A Mirror for Our Times: "The Rushdie Affair" and the Future of Multiculturalism.

• Author: Abbas, Tahir
• Position: Book review

A Mirror for Our Times: "The Rushdie Affair" and the Future of Multiculturalism By Paul Weller New York, London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 2009, 277 pages, ISBN 9780826451200, 19.99 [pounds sterling].

"The Rushdie Affair" that began in 1989 with the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, the "Book Burning in Bradford" that came soon afterwards, and the now infamous fatwa declared by the late Ayatollah Khomeini still have important implications for discussions of religion, culture, identity, faith and the nature of diverse societies today as it did then. Such is the legacy of this episode of British multicultural history that debates focusing on how to deal with the challenges of diversity, inter-faith dialogue, tolerance and co-existence remain as important as ever. In response to such a cultural and intellectual challenge Professor Paul Weller has written this book to reflect on this "mirror for our times". The book is an important and timely contribution to a set of issues that remain topical in relation to a whole host of spheres, not least in social science studies of Muslim minorities, but also in relation to policy-level questions on how to manage diverse societies.

There is no doubt that the 1989 publication of Rushdie's now infamous novel has had profound implications for the ways in which questions in relation to the positions and experiences of Muslim minorities in Britain and in the West would be seen for the foreseeable future; and, it seems, given the events of the 2006 Cartoons Affair, the lingering impacts continue. Largely invisible to the "host community", the Rushdie book catapulted the presence of Muslims in Britain; however, it did so in a fundamentally negative and reductive way. As much as there was and is huge diversity among the Muslims of the West, the dominant media and political discourse invariably characterized this group in essentialized and homogenized terms. While the 1990s raged on, with global conflicts often involving Muslim nations and peoples, and with the events of 9/11 in the USA and 7/7 in Britain that came in the new millennium, much remains the same. Polarizations between those who regard religion as a negative force while often promulgating a secular, liberal and democrat process have sometimes defined themselves as the very same "Muslimness" which in reality is the experience of minority groups vying for recognition, acceptability, equality and fairness. The...