" 36Another aspect of his personality that Shahid has to negotiate is religion. Shahid apart from beingan Asian in Britain is also a Muslim youth. At least this is what he is made to realise in the novelby Riaz and Chad. Religion or Islam here becomes a form of solidarity between South Asianyouth. It helps them to unify and assume a distinct identity based on common experiences.Religion also allows Shahid to question the notion of identity as homogenous and fixed. In thecontext of the diaspora or a migrant subject identity becomes a plural concept. Avtar Brahadvocates that diaspora in itself is a heterogenous category. Shahid being an Asian in Britaininevitably occupies this diasporic identity. Brah employs the term diaspora as a concept thatneeds to be redefined as opposed to a fixed category of meaning. Diaspora is a conceptualcategory ?as opposed to using it as a description if different migrations.? Accordingly, ?…theterm should be seen as conceptual mapping which defies the search for originary absolutes, orgenuine and authentic manifestations of a stable, pre-given, unchanging identity; for pristine,pure customs and traditions or unsullied glorious pasts? (196). Thus, the concept of diaspora specifies a matrix of economic, political and cultural inter- relationships which construct the commonality between the various components of a dispersedgroup. Thus, diaspora as a category should be examined as a heterogeneous, differentiated alongthe lines of class, gender and sexuality. Even the protagonist of the novel is compelled to locate afixed concept of identity. Shahid is coerced into defining himselfas a =Muslim‘. The noveladvocates against a fixed and homogenous concept of identity. Whenever, Shahid tries tocategorise himself into a fixed identity he fails: …Shahid was afraid his ignorance would place him in no man‘s land. These dayseveryone was insisting on their identity, coming out as a man, woman, gay, black, Jew -brandishing whichever features they could lay claim, as if without a tag they wouldn‘t be37human. Shahid too wanted to belong to his people. But he had to know the, their past andwhat they hoped for. (Kureishi 76)Like Brick Lane Kureishi depicts inter-generational conflict between parents and children.Shahid dreams of becoming a writer. He even publishes his short story based on his experiencesof racism called ? =Paki Wog Fuck Off Home‘ ? (60). The story is soon discovered by his motherwho vehemently disapproves it. Shahid‘s mother hates racism. Her reaction to racism is silence.Since she belonged to affluent family in Pakistan, she cannot accept the idea of being hated. Thenovel demonstrates what happens when South Asians leave their homeland. In their homelandsthey occupy places of honour, status and power. However, when they migrate they have tonegotiate new status and social networks. Shahid‘s mother reacts by refusing to acknowledge racism:Even when Shahid vomited and defecated with fear before going to school, or when hereturned with cuts, bruises and his bag slashed with knives, she behaved as if so appallingan insult couldn‘t exist. Andso she turned away from him. What he knew was too muchfor her. ( Kureishi 61) In an interview to Robert MacCrum , Kureishi discusses how being a writer wascondemned in his family. The idea was that a South Asian diasporic subject who migratesto Britain cannot not fulfill their creative urges but need to uplift themselveseconomically:?Well, that certainly happened to my cousins. The men wanted the boys to be doctors,lawyers, or engineers, and not mess around writing stories. We didn't come to England tomess around, you know. My father came from a literary family. My uncles had film38magazines, and one of my uncles is a columnist for Pakistan's daily paper. So I did comefrom a literary background. Being a writer wasn't so unusual?.(Kunzru)As Shahid observes :?Their parents had come to make an affluent and stable life in a country notrun by tyrants?.(44) As migrants Shahid‘s parents were only concerned about their work.Religion is not given any primacy. Instead work replaces religion: ?At home Papa liked to say,when asked about his faith, =Yes, I have a belief. It‘s called working until my arseaches!‘?