After the fatwa, and the subsequent decade of semi-underground life under police protection, I came close to losing myself again, and, for a while, I floundered. The danger was real; the widespread hostility was almost worse than that. The reason I was not only consoled by the flood of good feeling that came my way after the knife attack, but also surprised by it, was that after the fatwa there was some similar support, but also a hurtful quantity of sharp criticism. In the West there were many voices—not just the aforementioned Hugh Trevor-Roper, Richard Littlejohn, Jimmy Carter, and Germaine
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