Random House and the Islamic War against Free Speech

August 22, 2008, Robert Spencer:

Random House paid $100,000 for Sherry Jones’ racy historical novel about Muhammad and his nine-year-old wife, Aisha, The Jewel of Medina, only to withdraw the book just days before its scheduled August 12 publication date. Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry explained that they decided to drop the book after receiving, “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.” They 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.”

Sherry Jones is an unlikely candidate to be the next Salman Rushdie, and her novel is hardly in the same league as Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ film Fitna, which vividly depicted Muslims acting upon the dictates of the Qur’an’s violent passages. The Jewel of Medina, by contrast, is a Harlequin Romance-level trivialization of Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha, luridly depicting the child as finding, at the moment of the consummation of her marriage to Muhammad, “the bliss I had longed for all my life” – yes, her entire nine years.

But Islamic jihadists seem to have little patience for semi-erotic children’s fiction. They are indignant over Jones’s book not because its depiction of the prophet of Islam having sex with a child is inaccurate – the most respected sources of Islamic tradition say he did that. Rather, what apparently angers them is that the novel makes this known. The ordinary understanding of slander in the West is that it involves making false charges that defame another person. But in Islamic law, the definition of slander doesn’t involve falsehood. The Shafi’i manual of Islamic law ‘Umdat al-Salik defines “slander” as “to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike.” Nothing is said about whether or not what is said is true -- only that the person would dislike it. And this is based on a statement of Muhammad to the same effect.
August 17, 2008, Janet Albrechtsen:
It’s a shame that each time a clash of interests involves Muslim hurt, the West raises the white flag with increasing alacrity. When does Western surrender end? Fencing off Islam from critique and curtailing the West’s long-cherished right to freedom of expression won’t help anyone. If aspects of Islam need to confront modernity, it won’t happen by tiptoeing around Muslim sensibilities, treating them like children too vulnerable to deal with the tough questions. That treatment will only encourage victimhood and more censorship ...

... let Ms Jones write about Muhammad’s child bride. If not for the sake of Islam, then for the sake of the West.
Yup.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just a snippet of an article entitled What would we do without the Danes?

Thank God for the Danes, they will go where others in the western world fear to tread, it is to our unending shame that publishers in the UK or America would not publish this book, they are all scared stiff of Muslims and Islam, such is the fear of reprisal against them they willingly submit at the slightest hint of reprisal or fear of upsetting the universal censors of free speech, they should be utterly ashamed


A Danish publisher is in negotiations to buy Sherry Jones’s novel about the child bride of Muhammad, which was dropped by Random House in America and pulled from bookshops in Serbia.


GOD-BLESS THE DANES FOR SURE!
They have never backed off once.

Anonymous said...

Received this excellent article from a SIOE member in the USA.
Mark Steyn's take on liberty at risk and islam.



http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

This week SIOE UK and the Danish SAID held a demo in Denmark, regarding the muslim presecution of the Danish Greenlanders.
It was a really good turnout, with the usual nutters from the anti fascist anti racist mobs in their black gear.
Shouting stop racism!
Failing to see the irony when it's muslims persecuting the poor inuate people by driving them from their homes.
Emeritas a Danish friend informs me there is an air of anger among'st the Danish people, that their left wing government is now getting worried, Danes are turning to nationalist parties.
That appears to be the way to go now!