There are two to three million Muslims in Britain, most of them immigrants from the Asian subcontinent. The older generation came in the forties and fifties before immigration was restricted. For year they went about their lives quietly, anonymously.

Much media attention was focused on Muslim anger against publication of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses." Less attention was paid to the second and third generation of Muslims in Britain, young men and women born and raised as Muslims. The Rushdie Affair and the Gulf War made an increasing number of these British Muslims more determined to defend their culture and religious identity in a society where the Church of England is still the official state religion.