Liberals were in a tricky position, having to argue both for linguistic protectionism in some areas and for freedom in others. So that when some Muslims began to speak of ‘respect’ for their religion and the ‘insult’ of The Satanic Verses the idea of free speech and its necessity and extension was always presented as the conclusive argument. Criticism was essential in any society. This could be said, but not that. But how would this be decided, and by whom?
The Marxists, too, were finding the issue of the fatwa difficult. It was only partly a coincidence that Islamic fundamentalism came to the West in the year that that other great cause, Marxist-Communism, disappeared. The character of the stuttering socialist teacher in The Black Album — Deedee Osgood’s husband Brownlow — was partly inspired by some of the strange convolutions of the disintegrating Left at the time.
At a conference in Amsterdam in 1989 I remember arguing with John Berger, who was insisting that complaints about The Satanic Verses were justified, as they came from the downtrodden proletariat. Why, he said, would he want to support a privileged middle-class artist who was — supposedly — attacking the deepest beliefs of an otherwise exploited and humiliated Muslim working class? This seemed to me to be an eccentric and perverse point of view, particularly from a writer who valued freedom, and when it was obvious that the opportunity to dissent, to be critical of leaders and authorities — and to be free of censorship — was necessary for anyone to live a good life, as the many writers, critics and journalists in prison in Muslim countries would no doubt attest.
To struggle my way through this thicket of fine distinctions, difficult debates and violent outcomes, I invented the story of Shahid, a somewhat lost and uncertain Asian kid from Kent, whose father has recently died — and who joins up, at college, with a band of similar-minded anti-racists. The story develops with Shahid discovering that the group are going further than anti-racist activism. They are beginning to organise themselves not only around the attack on Rushdie, but as Islamo-fascists who believe themselves to be in possession of the Truth.
This is a big intellectual leap. As puritanical truth-possessors, Riaz’s group and those they identify with have powerful, imperialistic ideas of how the world should be and what it should be purged of. Soon, believing the West has sunk into a stew of decadence, consumerism and celebrity obsession — a not-untypical fantasy about the West, corresponding to a not-unsimilar fantasy of the West about the sensual East, as Edward Said has argued — they believe it is their duty to bring about a new, pure world. They want to awaken benighted people to the reality of their situation. To do this they insist on a complete dominance of people’s private lives, and of women and female sexuality in particular.
Some of these attitudes were familiar to me, as I grew up in the sixties and seventies when the desire for revolution, for violent change, for the cleansing of exploitative capitalists and a more ethical world, was part of our style. Almost everyone I knew had wanted, and worked in some way to bring about, not only the modification of capitalism, but its overthrow. For us, from D. H. Lawrence to William Burroughs and the Sex Pistols, blasphemy and dissent was a blessed thing, kicking open the door to the future, bringing new knowledge, freedom and ways of living. The credo was: be proud of your blasphemy, these vile idols have been worshipped for too long! The point was to be disrespectful, to piss on the sacred and attack authority. As Guy Debord wrote, ‘Where there was fire, we carried petrol.’
But there was, mixed in with this liberation rhetoric, as in other revolutionary movements — either of the left or right — a strong element of puritanism and self-hatred. There was a desire for the masochism of obedience and self-punishment, something not only illustrated by the Taliban, but by all revolts, which are inevitably vitiated by the egotism of self-righteousness and in love with self-sacrifice. This concerns not only the erotics of the ‘revolutionary moment’, the ecstasy of a break with the past and the fantasy of renewal, but also the human pen chant for living in authoritarian societies and intransigent systems, where safety and the firm constraint of the leader are preferable to liberal doubt, uncertainty and change. As George Bataille reminds us in an essay written in 1957, ‘Man goes constantly in fear of himself. His erotic urges terrify him.’
Riaz, the solemn, earnest and clever leader of the small group which Shahid joins, understands that hatred of the Other is an effective way of keeping his group not only together but moving forward. To do this, he has to create an effective paranoia. He must ensure that the image and idea of the Other is sufficiently horrible and dangerous to make it worth being afraid of. The former colonialistic Western Other, having helped rush the East into premature modernity, must have no virtues. Just as the West has generated fantasies and misapprehensions of the East for its own purposes, the East — this time stationed in the West — will do the same, ensuring not only a comprehensive misunderstanding between the two sides, but a complete disjunction which occludes complexity.
Of course, for some Muslims this disjunction is there from the start. To be bereft of religion is to be bereft of human value. Almost unknowingly, Muslims who believe this are making a significant sacrifice by forfeiting the importance of seeing others, and of course themselves, as being completely human. In Karachi, I recall, people were both curious and amazed when I said I was an atheist. ‘So when you die,’ said one of my cousins, ‘you’ll be all dressed up with nowhere to go?’ At the same time Islamic societies, far from being ‘spiritual’, are — because of years of deprivation and envy — among the most materialistic on earth. Shopping and the mosque have no trouble in getting along together.
Some of the attitudes among the kids I talked to for The Black Album reminded me of Nietzsche’s analysis of the origins of religion, in particular his idea that religion — and Nietzsche was referring to Christianity — was the aggression of the weak, of the victim or oppressed. These attacks on the West, and the religion they were supposed to protect, were in fact a form of highly organised resentment or bitterness, developed out of colonialism, racism and covetousness. The violent criticism of Rushdie, an exceptionally gifted artist of whom the community should have been proud, was in fact a hatred of talent and of the exceptional, a kind of forced equalisation from a religion which had not only become culturally and intellectually mediocre, but which was looking to an invented past for solutions to contemporary difficulties.
Towards the end of The Black Album, with the help of his lecturer and soon-to-be-girlfriend Deedee Osgood, Shahid understands that he has to withdraw from this group in order to establish himself on his own terms at last. This isn’t easy, as the group has provided him with solidarity, friendship and direction, and doesn’t want to let him go.
He extracts himself, in part, by beginning to discover the exuberance and freedom of his own sexuality and creativity. ‘How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made?’ asks Salman Rushdie, relevantly, at the beginning of The Satanic Verses.
It is also no accident that British and American pop, as exemplified for Shahid by Prince’s intelligent, sensual and prolific creativity, is in a particularly lively phase. The clubs and parties Deedee takes Shahid to represent a continuing form of the youthful celebration and self-expression that Britain has enjoyed since the sixties.