(Kunzru 44)In an essay by Kureishi called ?Something Given: Reflections on Writing? he writes how Asianmigrants are not encouraged to take up creative pursuits by their own families. On his trip toParis as a young man, Kureishi meets his uncle who owns a restaurant Kureishi writes:?Once, in Paris, where I was staying, I went to a restaurant with one ofmy father's elderbrothers. He was one of my favourite uncles, famous for his carousing but also for hisviolent temper. After a few drinks I admitted to him that I'd come to Paris to write, tolearn to be a writer. He subjected me to a tirade of abuse, Who do you think you are, hesaid, Balzac? You're a fool, he went on, and your father's a fool too, to encourage you inthis. It is pretentious, idiotic. Fortunately, I was too young to be discouraged; I knew howto keep my illusions going. But I was shocked by what my father had had to endure fromhis family. You couldn't get above your station; you couldn't dream too wildly.?In the same essay commenting on the condition of the immigrant Kureishi writes:?For immigrants and their families, disorder and strangeness is the condition of theirexistence. They want a new life and the material advancement that goes with it. Buthaving been ripped from one world and flung into another, what they also require, tokeep everything together, is tradition, habitual ideas, stasis. Life in the country you have39left may move on, but life in the diaspora is often held in a strange suspension, as if theact of moving has provided too much disturbance as it is.?Kureishi further explores the idea of religion through the =rushdie-affair‘. Writer SalmanRushdie‘s book Satanic Verses published in the year 1986 was soon labeled as blasphemous as ithurtled the sentiments of the Muslim community. The =rushdie-affair‘ was a significant event inBritain as there was a public book- burning in Bradford. A similar episode is portrayed in thenovel when Shahid‘s friends enact the same book-burning episode in their college premises: ?Ashiver flared through the chapters; scorched pages whirled across the crowd. One paragraph tookoff towards Kilburn; several passages flew towards WestbournePark; half the cover went straightup.? (Kunzru 188)In an essay entitled ?Essentialialising Essentialism, Essentialising Silence: Ambivalence andMultiplicity in the Constructions of Racism and Ethnicity?, Pnina Werbner observes that:?theSatanic Verses was a poltically polemical novel.? (231) Werbner analyses the event as areflection of the ?moral panic? that spread among the Muslim community of Britain:The publication of the novel sparked a new moral panic. Muslims globally perceived it asa public symbol violation, a Western and Zionist conspiracy to defame and mock Islamand its symbols. In Britain the moral panic was a tangible symptom of the contradictionsPakistan immigrants were experiencing between their aspirations as economic migrantsand the cultural alienation which permanent settlement implied. The fact that the bookseemed to mock and deride Islamic culture and values made it a symbol of racism, of thehumiliations Pakistanis experience daily as black victims of racial abuse anddiscrimination. (231, 232)40Werbner terms this moral panic as fear of muslims or ?Islamophobia? (232). Like Avtar Brah,Werbner also suggest that; ?For the racist, the racist object is not only disgusting and hateful, butpowerful, fascinating, erotic and possessing qualities admired by racist subjects,? (233). Theracist attack portrayed in the novel can be examined in the light of Werbner‘s argument. Sheargues that:Racial or xenophobic attacks are meant to be exemplary. The message of the attackers isclear: these immigrants, black people, Muslims, don‘t belong here. They must go or beeliminated. In this sense violence is a =theatrical‘ locutionary act, an act of publiccommunication. Hence, although racial violence seems to be haphazard and uncontrolled,in reality it is systematic.( 236)In an attempt to understandthe role of religion in the Asian youth Kureishi visited amosque. In an interview to John LewisKureishi says: ?I actually liked a lot of the kids I met in these mosques. They seemed more naive andinnocent and silly than they were dangerous, and their arguments were just daft.Fundamentalism gave them a sense of place, of belonging. Many were unemployed, mosthad friends involved in drugs; religion kept them out of trouble. And many were veryhospitable. They‘d greet me with a tie, or a pair of cufflinks, and a copy of the Koran?.In the same interview Kureishi tells John Lewis the aim of writing this novel and the meaning ofits title:“The Black Album is basically a story of ideas… ?It‘s about race, religion, identitypolitics, art and sex. It‘s also about education — I was always very interested in thepostmodern idea that university lecturers, like the one in this story, had started studyingMadonna or Prince. The story is named after Prince‘s famous bootleg album, and "