Take A Step Back

            The ability to make a mass audience laugh is strangely difficult. But the ability to make a mass audience laugh about a serious issue is ironically genius. And it’s through irony, and blatant sarcasm, that allow certain individuals to capture our minds and show us how we create mundane issues or things as being of distinct importance. In popular culture, television figures such as Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert have successfully satirized political issues, figures and ideologies. The ability of these two to sarcastically make fun of serious issues, while not seeming ludicrous, has propelled them into the elite of comedy and has shown a new generation that everything should be questioned, and that satirized comedy may allow the forum for these questions. Stewart and Colbert, though, are not the only comedians or persons using humor as a counterpoint to the status quo. Nor are they the first.

            Salman Rushdie, author of East, West, has successfully used satire to challenge ideas for 30 years. His book, a collection of short stories, illustrates the use of satirizing sacred objects and figures. Rushdie accomplishes this by making the sacred object seem overwhelmingly divine, and the worship of this object as extremely important. In his short story, “The Prophet’s Hair”, Rushdie shows how a sacred object, and its impractical worship, can ruin the unity of a family. The story begins with Hasim, a man who is a moneylender in Srinigar, a village near the Indian-Pakistan border. Hasim is a man who is ambitious in all aspects of life, not religious and encourages his children to think freely. But upon coming into possession of a sacred religious object, Hasim’s entire mindset changes and his life begins to shatter around him. The object, a hair which supposedly was the Prophet Mohammed’s, had been stolen from its sacred place only days earlier. Hasim should have returned the artifact, but instead, decided to keep it for its rare beauty.

            As Rushdie reveals the story, though, we come to find that the religious relic has turned Hasim into a man of intense and dedicated worship. Under the “spell” of this sacred object, Hasim completely contradicts his earlier views and begins revealing unwanted news and instituting new rules. “From then on, he began to pray five times daily for the first time in his life, and his wife and children were obliged to do likewise” (Rushdie, p. 46). Consequently, Hasim’s children plot against him and hire a professional thief to steal the relic, and return it to its shrine. Because of the drastic effects the hair is having on Hasim, the ability to steal the hair is difficult. Hasim even reverts to sleeping with the hair below his pillow. At its conclusion, the story comes full circle in that Hasim returns to his normal self once the hair has been returned to its place of worship, but not without great loss.

In hindsight, this story could be about how various evils can capture and motivate our identities. But beneath the story, there are sarcastic tones that reveal how unreasonable this story actually is. Rushdie, in a simple manner, illustrates how a human hair being turned into a sacred object seems rather unreal. The fact that many people actually do worship such objects is what makes the use of satire an intricate tool to pointing out the obvious, which, ironically, is usually hidden. Followers of Islam rarely question their religion, because faith, essentially, is believing in the unbelievable. For them, the word or belonging of Prophet Mohammed’s is an object that should be undoubtedly worshipped, even if the object is as mundane as a hair. But for Rushdie, the worship of this object is something that should be undoubtedly satirized and questioned, even if the attempt to do so may be offensive to certain groups or individuals.

Using satire, successfully, is a difficult feat. And there are many dangers that associate with satire. Not only can you offend or harm others, but you can be persecuted for being blasphemous. Salman Rushdie always goes out on a limb, flirting with crossing the line of unacceptable. For him, though, there seems to be no line or boundary that he is daring to cross. And this could be his greatest danger. For some, the first question they may have for Rushdie is, who are you to be the voice of reason? Who gave you the right to question these issues, just because you do not believe in them? And these are valid questions, but they are not all that reasonable. Rushdie expects you to ask these questions about him. Many challenge Rushdie on the basis that he is self-professed as an iconoclast in his attempt to satirize and question serious issues. To me, Rushdie would appreciate this challenge. It proves his side of the argument. At some point, for any issue, self-professed ideas or persons first incorporated their opinions on the issue. Historically, the disciples of Jesus Christ interpreted his life and expressed their opinions through the Bible. It’s the belief and faith in something divine which makes Jesus a divine figure. By satirizing issues like these, Rushdie is simply highlighting the blind truth. At best, Rushdie reminds us that we are susceptible to reproduced ideologies, and that every once in a while, we need to take a step back and refocus on the big picture.