You Still Can't Write About Muhammad
We read:
"Starting in 2002, Spokane, Wash., journalist Sherry Jones toiled weekends on a racy historical novel about Aisha, the young wife of the prophet Muhammad. Ms. Jones learned Arabic, studied scholarly works about Aisha's life, and came to admire her protagonist as a woman of courage. When Random House bought her novel last year in a $100,000, two-book deal, she was ecstatic. This past spring, she began plans for an eight-city book tour after the Aug. 12 publication date of "The Jewel of Medina" -- a tale of lust, love and intrigue in the prophet's harem.
It's not going to happen: In May, Random House abruptly called off publication of the book. The series of events that torpedoed this novel are a window into how quickly fear stunts intelligent discourse about the Muslim world.
Random House feared the book would become a new "Satanic Verses," the Salman Rushdie novel of 1988 that led to death threats, riots and the murder of the book's Japanese translator, among other horrors. In an interview about Ms. Jones's novel, Thomas Perry, deputy publisher at Random House Publishing Group, said that it "disturbs us that we feel we cannot publish it right now." He said that after sending out advance copies of the novel, the company received "from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."
After consulting security experts and Islam scholars, Mr. Perry said the company decided "to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel."
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8 comments:
I guess they've won then when people fear to even get a book published anymore. All that's left is to convert or die.
"The Truth hurts" is obviously a truthful saying!
Edmund Burke said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'
Evil triumphs here, because good men are unwilling to do what is necessary.
This event of cancelling a book publishing makes me want to read it even though I know nothing about the author. The pen is mighty. We must keep writing.
They are not sheeple at all. They are the new Cavemen, because all they do is Cave in to their fear of a bunch of barbarian savages that should be eradicated from the face of the earth.
Isn't this story akin to the one below about the French newspaper column sacking a writer for some anti-semitic comments?
It is a private company and they, for their own reasons, have decided not to publish. We may disagree with them but this was a simple business decision that they were entitled to make
Funny no one had any misgivings about publishing "The DaVinci Code."
"The world is filled with evil things, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who do nothing"...
Albert Einstein
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