Does anyone know the history behind these verses, other than what was written in Rushdie's fictional novel? It's pretty interesting...
At the dawn of Islam, Muhammad and his small band of followers had come head-to-head with his tribe, the Quraysh, who basically managed the Ka'aba (the big black block of Mecca) and it's pagan Gods. The place used to be filled with ancient pagan idols before the Muslims eventually destroyed them all. Bear in mind, that in a monotheistic religion, there can be only one God, and in Muhammad's case it was Allah, so worship of other Gods was considered blasphemous.
So anyway, the Quraysh tribe ran all of Muhammad's followers off to Christian Ethiopia where they stayed in exile. Muhammad meanwhile stayed in Mecca, where he and his immediate family were starved into submission and repent. As hunger took over, Muhammad revoked his Islamic preachings and admitted to acknowledging the three pagan Godesses of Mecca (al-Lat, al-Uzzah, and al-Manat). This saved Muhammad's life and later, all the exiles returned from Ethiopia.
When the heat from the Quraysh died down, this entire event was 'modified' in Muhammad's preachings (which were being documented by his assistants into creating the Q'uran itself) to explain that this revelation had come from none other than SATAN! It was therefore considered a "Satanic Verse".
So of course today, Islamic authorities hush up any form of Satanic Verse because it shows that, in facing mortal death, it was in fact Satan who saved Muhammad, not Allah. This is an embarrasment to the Islamic leaders, and of course opens the floodgates with regards to how many other passages in the Q'uran could actually be deemed Satanic, or beg the question as to why Allah didn't offer to save his messenger in the first place....
Cue the Ayatollah of Iran and his fatwa on Salman Rushdie. Anyway, I just thought this was interesting, and that's the long and short of it. Ho hum.