arise sir fatwa

Rushdie quote of the day: "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." *

Last year I was made redundant from an urban regeneration programme in east London. Over half the residents of the neighbourhood it operates in are Bangladeshi - or, being accurate, Sylheti - Muslims (Sylhet being a very poor, rural region within Bangladesh). The younger generation have mostly been born in London, and their parents mostly haven't. There are high levels of literacy, language, unemployment, housing, health, mental health, drug and other problems, and the neighbourhood is characterised by the "batten down the hatches" tendency that can characterise immigrant communities. The undisputed centre of power is the mosque, the mosque is entirely run by the old men, and the brand of Islam practiced locally seems to be pretty fundamentalist, as I described in some posts last summer.

Last spring, with lots of us facing redundancy, we all got to talking in ways we never really had before - bonding over our shared uncertainty, saying goodbye to what had been a pretty intense shared experience, and discussing our hopes, fears and plans. I was privy to a lot of this as I was also acting as union rep. One day I got to chatting with a Bengali colleague of mine, and in the course of it I mentioned that before the council (long before the council) I had worked for Penguin Books.

His face took on a look of significance and he went, "ohh-hhh..."

I thought, "hullo! I never had you down for the type who's interested in publishing," but I thought maybe the imprint has such name recognition or something, so I said, "what?"

And he starts blushing, hemming and hawing like a denizen of Hogwarts suddenly asked to name Voldemort. I still didn't get it. Then he stammers out something about "that book, you know..."

Dear God. Even after five years in that neighbourhood I hadn't seen it coming.

And here we are again. With a fresh fracas breaking out over the scarily inappropriate reaction in Pakistan** to the news of Rushdie's knighthood, I'd be interested in how the news is going down in my old stomping ground.

Or maybe I'd find it boringly predictable.

By the way, back in the day we were quite scared in our little Penguin shop in Covent Garden - Penguin was afraid to be seen to do a reprint, even though the book was selling like hot cakes; there were lots of bomb threats. My sweet, mild-mannered erstwhile workmate might not have liked to consider the implications of that.

* Bonus quote of the day (hat tip to the Drink-soaked Trots): "Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him .. his mind must be tormented for the rest of his life unless he asks for forgiveness to Almighty Allah."

This is Iqbal Sacranie, ex-chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain, speaking at the time of the original fatwa against Rushdie. Knighted two years ago, he is is now Sir Iqbal Sacranie. So much for all the Pakistani cries of "Wolf! Wolf!"

** "This is an occasion for the 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision," Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, religious affairs minister, told the Pakistani parliament in Islamabad. "The west is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body he would be right to do so unless the British government apologises and withdraws the 'sir' title."