emigrant, on his knees against a mountain-flushed landscape, the sound of an indignant thud as his head bows in...