ABSTRACT
The Ayatollah’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie, in February 1989, has had as equally unsettling effects on the left as on the mainstream of British politics. The campaign against the Satanic Verses has revealed an increasingly confident and militant section of the Asian community, marching under the banner of Islam rather than of antiracism. Socialists—long unused to the passions aroused by religion—were taken by surprise. Feminists, beginning to absorb the emphasis that Black feminists were placing on cultural autonomy in the face of racism, were equally puzzled by the metamorphosis of ‘culture’ into a celebration of masculinity on the streets. Though uneasy in the knowledge that the defence of free speech has traditionally been the onus of radicals, both movements left the defence of Rushdie largely to his peers in the liberal literary establishment.
