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Recordings › Salman Rushdie & The Satanic Verses | Mufti Abu Layth · 19 Aug 2022 › Segment 2 of 21

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What does the Mufti think of Salman Rushdie as a person?

hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith muftis shaytan shaitan shaytaan iblis iblees shayateen shayatin satan

Why Rushdie is back in the news, and Mufti Abu Layth's impression of him

LessonRecorded 19 Aug 2022Segment 2 of 21 in the recording2022-08-19-S02

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This segment5:17 to 9:18 · 4 min 01 sGeneral teaching

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Mufti Abu Layth says he personally finds Rushdie's personality abhorrent and senses a strong negativity from him, and that he researched him in order to be fair.

In more detail

Mufti Abu Layth says that since the attack Rushdie and The Satanic Verses are back in the limelight and widely searched, so he will assess the man, the book, the context and the history, and attempt a psychoanalysis. Speaking of his own impression, he says he finds Rushdie's character and personality abhorrent and senses from him a negativity, even a malice, that he seldom feels about anyone, and mentions a hadith about what is seen in people's faces [?]. He says he researched Rushdie with a heavy heart in order to be as fair as possible, then begins the biography: Rushdie was born in June 1947 in Bombay under the British Raj, a few months before Indian and Pakistani independence.

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Transcript

machine5:17 to 9:18 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
5:00

right so right now that said moving forward following this attack the satanic verses and salman rushdie its author have been now brought back into the limelight many people are discussing him people have been googling he's become one of the most googled in the last uh two weeks he has become one of the most googled entities people are trying to find out what it what was he all about what are all these things so let's discuss him let's assess

5:38

let's evaluate the book the context the history let's psychoanalyze as well what is this person's story so i did a bit of research and i have to say salman rushdie right i find this person's character and personality so abhorrent and just so full of a kind of like a negative he

6:17

gives off such a negative vibe an aura well like i this is just this is my i don't know if there's people who just if you see them you find this ah like like just negative energy about them and i really feel that with him just looking at him i sense this unease just looking at him honestly and and that seldom happens to me

6:56

um not so it's not a common thing to to see you know just to find some kind such strong negativity sense it from certain people and i sense that from salman rushdie um this the i don't know it's one of those things that's inexplicable i guess um now some people say is it about carrying trauma no not that negativity i almost sense a malice

7:33

like i look at that face and i don't sense like goodness imagine i never knew who he was and you showed me his picture and there's something you know in the hadith the prophet sallam in this hadith where he said that you find ahead in certain faces and and i guess it's it's kind of adverse thing is true as well that you sense i sense just just something very unsettling about him so me researching him this

8:12

last week or so was was with a heavy heart shall i say because there's very few people i find as unsettling as as him but i've been researching him because i thought well since i was going to speak on him that let's make it as fair as possible um i'm serious wallahi i don't know what the devil would look like but i wouldn't it's just something so devilish satanic about his face it god honestly but let's speak a bit about him so he was born as you could see in june 1947

8:51

in bombay under the british raj so where he was born it was still under british rule and it was in the following months in august that year that india and pakistan were subsequently to receive independence but when he was born he it was still under the british raj and he's there's something important to learn about salman rushdie is he was born into privilege his family were quite privileged his father was not your common kind of person his father his name was anis ahmad

Paragraphs overlapping 5:17 to 9:18. Full text on the recording page.

Cite this segment

Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2022-08-19-S02, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/t0phqrnjjby/s/2/ (accessed 1 November 2026)

APA 7 
Mufti Abu Layth. (2022, August 19). What does the Mufti think of Salman Rushdie as a person? [Video, segment 2022-08-19-S02, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/t0phqrnjjby/s/2/
Chicago author-date 
Mufti Abu Layth. 2022. "What does the Mufti think of Salman Rushdie as a person?" Video, segment 2022-08-19-S02, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded August 19, 2022. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/t0phqrnjjby/s/2/
BibTeX 
@misc{abulayth-2022-08-19-S02,
  author = {Mufti Abu Layth},
  title = {{What does the Mufti think of Salman Rushdie as a person?}},
  year = {2022},
  month = {8},
  date = {2022-08-19},
  howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/t0phqrnjjby/s/2/}},
  url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/t0phqrnjjby/s/2/},
  organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive},
  urldate = {2026-11-01},
  note = {Segment 2022-08-19-S02, auto-transcribed, may contain errors}
}
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