Malik, a researcher and public intellectual in the UK, analyzes the conditions within which the fatwa on Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was issued in 1989 and traces its consequences for the development of the rhetoric of jihad in the Middle East and within the West itself. In this book he discusses current debates about the ‘Muslim issue’ and the widespread disillusionment with multiculturalism in the West, including how certain integration policies (especially in the UK) actually contributed to the rise of radical Islam within western Muslim communities.