‘The’ Book Sells Out at County Bookstores

Hardly anyone has actually read it. But in its few short weeks of publication, “The Satanic Verses”--the notorious novel that brought its author a death sentence--continues to spread shock waves, inflaming Muslims, chilling creative writers and fascinating and frustrating book buyers who can’t find it anywhere on county bookstore shelves.

“People come in and say, ‘Do you have the book?’ And we say, ‘Put your name on the list,’ ” said Dorothy Ibsen, owner of Fahrenheit 451 Book Store in Laguna Beach, who has 30 people on a waiting list for the book.

Scores of bookstores in the county have been sold out of “The Satanic Verses” for at least a week, and many owners said they are receiving from three to 30 requests daily.

“We particularly want to handle it because the whole idea of our store is we’re open to freedom of expression,” said Ibsen, whose store is named after Ray Bradbury’s novel about a future society in which books are burned. “So we definitely want to have this thing. Nobody’s going to be threatening murder and get by with it in our bookstore.”

But at the Islamic Society of Orange County, which serves about 20,000 Muslims, the mood was different.

“We do accept the standard of freedom of speech, but dirt and filthy language is not freedom of speech. You’re polluting the concept of freedom of speech,” said Qaiser Imam, principal at the school and mosque complex in Garden Grove.

At least 1,000 letters had been sent from the Islamic Society asking Viking Press to stop publication, but no one has received an answer, he said Thursday.

Teacher Lana Hakim said many worshipers cried when Muzamil Siddiqi, the imam or religious leader of the mosque, explained the most offensive passages of Salman Rushdie’s novel to a congregation of about 1,000 last Friday. “It makes you angry,” she said. “You’re not supposed to publish lies.”

Rushdie used an insulting word, Mahound , an archaic name that means the Devil, to describe the prophet Mohammed and also depicted his wives as prostitutes, said Siddiqi, who said he has read the novel. Other objectionable words were used to refer to Mecca, the holy city of Islam, he said.

Although local Muslims universally condemn the novel, Siddiqi said most do not approve of the death sentence Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini pronounced on Rushdie, who is now in hiding and under around-the-clock guard in Great Britain.

Under Islamic law, people suspected of heresy must be given a trial in which they have a chance to explain themselves and repent, Siddiqi said. “If a person is executed, it has to be by someone assigned by the state.” He said he could not remember when anyone in the Islamic world had been executed for blasphemy.

But teacher Ahalilah Cousin said that although she does not support Khomeini, she believes that he “is within Islamic right to demand the death of this man (Rushdie). . . .”

“We swear to uphold our religion,” Cousin said. “We will be a force against anyone who intends to destroy, belittle or insult Islamic teaching and traditions of the prophet.

“If he chooses to continue to condemn Islam, then his blood becomes lawful for any Muslim. He has tried and convicted himself.”

Meanwhile, local writers, distressed by both Khomeini’s call for the death of Rushdie and the decision of two bookstore chains to withdraw “Satanic Verses” from their shelves, said they feared a chilling effect upon their work. Some called for reprisals.

Decrying Rushdie’s situation as “Kafkaesque,” Donald Heiney, a UC Irvine writing teacher who publishes fiction under the name MacDonald Harris, said, “It’s a very frightening and ominous thing that a foreign power can censure books in America and has disturbing implications for anyone who is a creative writer as I am.”

Heiney added: “Maybe you’re writing about a piece of fiction and get involved (with) American born-again Christians and say, ‘Wait a minute, do I want to do this? What kind of a hornet’s nest am I going to stir up?’ It can take the edge off a writer’s work.”

Gregory Benford, a science fiction writer and UCI physics professor, said he is “over being appalled” at the Rushdie controversy and offered this advice to the author: “Don’t get mad, get even. Talk is cheap. Hurt them.”

Benford said he thought Rushdie ought to sue Iran for damages in World Court “for a clear violation of international law.”

“Freeze their assets and interrupt all their bank accounts in Europe and the United States,” Benford said. “Tie them up for a year or two. This will do more damage than any number of writers’ public protests.”

Elizabeth George of Huntington Beach, whose first published novel was on the London Times best seller list just below Rushdie’s last week, said her first thought was whether “Khomeini’s eyes would drop down (the list) and see mine as well.”

Ann Maxwell of Laguna Niguel, author of romance, science fiction and detective novels, said she considers writing a moral act. “If you don’t write about what you believe, there’s no purpose in writing. And the fact that not everyone agrees with you is really unimportant.”

Author Arnold Hano of Laguna Beach, compared the Islamic protest to protests over “The Last Temptation of Christ,” saying, “Ours was a much more benign protest.”

Islamic fundamentalists “seem to think that this book is powerful.”

He said that the protests will probably boost sales and that he has placed an order for the book at Upchurch-Brown, a Laguna Beach bookstore where it already had sold out.

Hano said the book must be protected on principle. “It is more important that the book live than anything else. The ideas have to be propagated. It is up to us to buy the book and talk about the book and hate the book if it’s no good.”

Because of threats against bookstores that sell the book, the nation’s two largest booksellers, Waldenbooks and B. Dalton, withdrew it from their shelves. B. Dalton reversed itself Wednesday, but like nearly every independent county bookstore contacted in an informal survey Thursday, all the local stores had sold out of the books. Extra copies were not expected until the first week of March.

Waldenbooks takes orders on request and allows its store managers to display it if they “feel strongly” and do not feel threatened, said Andy Klein of Waldenbooks in the Orange Mall.

People are buying or requesting the book out of curiosity as well as a form of protest, said Lynn Bell, manager of Crown Books in Mission Viejo.

“A lot of people have said that they don’t want to necessarily read the book, but want to buy it as a form of protest against the man halfway around the world telling us what we can or can’t read. . . .

“I have talked to a lot of people who have read it, and they said it was dull, pedantic, convoluted and not terribly interesting.”