Sherry Jones emailed me the prologue of her book The Jewel of Medina to share with you all. I’ve read it, and I sent it to shewhohashope to gain her perspective, as she and I are of different faiths and cultures, and have differing views of the prologue and the book that it introduces. Obviously, sweeping judgments based on the prologue are as frail as sweeping judgments based on not having read the book at all, but hey, what is our site without some randomly sweeping judgments, right?
If you’d like to download the prologue and read it for yourself, a PDF is available here (please right click and download, thanks). All contents of the prologue are copyright Sherry Jones.
My reactions are from the perspective of a reader, and someone who is, due to this controversy, very curious about Islam, Aisha, Mohammed, and this book itself. Shewhohashope, a 22 year-old student of Anthropology living in London, England, is a Sunni Muslim and rabid Heyer fan.
Even though I said I wouldn’t read it, I did and it did solidify my reasoning for not reading the novel. There are inaccuracies about her life right from the first line. it’s expected, but it just doesn’t sit well with me.
I’ve learned about her life, so when the first sentence says
Scandal blew in on the errant wind when I rode into Medina clutching Safwan’s waist.
It make me shake my head, because in the hadith Aisha mentioned this never happened and while reading the prologue, it does paint the picture that Aisha wanted to be with Safwan. In our religion, to even say that is a huge sin, to the point that if you even say they had relations and that Aisha was unfaithful takes you out of the folds of Islam.
It’s paints the Sahabis (companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him)) in such a negative light, which was disheartening to read. Ali wasn’t jealous of her, Umar didn’t want to harm her. She didn’t even know what was being said till a month or so after, and when she found out she stayed with her parents and prayed.
I don’t really know what to say. If the topic didn’t offend some Muslims before, reading the prologue will offend Muslim (regardless of what sect you are in). I mentioned before in the other thread that if you write fiction about the Prophets and their wives, you will change it to spice it up. That’s why we stay away from it, because if you write fiction about them, you are saying lies because you weren’t there and it’s a sin and that’s why this book will offend.
Sorry if this doesn’t make sense. I’m honestly at a loss for words after reading the prologue.
Thank you for your insightful reviews! I would like to point out that the Qur’an refers to a “lie” but does not say whether that lie refers to accusations of adultery or of intent. In fact, A’isha, although tempted by another, does not succumb in my book. In writing this novel, I tried to take into account both Sunni and Shia views, particularly of this incident. No worries though: Her honor remains intact! And she grows up a LOT because of this experience.
Just from the prologue, the part I could see becoming contentious is that Jones’ Aisha ran away with another man with the intent to commit adultery, when this is specifically denied in the Qur’an. And the depiction of several of the sahaba in their treatment of Aisha, although that has basis within Islamic historical records (and within the Qur’an).
I can’t disagree with this.
The writing isn’t bad (in fact, I rather like her voice), but starting with the idea that Aisha really did run away with adulterous intentions seems problematic to me.
I’d be curious to see what Jones based this on. Are there alternate versions of Aisha’s history out there that support this, or is it pure fictional invention? If it’s the former, that’s one thing. We all know historical accounts can vary widely depending on who’s doing the telling, and if in one version of Islam there is a belief that Aisha did act in the way and then repented, ok. If this is purely fictional though, it becomes a real problem IMO (but we all know I like my history to be, well, historically based).
I’m not widely read enough in the history of Aisha to be able to render an educated opinion, so I’ll have to rely on those who are.
That said, I don’t see any reason to go to the extreme of protesting the publication of the book. Lots of historically inaccurate, culturally offensive, stuff is published. Just ask any historian or minority you know.
Sorry for the second post, just wanted to make a correction.
Not to mention that Aisha in Islamic tradition (or sunni tradition) is one of the four perfect women who are held up as what all Muslim women should aim to be as wel as one of the Mothers of the Faith (along with Khadijah, Mary, and Asiya (ra)).
