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Then Cat Stevens - Yusuf Islam - bubbled up in the Guardian like a fart in a bath, still demanding that Rushdie withdraw his book and 'repent', and claiming that his support of the fatwa was in line with the Ten Commandments. (In later years he would pretend that he never said any of these things, never called for anyone's murder, never justified it on the basis of his religion's 'law', never appeared on TV or spoken to the papers to spout his uneducated bloodthirsty rubbish, knowing he lived in an age in which nobody had a memory. Repeated denials could establish a new truth that erased the old one.)

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty told Alice, in Wonderland, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' The creators of 'Newsepak' in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four knew exactly what Humpty Dumpty meant, renaming the propaganda ministry the Ministry of Truth and the state's most repressive organ the Ministry of Love. 'Islamophobia' was an addition to the vocabulary of Humpty Dumpty Newspeak. It took the language of analysis, reason and dispute, and stood it on its head.

Something new was happening here: the growth of a new intolerance. It was spreading across the surface of the earth, but nobody wanted to know. A new word had been created to help the blind remain blind: Islamophobia. To criticise the militant stridency of this religion in its contemporary incarnation was to be a bigot. A phobic person was extreme and irrational in his views, and so the fault lay with such persons and not with the belief system that boasted over one billion followers worldwide. One billion believers could not be wrong, therefore the critics must be the ones foaming at the mouth. When, he wanted to know, did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent. 'He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill', wrote Edward Burke. 'Our antagonist is our helper'. Only the weak and the authoritarian turned away from their opponents and called them names and sometimes wished to do them harm.

Quasi-mythological names were coming after him now, grand sheikhs and blind ones, the seminarians of Darul Uloom in India, the Wahhabi mullahs of Sudi Arabia (where the book had also been banned), and, in the near future, the turbaned Iranian theologicans of Qom. He had never given much thought to these august personages, but they were certainly thinking about him. Rapidly, ruthlessly, the world of religion was setting the terms of the debate. The secular world, less organised, less united and, essentially, less concerned, lagged far behind; and much vital ground was given up without a struggle.