Events in Britain since the Salman Rushdie affair have highlighted the extent to which British Muslims are increasingly making claims on their status as citizens of the nation-state - quite literally renegotiating the boundaries of what it means to belong. This work explores the tensions and the contradictions facing ethnic minorities in a multicultural society, particularly when those communities assert rights that the majority would often prefer they went without - in this particular case the right to express their Islamic identity and culture in ways which sometimes disturb and challenge prevailing notions of what it means to be British. Using the Rushdie affair as a starting point, this work sets the debates around Muslim religious identity and cultural politics in the wider contect of contemporary ideas about globalization and diaspora, community and hybridity.
