That fatwa<\/a><\/em> equals death sentence does not equal death sentence<\/a> was one of many things British non-Muslims would learn. Rushdie, who knew what he was on about, knew this was not what fatwa<\/em> meant, but he would himself learn that this doesn\u2019t matter. He also knew \u2013 he says he knew \u2013 that his novel, The Satanic Verses<\/em>, was neither an attack on Islam nor a deliberate attempt to insult the Prophet Muhammad. Again, it would not matter. How others interpreted his work shaped his life and security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It had wider repercussions as well \u2013 significant ones for\nthe seam of studies that underpin this centre. We are the Centre for the Study\nof Islam in the UK, and the social circumstances and relations of British\nMuslims are our subject. Arguably, there were no \u2018British Muslims\u2019 \u2013 not as a\nspecific object of study \u2013 before Rushdie\u2019s novel, the outcry, the fatwa<\/em>, and the ensuing events. This\nargument is made persuasively by many researchers who note that the ways in\nwhich these populations were classified hitherto were ethnic (Asian, Pakistani,\nArab) or racialized (simply, Black). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Those upset at Rushdie\u2019s novel, however, disrupted these\nsilos. Their solidarities cut across ethnic lines, so that Pakistanis, Arabs,\nand Somalis had common cause. Meanwhile, hierarchical religion was precisely\none of the institutions that the emancipatory politics of Black Britain\nstruggled with. Blasphemy was a hard cause to support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so, they were made Muslim in a scholarly sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pnina Werbner, the anthropologist<\/a>, witnessed this \u2018sudden visibilsation\u2019 of British Muslims firsthand (2002: 107). In the midst of fieldwork among Pakistanis in Manchester, she experienced \u2018a personal moment of crisis. My initial reaction to the calls for the author\u2019s death was one of disbelief and shock. The sense of the gulf between myself and the people who for years had been not only the subject of my scholarly research, but close friends whom I trusted and esteemed, was quite devastating.\u2019 (2002: 8) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Her long-term engagement with the community she was studying gave her a context that, initially, made the change surprising. It also allowed her to identify the different currents within this community and follow where they led. That was to a collective moment of reflection on how to be<\/em> in this space and where loyalties were imagined to lie. Optimistically, for Werbner, \u2018[t]he Rushdie affair underlined the full implications of being a British citizen as a felt set of obligations and entitlements. On the one hand, there came to be a general acceptance that, as overseas Muslims outside the House of Islam, British Muslims were both duty-bound and obliged to respect the law of the land. On the other hand, the affair spurred the community on to create much more specific and achievable local agendas\u2026\u2019 (2002: 258)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Werbner proposed the idea of the diasporic public sphere<\/em>, an internal space in which Muslims could have dialogue and from which they spoke to the wider public. Tariq Modood, sociologist at Bristol University<\/a>, was similarly engaged with social research at the time and able to witness, comment on, and, through his own writing, shape some of the direction for this new Muslim consciousness. His work, along with others, including his student Nasar Meer<\/a>, concerns precisely the \u2018specific and achievable local agendas\u2019 Werbner identified as an outcome of the Rushdie Affair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Growing up, I was peripherally aware of Rushdie and had read\na couple of his novels. Before embarking on my MA, I made sure I read The Satanic Verses<\/em>. His story has\ncontoured the subject I studied and now teach and research, but I came back to\nhis writing this past Christmas. My wife had given me Joseph Anton<\/em>, his memoir of those years in hiding. It\u2019s engagingly\nwritten \u2013 quite a story, obviously, though I felt it sprawled. It\u2019s much easier\nwriting fiction, when you can end the hero\u2019s story when you want to, rather\nthan when as a matter of public record the narrative in fact ends. I built up a\nfair amount of sympathy for him at the beginning which was squandered the\ndeeper into his affairs it got.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, reading it with a professional eye, I was most\ninterested in his characterisation of the ideological battlefield in which he both\nhad inserted himself and was forcibly inserted. Though he says his purpose was\nnot to malign the religion, he has little patience in the memoir for those who\ndid not defend him. His ledger is clean and straightforward: you are with him\nor you are against him. Those who suggest that Muslims had legitimate reasons\nfor grievance are enemies, supporters of the fatwa<\/em>. I don\u2019t believe this to be true, but I can understand why he\nwould feel that way. His life was directly implicated as few others\u2019 were. For\nhim, these positions are absolute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet it seems a failure for a literary novelist \u2013 a type whose business is nuanced portraits of the human condition and a resistance to blunt, easy distinctions. Social scientists, like novelists, are trained to seek nuance, eschew binaries, and above all critically examine situations and relations. We look at things from multiple sides, and this often looks like faff to the wider public. For Rushdie, it looks like collaboration. Modood, for example, is a minor villain in Rushdie\u2019s book, name-dropped alongside US scholar Akbar Ahmed as a hypocrite appeasing those who wanted to kill the author. It\u2019s not how I see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What seems clear to me, though, is that the entire affair\nprecipitated the field of British Muslim studies. It highlighted the importance\nnot only of religious literacy in general, as a companion to the tools of literary\ncriticism, but specific knowledge about Muslims: what their terms mean, what\nthey believe and how they disagree, what their history looks like and how their\npresent is shaped. What their future might hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before Rushdie\u2019s story concluded, another event occurred that set a new node on the contour line of social studies of Muslims. He was living in New York at the time of the attacks of 11 September 2001, though he was in Houston, Texas on the day itself. Of the post-9\/11 period, Rushdie has both the arrogance and the self-awareness to say, \u2018The prologue was past and now the world was grappling with the main event.\u2019 (2012: 626) In this, his analysis is spot on. When I present key moments for Muslims and the media, I dwell on the Rushdie Affair, and people sometimes thank me for taking this longer view. For some, 9\/11 is the date that everything changed and everything starts. In Britain, this \u2018sudden visibilisation\u2019 occurred earlier, so the story of our discipline is closely connected to the story of this man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Works cited: Dr Michael Munnik<\/a> is Lecturer for Social Science Theories and Methods with Cardiff University\u2019s School of History, Archaeology and Religion and the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK. His research concerns the production of news about Muslims in Britain and the participation of Muslims in the news media<\/a>. Dr Munnik is the Communications and Publications Officer for the Sociology of Religion Study Group<\/a> for the British Sociological Association.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"14 February marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fatwa pronounced by the Iranian religious and political leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini advocating the murder of Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie. Some Valentine. 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Rushdie, Salman. Joseph Anton: A Memoir. <\/em>London: Jonathan Cape, 2012
Werbner, Pnina. Imagined Diasporas among Manchester Muslims: The Public Performance of Pakistani Transnational Identity Politics. <\/em>Oxford: James Currey, 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n