You might remember a non-comics post a little while ago about the US arm of Random House dropping the Jewel of Medina, a novel by Sherry Jones which takes as its premise the life of Muhammad’s favourite wife A’isha. The publisher dropped the novel shortly before publication citing safety concerns for staff – understandable perhaps in the wake of the response the Mohammad cartoons in Denmark provoked (and the spectre of the Satanic Verses hanging in the background). However, a lot of critics saw this as self-censorship and were less than happy about the withdrawal of the book. Independent UK publisher Gibson Square announced plans to publish the novel in Britain, declaring that it was a moving work, not offensive and that literature should not be censored through fear: “If a novel of quality and skill that casts light on a beautiful subject we know too little of in the West, but have a genuine interest in, cannot be published here, it would truly mean that the clock has been turned back to the dark ages.”
Sadly it appears that the all-too-predictable ‘outraged’ violent response has come even before the book is published – Sky News is reporting that three men have been arrested and charged with “plotting to endanger life and damage property” for a suspected petrol bomb attack on the home and office of Martin Rinjya, the publisher of Gibson Square. Since the book hasn’t even been published here yet I’m assuming that these idiots haven’t actually read it, of course. Its bad enough that the freedom of speech is harmed in this way, but such actions also tend to fuel the bogeyman stereotype of Muslims when the truth is that this was the action of a tiny faction of idiots, so they manage to harm the freedom of speech and multi-cultural relations at the same time.
Fri, Oct 3, 2008
Books