In the 1980s or 1990s almost nobody predicted that the first decades of the twentieth century in Europe would be riven by discussions about religion. The increasingly secular continent had expected to be able to leave faith behind it, or at least recognised that after many centuries the place of religion in the modern state had been pretty much settled. If, more specifically, anybody in the late part of the twentieth century had said that the early years of the next century in Europe would be rife with discussions about blasphemy and that death for blasphemy would once again have to be expected in Europe, any audience would have scorned the prediction and doubted the sanity of the claimant. It was not that the early-warning sirens that went off were not heard. How could some of them not be? The problem was that they were consistently ignored.

Britain had one of the earliest warnings, from Valentine’s Day 1989 when the Supreme Leader of the Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a document calling on ‘all zealous Muslims of the world’ to know that ‘the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses – which has been compiled, printed and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet and the Qur’an – and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its contents, are sentenced to death’. The Ayatollah went on: ‘I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities.’6 The head of a Tehran ‘charitable foundation’ followed this up with a $3 million reward for the British novelist’s murder (the bounty to be reduced by $2 million if the murderer was a non-Muslim). Britain – and the rest of Europe – learned the word fatwa for the first time.

Within less than 24 hours Rushdie was in hiding, with protection provided by the British state. Soon thousands of British Muslims were on the streets supporting the imposition of Islamic blasphemy laws in Britain. In Bradford, in the north of England, the novel was nailed to a piece of wood and then burnt in front of crowds of thousands of Muslims. One man who thanks to the controversy was on the fast-track to Muslim leadership status, Iqbal (later Sir Iqbal) Sacranie, was asked whether he thought the author of The Satanic Verses deserved death. Sacranie replied, ‘Death perhaps, is a bit too easy for him.’7 Britain’s most famous convert to Islam, Yusuf Islam (formerly known as the singer Cat Stevens), was asked on a television programme whether he would give Rushdie shelter if he were to turn up at his door. He replied, ‘I’d try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is.’ Asked whether he would go to a demonstration where an effigy of Rushdie was being burnt, he replied, ‘I would have hoped that it would be the real thing.’8