ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to reconcile the author's work as a literary critic with the work he has undertaken in recent years on young Muslims in contemporary Britain, work which resulted in the author's book Young British Muslim Voices. In the aftermath of the bombings in London, and in the context of the 'War on Terror', young British Muslims have found themselves under intense political scrutiny. The chapter offers a cross-examination of the literary fiction of recent years by setting literary representations of young Muslims in Britain against the voices that he recorded in Young British Muslim Voices. Whilst Rushdie's own fiction only belatedly and reluctantly acknowledges the shift that was, in large part, initiated by The Satanic Verses, the work of Hanif Kureishi dramatically demonstrates it. In his novel,The Black Album, was perhaps the first literary work to register the profound transformations in identity amongst British Asian youth that had been set in motion by the Rushdie Affair.
