Kamila Shamsie: Islamophobia in the West is undermining civil liberties

Over coffee and rice crackers, Shamsie says that she worries that Islamophobia in the West is undermining civil liberties and fostering radicalism

Every few months, it seems, a senseless terrorist attack in the UK or France hits the front pages. The headlines are followed by attempts to understand how the perpetrators, often young Muslim men, become radicalised in the West. Islam is often indicted as the culprit, but the absence of a similar frequency of terrorist incidents in countries such as India or Indonesia with much larger Muslim populations makes such theorising seem superficial.

The British Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie in her latest novel, Home Fire, holds up an illuminating mirror to this complicated world. Within minutes of arriving at the lounge of