Identity crisis

A new BBC series explores the wider story of the 1989 Satanic Verses controversy

Fatwa RADIO Radio 4 Weekdays from Monday 4 February

On 14 February 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie and his publishers. But why did Iran’s ailing supreme leader target the author of The Satanic Verses? And what were the consequences in Britain and the wider world?

These are the questions addressed by a new series which, rather than focusing on Rushdie’s own personal ordeal, looks at the wider story over two decades. “We’re trying to create a sense of the context in which the fatwa happened,” explains executive producer Richard Knight.

The series – which is produced by Chloe Hadjimatheou and gathers together first-hand testimony from, among others, book-burners, activists of different stripes and academics – begins not in the late 1980s, but in 1979. This was the year the shah of Iran’s government was toppled, a year chosen to help “understand the nature of the regime from which the fatwa emerged”.

More central to the series, though, is the story of Britain’s Muslim community in the 1980s – of life in a place where overt racism was far more commonplace than today, and where many white Britons were at best dimly aware of how communities with roots abroad saw themselves. The series makes the point that 1989 changed this.

“For [immigrant communities], 1989 was a moment when a kind of definition happened,” says Knight. “On all sides, people were struggling to find, project, communicate and understand their identities – or the identities of others – and that was thrown into sharp relief.” Yet the fatwa forced people to choose sides. “You had to decide where you stood,” says Knight.

Carrying the story forward to 1999, the series also looks at the consequences of the event. We hear from those who were drawn towards jihad, and voices from the nationalist right who sought to play on the fears the fatwa brought to the surface. The subject of self-censorship, because of the danger of inspiring “a violent, aggressive response”, also features prominently.

“There were implications for everyone, some of which are subtle and some of which are more obvious,” says Knight. “We’re trying to understand what those consequences may have been.”