[8][12][13][14][15][16] Harrison appears sitting at the table drinking wine, expecting his guests and making a toast, in the name of Omar Khayyám, to Rushdie and all those who had experienced persecution on religious grounds.
Rowland mentions Harrison's choice of the Bradford restaurant which used to be a church, as symbolising the opposition of Literature to state religion by "occupying" a space used for religious purposes in the past.
[16] John Gabriel comments that the film-poem's intent is to make clear that the Rushdie affair is connected to wider historical issues of censorship and the freedom to publish.
According to Gabriel, Harrison makes this connection by "defiantly drinking an alcoholic toast to Rushdie in the company of four other blasphemers" at the Bradford restaurant and by the publication of his poem titled The Satanic Verses which was published in The Observer in which he writes:[8] I shall not cease from mental strifenor shall my pen sleep in my handtill Rushdie has a right to lifeand books aren't burned or bannedThe then-Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie had been applying pressure to the BBC to postpone the broadcast of the film-poem.
John Lyttle, the secretary for public affairs of the Archbishop, had written to BBC director-general Michael Checkland, on Runcie's behalf, expressing concerns about the impact the film might have on the Muslims of Britain.