Put simply, Rushdie had the power to shape the public narrative of Islam in a manner that British Muslims themselves did not. Ironically, in his recently published memoir Rushdie comments on the difficulty of controlling how a story is told: “At the heart of the dispute over The Satanic Verses . . . behind all the accusations and abuse, was a question of profound importance: Who shall have control over the story? Who has, who should have, the power not only to tell the stories with which, and within which, we all lived, but also to say in what manner those stories may be told?” Rushdie's answer to these questions is that “everyone and anyone has, or should have that power,” and yet the Rushdie Affair is a prime example of the unequal distribution of this power. Rushdie's novel demonstrates how one person can have control over the most sacred stories of a marginalized religious community in Britain.

XREF: Connects to broader questions of who controls narratives, especially postcolonial and media power dynamics.

Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 356