I've seen it all now

Will Gompertz

14 January 1989 was one of the darkest days of recent British history. It saw book-burning on the streets of Yorkshire as a result of a murderous religious edict from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini against a British-Indian author. That edict (fatwa) resulted in the author being targeted for assassination, going into hiding and receiving round-the-clock police protection. People associated with publishing the book were attacked and even killed. People died in riots around the world. And latent extremism within the UK's Muslim population became overt, with consequences that have echoed down the subsequent decades.

Astonishingly, last night's BBC One News at Ten reported the anniversary without mentioning the fatwa or the deaths that followed it.

And, even more astonishingly, Will Gompertz's piece proved to be nothing less than a celebration of the event, marking the wonderful moment when British Muslims got their voice.

Here's a transcript of this truly jaw-dropping, appalling BBC report:

Newsreader: It's 30 years since the publication of the book The Satanic Verses sparked protests right around the world. Some Muslims believed its author, Salman Rushdie, blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad. The controversy prompted a vigorous debate about freedom of speech and respect for religious sensitivities that resonates today. They are themes that will be explored at the Bradford Literature Festival, which opened tonight - in a city where a copy of The Satanic Verses was burned in public in 1989. Our arts editor, Will Gompertz, has more:

Syima Aslam, Director, Bradford Literary Festival: This is the centre of Bradford, the heart of Bradford. 30 years ago, this was also where some rather momentous events took place. This is where The Satanic Verses was burnt. It's the image that became seared in the national consciousness and became associated with this city. For Muslims collectively, it was a moment of crystallisation of identity. Prior to that, you know, everybody was Asian, there wasn't really the religious nuance. What you see at that moment is people saying, actually I live here, this is my country, I belong here, I'm going to spend the rest of my life here and my children are going to grow up here, so if I don't like something I'm going to raise my voice.

Will Gompertz: The festival is hosting a series of events, with contemporary authors reflecting on the politics of writing three decades on from Salman Rushdie's controversial novel.

Will Gompertz (to Ayisha Malik): Would your books - which are about Muslims dating and putting a mosque in a British village - would those have been published, 30 years ago, and would they have created a reaction if they were? Ayisha Malik, author: No, I don't think they would have been published and certainly not a book about a mosque in a village, because that conversation wasn't even happening and I don't think we were part of things in that way. I think a writer should be allowed to write whatever they want to write about, that is just categorical. What I do think, though, is that you have a responsibility. I don't believe in censorship when it comes to writing, but I do think that you have to bear the consequences of what you write. 

A new play, Imam Imran, which is part of the festival programme. It explores issues of identity, perception, protest and faith.

Will Gompertz (to Iqbal Khan): So if you go back 30 years to the burning of The Satanic Verses and that moment and everything that happened since, where does this play bring us to? Iqbal Khan, director: OK, so I think it brings us to a place where I think the confidence to protest is more present now I think than it was then. I think the protest now is more articulate, more subtle and more nuanced. I think also particularly in the way the play deals with these issues, there's the confidence to use satire, to use humour, to use other ways of addressing the issues other than naked anger and frustration.     

The subject of protest is extended to the festival itself. Some authors have pulled out of events after discovering a government counter-extremism scheme had provided funding, proving once again that art and politics are not strange bedfellows, but are intimately connected. Will Gompertz, BBC News, Bradford. 

Becoming the norm

Before I got distracted by the previous observations I intended to write about an intriguing programme I saw last night on BBC Four. A very engaging Don McCullin “pootling “ around the nation in an affectionate documentary called “Looking for England” 

McCullins's black and white photos provided striking material for the TV screen, never mind the photogenic and sprightly octogenarian himself, whose enthusiasm and energy haven’t waned. 

Jasper Rees in the Telegraph:  

“In this cheerful assignment-cum-profile (directed by Adrian Sibley), he pootled around the nation, looking for Englishness in a country in the constant act of self-definition.”

The famous McCullin images are iconic, and it was gratifying to the photographer and, I think, to the viewer, to witness a stranger coming up to say hello and then identifying himself as one of the young men featured in a photograph taken by McCullin, captured decades ago when enjoying a game of football on the beach with his workmates; or another who knew the (now deceased) character who was famously portrayed in a much-admired image of a young couple standing on a railway track amidst some desolate 60s landscape. These two encounters seemed genuinely spontaneous. Doesn't really matter though. 

Very touching, nostalgic and engaging it all was, revisiting locations he’d known before. Interestingly he still sticks to the old-fashioned craft of photography, using proper rolls of film and manually developing and printing in the darkroom, himself.

No more Jewish bakery in Dalston. Hardly any Jews remaining in areas now populated by Muslims; those fox hunters - and then the hooded, black-clad protesters. McCullin seemed remarkably non-judgemental about it all. 

Jasper Rees continues:

“He found a capacious place with room for one and all: pensioners in the rain at Eastbourne, down and outs in the East End, men in Bradford beating their bare chests at a Muslim festival.” 

All the press reviews I’ve read seem remarkably unconcerned about this hideous ritual, which our politically correct journalists either ignored altogether or, as in this review, casually slipped in at the end of the list of photogenic situations and scenarios in which there’s “room for one and all”.

The Bradford street celebration that McCullin took snaps of in a seemingly detached manner involved a mob of self-flagellating Muslim men commemorating a festival called Ashura. Hundreds of them. They processed down the street, bare-chested, in a trance-like frenzy of self-harm; some of their backs were raggedly scarred. Witnessing that could drive arrows through the heart. Metaphorical arrows.

“This will become the norm in future in my opinion,” said McCullin. I wasn’t sure if he was genuinely dispassionate about such a bleak future, or whether his apparent indifference disguised weary resignation or deep sorrow. You couldn’t tell.  

This is not okay. Surely to goodness, there’s no room for this ugly manifestation of Islamification in Britain’s towns and cities.  Why are people so complacent about it? If they really are, then God help us.