Rome, Italy - An Italian female former MP has upped the ante on the Anglo-Brit novelist, Sir Salman Rushdie, writer of Satanic Verses, by proclaiming on Canale 5 TV that the Prophet Mohammed was a polygamist and paedophile, incensing Muslim members of the audience.
Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses provoked death threats and a fatwā issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in February 1989, for asserting that the verses in question, allegedly from the Koran, permitted prayers of intercession to be made to three Pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Uzza, and Manāt. The novelist also suggested every time Mohammed was faced with an awkward question, he retired to a cave and, after mediating, always came out with a suitable answer. If such relatively low-key comments could provoke such a backlash in the Islamic world, Daniela Santanche’s comments are likely to render her an immediate target of Islamic fundamentalist hit squads. At the time of the debate, at least one bearded Arab-looking individual had to be restrained from attacking Santanche.
Daniela Santanche, a staunch feminist and former far right-wing MP of the post-fascist National Alliance party, made these controversial comments concerning the beloved founder of Islam in a TV debate with the president of Milan’s Islamic centre, Ali Abu Schwaima, on Sunday, March 21. The programme presenter was quick to absolve herself and her staff from blame following the debate, saying, “I and my staff dissociate ourselves from these comments, which are offensive to Islam.”
The debate’s ostensible topic hinged on the contentious issue of placing crucifixes in Italian classrooms after last week’s ban by the European Court of Human Rights. Santanche, now the leader of the far-right La Destra party, was staunchly opposed the conversion of a former velodrome into a mosque in Milan. Among other things, she opposes Muslim women wearing the veil in Italy and has called for a referendum to reopen the country’s brothels.
She had asserted that “Mohammed was a polygamist and a paedophile because he had nine wives, one of whom was only nine years old, that is a historical fact.” In his favour, however, it must be noted that polygamy was the norm in Arab countries at time the prophet lived, partially as a way of providing for the families of relatives whose father had died when life expectancy, because of the harsh existential conditions of the desert and inter-tribal warfare, was short. Muslims are still allowed four wives.
As for the paedophile accusation, Aisha, one of the prophet’s wives, was supposedly nine-years-old at the time of her marriage to Mohammed. Again child marriages were also common in Bedouin cultures in the 6 & 7th centuries AD because of the young girls’ ripeness and fresh faced-looks, as the desert sand swiftly erodes facial features. Even today in Yemen and Saudi Arabia child-marriage is still practised.