Well, this is just charming… the UK publisher of the controversial-before-it’s-published book, Jewel of Medina has had his house firebombed in London, according to the UK’s Sunday Times. The book has been batted about lately, with its original American publisher withdrawing from its contract. This left the writer scrambling around to find new publishers. Now, the British publisher is coming under physical threat for having agreed to print the book.
What’s most amazing—and most dismaying—is that the arsonists haven’t read the book. Instead, they’re working from some fantasized image of what might be in the book—but which the writer denies vehemently is not. While Islam may be a tolerant religion at it roots, there are too many Muslims happy to show their own intolerance through word and deed.
Muslim gang firebombs publisher of Allah novel, Martin Rynja
David LeppardSCOTLAND YARD’S counter-terrorist command yesterday foiled an alleged plot by Islamic extremists to kill the publisher of a forthcoming novel featuring sexual encounters between the Prophet Muhammad and his child bride.
Early yesterday armed undercover officers arrested three men after a petrol bomb was pushed through the door of the north London home of the book’s publisher.
The Metropolitan police said the target of the assassination plot, the Dutch publisher Martin Rynja, had not been injured.
The suspected terror gang was being followed by undercover police and the fire was quickly put out after the fire brigade smashed down the front door.
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October:03:2008 - 10:09
They need to start printing these type of books WITHOUT mentioning printing press or authors…
October:03:2008 - 10:10
And sell the books through a website so that nothing is an object of fury madness………
October:04:2008 - 05:28
There so many ways to register one’s displeasure at the things they consider as blasphemous. But do we really need to read the whole book to arrive to a conclusion? An American author and professor has labelled the book as ‘soft porn’ and is this not enough to register protest againts the book? We all know acid burns the skin and is it prudent to ask people to apply on the skin to see if it is harmful?
October:04:2008 - 08:54
I absolutely do not take as true any comment by any American professor, simply due to his/her status. I’ve run into far too many professors who are more interested in promoting themselves or their agendas at the cost of truth.
The author says she was sensitive to the issues she was writing about. Should her word count for nothing?
Until people actually read what’s written, how can they know what has been written? Because a mufti told them? Not adequate in my book, though slightly better in some circumstances than ‘a professor’.
Your acid analogy is not a good one. Acid burns in all circumstances; it burns all people. Books and ideas are utterly harmless unless they actually contain something noxious. To determine that, you need to know both the ideas and the recipients. You also need to figure out whether there is actual harm or harm to oneself or harm only to one’s ego and unexamined beliefs.
October:13:2008 - 17:04
It is hypocritical to defend writers (in the name of ‘free speech’) who disrespect Islam or its most sacred figure, but damning writers/public figures who deny “holocaust “or even talk ill about it.
British writer David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison at an Austrian court for denying the Holocaust. Wasn’t he entitled to “Free Speech”?
So why are we sensitive towards the Jewish faith and not the Islamic faith?
If you read the history carefully, ALL religions are tolerant until deliberately provoked.
This is like waving a red flag in front of a Bull and thinking the bull will not attack?
There is a fine line between free speech and deliberately disrespecting a religion.
Haven’t the writer learned from the discontent that engulfed the Muslim world after the publications of Sulman Rushdie’s book and the Danish Cartoons (disrespecting Muhammad)?
It is Good Manners 101/Diversity 101 to understand the sentiments of people of various faiths and cultures and not to deliberately disrespect their believes.
Muslims are not against Free Speech, they are against disrespect and abuse of their most sacred religious figures (similar to any other religion).
October:13:2008 - 17:29
In response to John Burgess,
an excerpt from statesman.com
…”It goes without saying — well, I hope it goes without saying — that the bombing of a publisher’s home is a horrific act, and no excuses should be made. Still, I find myself bothered by Jones’ reaction. According to London’s Daily Telegraph,
Sherry Jones has now called on Miss Spellberg to retract her comments, saying they are “unfair” and “slanderous”. “She used the most inflammatory language she could possibly have used,” she said. “If you want to incite heated emotions from any religious group you just use the word ‘pornography’ in the same sentence as their revered figures. “She ought to take back her words because it is in no way an accurate description of my book. There are no sex scenes in it.”
