Lifeline
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1 9 8 9
March : March.
Yusuf acquires the old Brondesbury & Kilburn Secondary School – ironically the very grammar school Mike Hurst had attended as a child – and sets up the Islamia Girls’ Secondary School which goes on to regularly top the GCSE examination league tables as one of the most successful secondary girls schools in the London. The Islamia Primary School also moves to the same site.Invited by the Islamic society, Yusuf delivers a talk to students at Kingston University, London, about his life and journey to Islam. He is asked to comment on Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and the fatwa against him. Yusuf explains that, like the Bible, the Qur’an defines blasphemy as a capital offence but at no time claimed to support any fatwa. The next day the Today newspaper runs with the headline, ‘Cat says kill Rushdie!’ Subsequently, Yusuf releases a number of statements correcting the misinformation.
November : November 9.
The Berlin Wall falls. Millions of Berliners take to the streets and hundreds of thousands cross between East and West Berlin. -
