Offending Muslims is harder than I thought

The Brighton Salon welcomed writer and broadcaster Kenan Malik to talk about the themes of his latest book From Fatwa to Jihad that marks the 20th anniversary of the death threat that drove Salmen Rushdie into hiding for writing The Satanic Verses, and preceded a new era in British politics and culture.

Kenan Malik first established that almost no-one in the room had managed to read The Satanic Verses. Then he asked why it was worth talking about the 20-year-old global controversy anyway. It is easy to underestimate the impact that the affair had on Britain and what it means for our understanding of multiculturalism and how the political landscape has been transformed.

The Jewel of Medina, a romantic and saucy book that had been commissioned by Random House, was pulled by the publisher after a single assistant professor in Islamic history had warned it was too offensive to Muslims to be published.

The Rushdie affair marked the beginning of a new kind of battle between a minority and the British state, where instead of taking action against discrimination or poverty, Muslims burned books and attacked publishers on the basis of their hurt feelings. The principle that it is morally unacceptable to offend was established in relations between different people in a way that we still suffer from today.

Kenan described how, in The Satanic Verses, the two main characters are hurtling toward the ground in a plane crashing on Sussex when they transform into the embodiment of good and evil, one into a goat-like demon and the other into an angel with a halo and start to have dreams. The book is a rewarding study of migration, Kenan said. There is not much of the book that talks about Islam specifically but the bit that offended was the suggestion that the prophet wrote the Koran rather than it being handed to him from God by the Angel Gabriel. The Satanic Verses refers to false pieces of the Koran that the devil tries to sneak in to the final book.

“There are myths here being used to create monsters. I returned to the Rushdie affair because there many myths about it and it also created monsters that need slaying,” said Kenan.

It is understood today that Muslims feel as if their identity is annihilated by what Rushdie wrote, but that was not how the affair started. Saudi Arabia had long believed itself to be the leader of Islam in the world and had used oil money to set up many organisations around the world that were sympathetic to it. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 had challenged that idea and both challengers for Islamic influence looked to attain moral superiority over the other. After being forced to end its war with Iraq on humiliating terms, Iran needed to regain its leading role in radical Islam. The Fatwa against Rushdie was aimed at Saudi Arabia for political reasons.

“The Satanic Verses was not banned in Iran and had already been reviewed in newspapers there before the Fatwa was passed,” Kenan said. The worldwide population of Muslims was not offended at first and it was in India, where Saudi organisations were campaigning in the run-up to a close election that the action against the book got underway. In Britain it presented an opportunity for the conservative elements of the Muslim community to regain the upper hand against the secular radicals.

Western liberals were unable to fully support Rushdie. In those Thatcherite days they felt powerless to do much about inequality but believed that the representation of minorities was a major problem and that showing respect for other people’s ideas and beliefs could avoid cultural pain.

This resulted in a shift in the meaning of the word radical in relation to Muslims from a secular identity to a fundamentalist one. Kenan related an anecdote about a Muslim who did not object to the publishing of those controversial Danish cartoons was told he wasn’t a proper Muslim by a Danish non-Muslim!

The British Council of Muslims had its origins in a conservative Saudi-backed campaign against The Satanic Verses. Recent polls show only 5% of British Muslims actually feel that the BCM represents their views while it has until very recently been representing Muslims in discussions with the government.

The Muslim community is much like others in that it has a whole range of attitudes and different views. However, once the liberals had identified minorities by their differences, they could only be protected from offence. An idea that is branded as offensive ends the discussion about it, putting any challenge to it beyond question. Free speech had to be curtailed in a plural democracy because censorship could defend minorities from offence.

The people most effectively and comprehensively silenced by this state of affairs were the progressive members of minorities who have had their books, plays and exhibitions banned and cancelled. The book-burners may have lost the battle with Rushdie because his book was published, but they won the war in the sense that they gained authority over their fellows and established that the state should protect them from anything they might be offended by. From the myth that all Muslims felt under attack, the institutionalisation of this view created a monster because it was now easier to be offended and many more things became offensive.

Lifting the veil off Muslim identity

The audience did not voice much in disagreement with Kenan’s presentation. Their questions included: Isn’t the veil a big issue for Muslim women? Isn’t the attitude of being offended a bad thing in that it is simply an emotional stance and not a rational one? Why are Muslims so attached to identity? Are Western perceptions based on the attitudes of hierarchical Christian religions inappropriate to Islam because it doesn’t have a central leadership, like Catholics, and is a more personal religion? What is the role of the crisis of British identity? Is there a case for adopting the French model of education and inclusion to rid ourselves of a grievance culture? Perhaps the radicals didn’t win their war either, if you can still publish a book so critical of them.

Kenan said that young Muslims in Britain had adopted a new identity rather than took one down from a traditional shelf. They had distanced themselves from the previous generation by taking up markers of that identity. There is no long tradition of being veiled in a particular way. Religion is not just a text and involves communities, traditions and cultural practices that the new radicals wanted to get away from. In that way they went back to the text and interpreted it more literally to suit the formation of their new identity.

The veils are an issue now but they were not worn in that way 150 years ago. Western attitudes to Islam were once very different to now. “Today we have an idea of a very puritanical and uptight Islam,” said Kenan. “Back then it was seen as too sexual!”

Identity in Britain is a problem for everyone when you’re asked ‘What does it mean to be British?’ But the adoption of a radical Islamic identity is different in that it is a more parochial category. It divides you from all the people of other backgrounds who may feel the same way as you about broad social issues. As an institutional multiculturalism rewards only special communities (poor does not count), one has to identify oneself as from that community in everything one does. This does involve emotional responses to situations rather than political ones.

“Racism in France has just been ignored in a way that is just as bad as multiculturalism,” Kenan said. He could not recommend the French attitude to assimilation in the light of the treatment of migrant workers from North Africa.

The origins of multiculturalism are in the identity politics of the New Left of the 1960s who had started to forsake politics for narrower concerns, phasing out ideology and bringing in identity.

“The great idea of equality has changed. Western liberals have betrayed it as they have with free speech,” said Kenan. Equality once meant that everyone had the right to be treated the same despite their differences. “Now it means the right to be treated differently because you’re different,” said Kenan.

The Brighton Salon would like to thank Kenan for a fascinating and informative discussion and Rob Clowes, the Salon’s chairman, heartily recommends From Fatwa to Jihad. There wasn’t time in the discussion to touch on many of the issues the book raises.

Next month, The Brighton Salon presents Policing Booze on the Beach with its own Sean Bell (myself) and the Manifesto Club’s Josie Appleton.

Brighton council has created booze control zones where alcohol can be confiscated from adults on the suspicion of police officers. We have managed 200 years of alcoholic public enjoyment on Brighton Beach without such zones and the place draws people from around the country. By trying to control the beach to make it a nicer place, the council will ruin it as an arena for public pleasure.

The salon takes place on June 25 at 7pm for 7.30pm at 'The Terraces' on Marine Parade. To reserve a place call 01273 507076 or 0782 5168685 or go to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Sean Bell