From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

I read this book after hearing Christopher Hitchens recommend it to a journalist interested in the state of Islam in the UK. I feel that with the passing of time since I read the book, my memory has faded somewhat, but as I came across the book again on Amazon and nobody had written a review, I thought that I would give an indication as to how much I enjoyed the book. There were several aspects that really struck me about how, in Malik's view, British Muslims were encouraged to group together artificially by councils and other government agencies to present a unified case, and that this is one way in which disparate groups encountering racism and the ills of British city life came to be united.

What made Malik's book so powerful for me is that this is the first account of the Britain of my youth which I really recognise. The racism, the Paki-bashing, the national front, the bigotry, far from being as isolated as some would like to suggest, were pervasive through my youth - and I hated every second of it. I grew up far enough away from Brixton to be aware that there were problems down the road, but close enough to experience the distasteful vagaries of racists and bigots. Malik has supplied me with a book where I can say, 'You want to know what the Britain of my youth was like ... there you are.' I can think of no better compliment to pay a writer.

The more complex problems that Malik investigates are intriguing. Some of his secular friends have become religious and, so Malik seems to suggest, have found an identity, albeit perhaps an inauthentic one (if that is not a disingenuous phrase) in a new form of Islam that is seen as a revitalisation of an old form. Such has the problem of identity become that as in the case where a novelist writes a book, like Monica Ali, it is questioned whether or not she is representative of the community from which she comes. Such an attempt to question whether a novelist should be allowed to write is an offence to every thinking person, to humanity as a whole. It is as much where we are like others, as much as where we differ that makes us who we are. And besides all that a novel is a work of fiction and should be treated as such.

'This is the first book to examine the powerful effect on freedom of speech and expression of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie in 1989. It is one of those rare books that tells you what, the sound and fury apart, is really going on. Malik probes the culture of self-censorship and political posturing that erodes free speech and skilfully questions the positions of the left and liberals. In his words: "If we invite the state to define the boundaries of acceptable speech, we cannot complain if it is not just speech to which we object that gets curtailed."'

The Orwell Prize is Britain's most prestigious prize for political writing. The Book Prize judges for 2010 were Jonathan Heawood (director, English PEN), Andrew Holgate (literary editor, Sunday Times) and Francine Stock (writer and broadcaster).