The problem with this is that the book contains at least one passage that would qualify as a sex scene. I haven’t read the entire book, but when the controversy first erupted, Spellberg allowed me to skim through it and copy a few pages. (Full disclosure: My wife, a UT professor, is a professional acquaintance of Spellberg’s.) Among them were this one, about an encounter between A’isha and her almost-lover Safwan:
“…His lips were so sweet and his breath so warm. I let my eyes flutter shut again as I returned his kiss, as chaste as a child’s. I felt a stirring under my skin and I raised my tongue to touch his. With our bodies, we brushed each other lightly – my breasts to his chest, his thigh to my most intimate place, my toes to his shins. An aroma like musk rose from his body. My moan of pleasure surprised me, luxuriant as the part of a cat stretching in the sunlight…”
There’s a bit more in this vein (“His pointed tongue darted into my mouth like a lizard’s”; “Safwan grabbed my breasts and squeezed them hard”; “Muhammad was so gentle. I hardly felt the scorpion’s sting”), and while one could reasonably disagree as to whether this qualifies as soft-core pornography or lukewarm erotica, it certainly qualifies as a sex scene. (Pace Bill Clinton, the absence of penetration is not a disqualifier.)
This isn’t the first time Jones has claimed that her book has no sex scenes in it, and I’m not sure why she has continued doing so. She has solid enough reasons to be angry about what has happened to her book on general (though not constitutional) freedom of speech grounds.
It also seems odd for her to accuse Spellberg of inflaming the opposition. Spellberg made her comment about soft-core pornography to a friend of Jones’ who wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal about the controversy. It’s the public campaign by Jones and her supporters to publicize her book’s shoddy treatment that has given Spellberg’s words such a wide audience. I think it’s fine – even admirable — for Jones to wage this public campaign; we deserve to know when a major publisher cancels a book out of fear of violent reprisal, even if that information prompts a violent reprisal. But does it make sense to publicize someone’s comments and then complain that those comments have unleashed a whirlwind? …”
October:13:2008 - 21:59
Saqib: Thanks for your comments and the quotations from the book.
If an author says s/he meant no disrespect, then I find it hard to say the author was being disrespectful. Respect (and its opposite) are the result of intention. If there is no ill intention, there can be no intentional disrespect or infliction of emotional pain.
A reader, on the other hand, may very well find something disrespectful, regardless of the author’s intent. That can be because the written word was unwittingly disrespectful or it can be because the reader has a thin skin.
In this case, even reading the sex scene your provide, I see no malign intent. Are we supposed to believe that the historical figures in this novel were celibate? Aren’t we told that the Prophet, no matter his merits, was a human being? To hold him and his family outside the realm of human behavior is to elevate him toward the deity, something I don’t find claimed in any school of Islam.
Might this scene be unwanted or distasteful to some? Assuredly so. But so what? I can be offended by any number of things. Should an author refrain from writing that which offends me? Where to start? The editorial page of a newspaper; the sports page; novels set in the American West… they all can be offensive to me at times. If I fear that a piece will offend me, no matter the writer’s intent, does it not fall on me to avoid reading it? Because I am offended, do I have the right to deprive you of that which you do not find offensive?
I find the David Irving trial to have been a travesty of the concept of freedom of speech and thought. I find many European laws offensive to the concept of free thinking. While I detest everything about National Socialism, I do not think it should be a crime to write or talk about it. To criminalize thoughts on this subject pushes us all down the very slippery slope of criminalizing other offensive speech or thought.
The law may cut–today–in a direction in which we approve. Will we approve when it cuts in a different direction tomorrow? The only assurance of freedom of thought we can have is to assure freedom of even offensive thought and writing. How can it be free when it can be shut down by a mob or a litigant?
October:14:2008 - 08:23
My culture & my education will usually not draw me to read or watch things that I know will be offensive to me or my family;
when I read or watch something and find it offensive then I simply switch to something else which I find acceptable; that’s the way my parents used to do with me, that’s the way I’ve been doing with my kids and the way I do myself as an individual;
Now the issue becomes different when offensive material is imposed to me but we are far from that in the case that is being debated here.