She's... somewhere in there.
Posted on 08/07/2008 6:14:48 PM PDT by flyfree
...the company has decided not to publish Sherry Jones’ historical novel “The Jewel of Medina” about Mohammed’s child bride Aisha. The book was part of a $100,000 two-book contract with the author.
Shame on Random House! This act of abject cowardice and de facto censorship is one of the most disgraceful incidents I can think of in the history of American publishing. As Asra Q. Nomani writes in the WSJ: 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.”
The “credible” source was one Denise Spellberg, a University of Texas academic who, on receipt of Jones’ galleys, started tattling like a six-year old to Muslims Spellberg felt would be angry with the work. Perry and his cronies simply caved in. That the publishers reference the “Satanic Verses” in their defence is yet more despicable. In the early 1990s, when I was president of West Coast Branch of PEN, we did everything in our power to defend Rushdie against the attempts to suppress his freedom of speech. Random House does nothing for its own authors. The natural conclusion of their behavior in this instance is that nothing critical of Islam could ever be written.
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
If America is destroyed, it may be by Americans who salute the flag, sing the national anthem, march in patriotic parades, cheer Fourth of July speakers – normally good Americans, but Americans who fail to comprehend what is required to keep our country strong and free, Americans who have been lulled away into a false security. Ezra Taft Benson - An Enemy Hath Done This
Bumping (to find quote later)!
It certainly is now.
Sounds like this was done to deliberately sabatoge the book
From her website in the Department of History, University of Texas, Austin, in case it gets lost:
Spellberg, Denise
Associate Professor
Office: GAR 0.138
Office Hours: Spring 2008: TBA
Phone:512-475-7202
dams@mail.utexas.edu
Education: PhD, 1989, Columbia University
Research interests:
Medieval Islamic history, religion, and gender, Islamic historiography, and Islam in Europe and America.
Courses taught:
History of the Middle East from 570 to 1453, Gender in Islamic History, Islamic Spain and North Africa, Islam in Europe and America, Islamic Historiography.
Geographic Area(s) of Study: Middle East
Thematic Field(s): Gender, Sexuality and Family, Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, Race, Ethnicity and Nation, Religion and Culture
Recent Publications:
Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of `A’isha bint Abi Bakr (Columbia University Press, 1994); “Writing the Unwritten Life of the Islamic Eve: Menstruation and the Demonization of Motherhood,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 28 (1996): 305-324; “Inventing Matamoras: Gender and the Forgotten Islamic Past in the United States of America,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 25 (2004): 148-164; “Could a Muslim Be President? An Eighteenth-Century Constitutional Debate,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39 (2006): 485-506.
She's... somewhere in there.
Random House is a business, not a government, therefore not censorship.
A simple solution for the author would be to change the setting slightly and give the characters new names. If she was witty, she could even make them improbably Jewish.
Then, if criticized, she could say to her critics: “The characters are Jews! How dare you call Mohammed a Jew! Muslims should make a death fatwa against you for calling Mohammed a Jew!”
Bet the commie librarians in the ALA won’t include this title among those of this year’s “banned book week”.
I believe we have a clue as to where Prof. Spellberg is coming from.
Identicism. Is that a word...???
btt
Well, or another word for it is gender bending.
I would add that she is a pretty junior professor with only one book and a couple of articles. Why is she being consulted about this, I wonder?
So another inch of ground is gained in the war between Islam and the West. All they had to do this time was threaten violence instead of actually going out and committing violence.
Slowly, at a glacial pace, we are accepting the position of dhimmi to our Islamic rulers. Here a publishing house has decided to reject centuries of free and open expression and speech from the mere hint of violence.
Islam is in the struggle for world domination to win; we are a tired civilization willing to give up our treasured traditions for the hope of a few quiet moments. Fortunately, the Chinese and Indians might be willing to stand up for their own traditions better than we are, and they’ll have no problems dealing with these thugs in a straightforward, even brutal, manner. It’s either that or a long, long dark age for humanity. However, it seems clear that the West isn’t up to the fight.
[self-ping]
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