In an interview on Islamic Militancy

That is very true for many things.Your final choice is From Fatwa to Jihad by Kenan Malik.

I liked the book for a variety of reasons. It is well written and well researched and makes a series of good points. The most interesting point to me was about identity. Kenan Malik’s own background is as a left-wing activist and campaigner. This book is all about the fatwa which came out against Salman Rushdie after he wrote his book The Satanic Verses in 1988.

What does it show you about Islamic militancy?

The real point which he makes, which I really like, is that back in the 1980s he was angry, campaigning and politicised but on a race basis. It was all about being black. Kenan Malik is of Indian background and he lives in England. Nowadays you don’t hear much about people campaigning on those types of issues. Colour has changed to religion in that now you will hear, “It is because I am a Muslim,” rather than, “It is because I am black.” Second generation British-Indians are far less likely to talk about politics along the old lines of white, black, left wing, right wing and I think that shift is a very important one. I wonder what the next shift will be.

And isn’t there also the idea that this fatwa brought religion on to a global scale when Ayatollah Khomeini could reach out and say it is not just within my own country I have decreed this? Fatwas are so powerful they can go beyond borders to the West.

Absolutely. The fatwa was about globalising Islam. What is also interesting about the fatwa is that it didn’t actually have a real effect. Salman Rushdie is still alive and writing. It wasn’t this huge event that everyone thought. And the argument I make in my book about why Islamic militancy has failed in the way that it has failed is because people, on the whole, are much less global than we have been led to imagine. I am afraid I think that societies are primarily ruled by what happens locally. That could be in villages, in neighbourhoods, among their friends and their brothers. One of the primary predictors of militant behaviour is having a member of your family engaged in the same activity rather than some big global reason. And 90% of terrorist acts, even if spectacular events like 9/11 get most attention, are committed within a few miles, at most, of where their perpetrators live.