the beast

    Salman Rushdie has the ability to tell a story that has many hidden meanings. To the unsuspecting reader, Rusdie’s ridicule and hidden opinions of the religion of Islam may be to far trapped within the brilliantly written satire. I had to read The Prophets Hair two times before I could ever began to grasp what he might be trying to get across to the reader. Rushdie has a history of upsetting people with his literary works and after publication of The Satanic Versus, he was forced to go into hiding because many wanted to harm him. It was only after he claimed to have a renewed faith in Islam was he able to show his face in public again. I think it is important to develop your own sense of what Rushdie is trying to convey in The Prophets Hair because the book East, West was written six years after The Satanic Versus, and this means the author was probably utilizing his greatest satire efforts to still get his point across without being to obvious.
    This short story follows Hashim, a wealthy moneylender and his downward spiral towards self-destruction. Hashim finds a small vial floating in the water and when closely observed, he realized that it is a single hair, Mohammed’s hair. When Hashim realizes the importance of this find, he becomes obsessed and has a complete change of character. Hashim’s logic in keeping the hair is that since the prophet Mohammed would have disapproved of his hair being stored in some museum as an object of worship, Hashim’s duty was to keep it to himself, away from the public. His discovery drives him into an obsessed maniac, completely contradictory to his usual life. Although Hashim had been a collector of many things in the past: spears, butterflies, swords, etc, this discovery of a relic had an impact that affected all those around him. It tears him apart emotionally to the point in which he claims his marriage was “the worst of his afflictions,” and that he also had a mistress. He claimed that his son Atta was a “dope” and accused his daughter of lasciviousness. Atta was the first to try and hire a thief to steal the relic from their father, but since he went down to the slums with to much money, he was assaulted and beaten to within an inch of his life. Huma succeeds in hiring the thief but when the thief is inches away from stealing the hair from beneath Hashim’s pillow, Atta screams and dies. This causes Hashim's wife to scream in lament, waking Hashim. Hashim wakes up walk down the hall stabbing the first thing he saw, his daughter. After all this he ends up killing himself.
    There are two things that I believe can change a person the most, money and religion. Since Hashim already had plenty of money, as Rushdie emphasized over and over again, I came to the conclusion that the finding of the hair was not just the discovery of a relic, but the finding of a religion. By bringing religion down to the level of something as earthly as a hair, you can observe the effects of it more clearly. Hashim's discovery of the hair prompted numerous changes in his life, including the acknowledgement of his wrongdoings, and a complete change of character, just as finding a religion would do. Although it is unclear to an extent, it seems as if Rushdie is describing what happens when one gives his or her life over to a religion. It seems as if Rushdie is saying that one cannot think clearly and that to give ones life over to a faith is like transforming yourself into something you are not.
    Like the ending to the Life of Brian, which we watched in class. This short story also brings religion down to a point where is not something holy or sacred. This desacrilization allows us to analyze the effects of a religion or relic without getting caught up in the aura that accompanies religion. Although not as outright as the Life of Brian in its message, The Prophets Hair does something different by subliminally displaying the effect religion has on someone’s character.