‘The right to free speech and the right to not have our lives determined by so-called ‘community leaders’ – invariably men.’

For some, 2014 is a momentous year. It marks, for example, 25 years since the Rushdie Affair and the birth of the feminist inspired coalition Women Against Fundamentalism (WAF).

And, as Sukhwant Dhaliwal explained in a recent article for Media Diversity, what came to be known as the ‘Rushdie Affair’ was a pivotal moment in the history of British multiculturalism.

‘As Julia Bard described at the time, the Ayatollah’s fatwa ‘broke the left and liberal consensus on anti-racism’. Should people defend the free speech of the protestors as ‘express(ions) of their culture’ or be seen to be siding with racists by depicting these actions as ‘barbaric’?’

And then at ‘a packed International Women’s Day event in Southall, on 8 March 1989, Southall Black Sisters(SBS) spoke out against the rise of fundamentalism in Britain and highlighted the implications for women.

‘They issued a statement in defence of Salman Rushdie, the right to free speech and the right to not have their lives determined by so called ‘community leaders’ – invariably men.

‘The event triggered the establishment of Women Against Fundamentalism.’

This June some of the members of WAF will launch a book that celebrates and discusses the on-going challenges faced by a feminism concerned with fighting both religious fundamentalism and racism.

This book maps the development of the organisation over the past 25 years, through the life stories and political reflections of some of its members.

It focuses on the ways in which lived contradictions have been reflected in their politics.

Their stories describe the pathways that led them to WAF, and the role WAF has played in their lives and in the different forms of politicial activism in which they have engaged.

Discussing feminist activism from a wide variety of different ethnic and religious backgrounds, contributors highlight the complex relationships of belonging that are at the heart of contemporary social life – including the problems of exclusionary political projects of belonging.

They also explore the ways in which anti-fundamentalism relates to broader feminist, anti-racist and other emancipatory political ideologies and movements.

The personal stories at the centre of this book are those of women whose lives enact the complexities of multiple (if shifting and contingent) mutually constitutive axes of power and difference.

Much of their concern therefore relates to crossing the boundaries of collectivity and practising a ‘dialogical transversal politics’ that has developed as an alternative to identity politics.

Co-author Sukhwant Dhaliwal joined WAF in 1995. She has worked with Asian women’s organisations challenging domestic violence in both Newham and Manchester and has worked with Southall Black Sisters.

Over the last ten years, she has completed research projects encompassing a number of equality strands including: racism and racist violence; disability; age; religion and belief; and gender.

Nira Yuval-Davis is a founding member of WAF. She is the director of the Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London and has been the president of an ISA Research Committee on Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations.

Her written and edited books include: Racialized Boundaries; Gender and Nation; and The Politics of Belonging. She is currently leading a research team on Everyday Situated Bordering as part of an EU research programme.

Sadly, WAF fell by the wayside, but, as this book shows, even during periods of inactivity, WAF has continued as a source of inspiration, a resource for political analysis and a method for political engagement.