_Religion is for the benefit of the masses, not for brain-box types like you. Those simpletons require strict rules for living, otherwise they would still think the earth sits on three fishes. But you mind-wallahs must know it's a lot of balls._ An Asian kid from Kent goes to college in London and teams up with a sympathetic group of anti-racists. But it's 1989, the year of the fatwa, and as Shahid begins a hedonistic affair with his lecturer, his radical Muslim friends want to steer him away from the decadence of the West. _We're not blasted Christians. We don't turn the other buttock. We will fight for our people who are being tortured anywhere - in Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, East End!_ Hanif Kureishi's witty stage adaptation of his strikingly prescient and acclaimed novel, _The Black Album_, humorously considers how the events of 1989 have shaped today's world, where fundamentalism battles liberalism. A co-production with Tara Arts, _The Black Album _premiered at the National Theatre, London, in July 2009.