The Rushdie Affair in Britain and the Netherlands
The worldwide protests against The Satanic Verses and the threats to its author Salman Rushdie are widely known. But how can we understand these protests – and the reactions to them? What does it mean to place the Rushdie Affair into the contemporary history of multiculturalism? Our focus will be on Britain and the Netherlands. The discussion will also address the affair’s long-term repercussions in both countries, including for their Muslim minorities, and the prospects of multiculturalism and diversity today.
The publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in 1988 sparked a global protest wave and raised pertinent questions about artistic freedom, religious identity and multicultural society. This event will shed light on the Rushdie Affair’s origins and repercussions in both Britain and the Netherlands.
Kieran Connell will highlight the relationship between the cosmopolitan author Rushdie and the deprived Northern English city of Bradford, where protesters famously burned his novel. He will show how local Muslims saw the campaign as a continuation of their prior antiracist activism – in stark contrast to how they were perceived by the British public. Leo Lucassen’s focus will be on the reception of the affair in the Netherlands. There left-wing secularists felt compelled to turn against state-sponsored multiculturalism and the presence of Islam in Dutch society – thus paving the road for the populist right of the 2000s. Such long-term consequences of the affair will be at the centre of the panel discussion, which will be joined by historian and journalist Lotfi El Hamidi. What can the history of the Rushdie Affair tell us about multiculturalism and diversity today?
Speakers
Kieran Connell is a writer and historian from Birmingham who teaches at Queen’s University Belfast. He has authored Multiculturalism in Britain: A People’s History (2024, shortlisted for the Wolfson Prize) and is currently working on a historical study of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses to be published in 2028.
Leo Lucassen teaches at the University of Leiden and is the former director of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. He has widely published on the history of migration in the Netherlands and elsewhere, including Migratie als DNA van Amsterdam (2021, with Jan Lucassen).
Lotfi El Hamidi is a historian and journalist, who has worked for NRC and is now editor at De Groene Amsterdammer. His publications include Generatie 9/11. Migratie, diaspora en identiteit (2022, nominated for the PrinsjesBoekenprijs) and Stakkers en wolven. In de schaduw van Gaza (2026).
Maaike Voorhoeve (moderator) teaches at the University of Amsterdam and is the former co-editor-in-chief of ZemZem. Tijdschrift over het Midden-Oosten, Noord-Afrika en islam. She is a scholar of Islamic law and is currently researching the influence of colonialism on gender laws in the Muslim world.
