Sacred Cows: The Rushdie Affair - How it Seemed Then

In 1989, after the Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for writingThe Satanic Verses, Fay Weldon publishedSacred Cows, a pamphlet critical of the fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran.

Weldon's pamphlet received a lot of attention on publication - mostly criticism of her perceived 'Islamophobia' - but Weldon set out to enforce the notion that no religion should have the right to issue threats and intimidation; no religion should hinder free expression.

InSacred Cows,Weldon criticizes all aspects of British society - Murdoch and theSun's page 3 girls; white, liberal complacence; problems with education and the NHS - and argues that the affront to Muslim people in Britain was not caused by publication ofThe Satanic Versesitself but rather by the 'awfulness of the society we have allowed to grow up around us'.The Satanic Versesis remedy, according to Weldon, to a fractured, ailing society. Publishing literature like this proves that our society 'may yet be well and our brave new God of individual conscience may yet arise'.

Originally published by Chatto & Windus as part of the 'Chatto Counterblasts' strand, this ebook edition is reissued with a new introduction by the author, as part of the Brain Shots series: the pre-eminent source for high quality, short-form digital non-fiction.