She isn’t part of the four righteous women, Fatima, the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) daughter, is. She is highly regarded as a great Muslimah though.
Hmmm. Now I’m thinking I skimmed over the portayal of the sahaba, but it is on record that people accused her of adultery so I let that slide, as it were.
Although (as Popin says) I don’t think she did know everything that was being said straight away. I’ll have to read up on the incident.
Silly mistake on my part.
I did keep wondering about Fatima.
Whether or not this book is faithful to Islam and its history doesn’t matter all that much to me, because I’m not Muslim. If I were, and my religious leaders said, “Hey, this is a book we consider to be damaging to the faith,” well, then I wouldn’t buy the book and support the author.
It just seems that simple, and it’s too bad the publishing house didn’t have some balls.
DAMN it. I just had a long comment typed out, very carefully worded, and it got eaten. RAR. I’m going to much less careful in this one, so let me say that I’m not trying to be provocative, nor am I setting out to offend anyone. I am asking a real question.
If the topic didn’t offend some Muslims before, reading the prologue will offend Muslim (regardless of what sect you are in).
My question is, in a religion as diversely populated as Islam, is it, in your (Popin’s or anyone else’s) possible to still be a “good” Muslim and not be offended by such a representation? I have known individual Muslims who did not follow the strictures of the Qu’ran quite as literally as they perhaps “should” have (scare quotes only b/c I’m not really sure what exactly they felt was required of them, or to what extent they felt obligated to obey those requirements), and I wonder if something like this would have been as problematic for them as it is for some of our commenters here. (Which is NOT to say that you’re wrong in being offended. If it is offensive to you, it’s offensive to you. Period.)
I feel like we are often presented a vision of Islam as a monolithic faith, even despite the Sunni/Shi’a divide, wherein Every Believer feels exactly the same way about some things, and based strictly on my own experience of Christianity, I wonder about the truth of that. Thoughts?
A vague disclaimer is no-one’s friend:
a) I’m clearly not an Islamic scholar.
b) I won’t be buying this book but I’m going to come to your house and slap you upside the head if you do.
c) I speak for myself (and probably a large number of Muslims, but don’t quote me on that if large numbers stop by and say I’m full of it)
d) Islam =/= a monolith but fictionalised representations of the Prophet (saws) are widely forbidden and intensely disliked.
I already said some stuff about cultural appropriation in the last post, and my thoughts on that still stand.
I think it’s too bad, I liked the prologue and would buy the book if it was available. This is fiction, so although it may offend people, they don’t have to read it or buy it or even talk about it. It’s not as if the author is saying this is what really happened- isn’t it kind of like religious fan-fic, in a way?
My question is, in a religion as diversely populated as Islam, is it, in your (Popin’s or anyone else’s) possible to still be a “good” Muslim and not be offended by such a representation?
I don’t think so. It’s alluding that Aisha wanted to have relations with Safwan, when she was cleared of any misdeeds from the Quran - which we consider to be the truth and revealed from God/Allah. So as a Muslim, regardless of your feelings towards Aisha, you can never ever, ever, allude that she wanted to sleep with Safwan, because Allah cleared her name in the Quran [24:11-20]
Can you be a good Muslim, but not be offended, sure, but you’d also have to believe that what is written is slanderous to Aisha and wrong.
b) I won’t be buying this book but I’m going to come to your house and slap you upside the head if you do.
*snicker* Hee. I assume you meant you’re NOT going to do that. But if you’d like to, I’ll make you some tea and we can chat while I duck the books you pitch at me. ;)
can never ever, ever, allude that she wanted to sleep with Safwan
Okay. So I assume, then, that the Qu’ran also has the idea of “adultery in the heart” that the New Testament has? In which even the desire to commit adultery is a sin on the level of adultery itself?
Can you be a good Muslim, but not be offended, sure, but you’d also have to believe that what is written is slanderous to Aisha and wrong
Okay, I see that.
I already said some stuff about cultural appropriation in the last post, and my thoughts on that still stand.
So would you feel differently if this novel (or a similarly themed novel) were written by a Muslim? If Rushdie or Pamuk took on a fictionalized account of Aisha for example?
I know that as a Native American I do find myself reacting differently to NA fiction written by NAs than I do to fiction written about NAs by non-NAs. And I can’t help but attribute the reaction to a very personal reaction to the cultural appropriation that I frequently feel is taking place.
b) I won’t be buying this book but I’m going to come to your house and slap you upside the head if you do.
*snicker* Hee. I assume you meant you’re NOT going to do that. But if you’d like to, I’ll make you some tea and we can chat while I duck the books you pitch at me. ;)
I did mean not. Unless you ask me nicely.
So would you feel differently if this novel (or a similarly themed novel) were written by a Muslim?
I’d feel somewhat different on the question of whether the work was appropriative, yes.
Please do remember, everyone—this is fiction! If my intention was to remain completely true to the historical record, I would have penned a nonfiction book. The story is the thing! And believe me, A’isha is a true heroine, in every sense of the word. Like any protagonist, she makes mistakes and learns from them, and emerges as a woman of true honor.
OK, I have to go and work on my sequel now—which is, by the way, even better than the first book. It alternates points of view between A’isha and her (historically documented) nemesis, Ali, and provides a lot of insight into both of these characters as well as the origins of the Sunni-Shi’ite split.
First, let’s get this out of the way: Brett Favre going to the Jets I will NOT discuss.
I, too, want to thank Ms. Jones and Shewhohashope. It was very brave and generous of the author to share her work, and very brave and generous of the anthropology student (a model of patience!) to share her beliefs.
The Prologue does fascinate me. I suspect that’s because we Westerners—or, to be more inclusive, many of us who aren’t Muslim—like seeing our leaders humanized. It usually makes us respect them more, not less. So, yes, I would read on. And I would do so knowing I was reading a work of fiction, not a theological treatise or historical biography.
About the writing itself: If anything balled me up, it was the overuse of figurative language. I’m a big fan of figurative language, but when the similes and metaphors and images are so elaborate, and come at me so thick and fast that I have trouble following the thread of the narrative, they become obtrusive.
I’m undoubtedly flaunting my ignorance by saying what I’m about to say . . . but hey, that’s never stopped me before. So, hi-ho and away I go! I just don’t understand how or why an admittedly fictionalized version of anything can be seen as threatening or insulting. Fiction is the product of one person’s imagination; it isn’t (usually, it isn’t) being peddled as The Truth. If someone wrote a novel in which Madonna were portrayed as the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, I wouldn’t find it egregiously offensive. Egregiously lame, maybe, but not something capable of undermining the tenets of Roman Catholicism.
Here’s how I see it. Mohamed and the Mothers of the Faith are what they are. And they are immutable. Their immutability is strengthened in the soul of every believer every second of every day. A Christian could say the same of Jesus Christ. No piddling human, no matter how creatively gifted, can alter fundamental truth. So why fuss over The Jewel of Medina or Jesus Christ, Superstar or Charlton Heston playing Moses or George Burns playing God Almighty . . . or any of it? There’s nothing inherently subversive about these fanciful creations, because they cannot alter truth or faith.
Okay. So I assume, then, that the Qu’ran also has the idea of “adultery in the heart” that the New Testament has? In which even the desire to commit adultery is a sin on the level of adultery itself?
No. If you have that desire to commit adultery, but don’t because you remember Allah. You are actually rewarded for it, because you are struggling with yourself to do good.
Sherry, I hope my thoughts didn’t attack you or offend you. I understand it’s fiction and I understand why you wrote your story like this. It just doesn’t sit well with me to ever want to read it though. Sorry.
Just do what the Catholics do.
Put out an official banned book list.
Then the rest of us can ignore it.
If you have that desire to commit adultery, but don’t because you remember Allah. You are actually rewarded for it, because you are struggling with yourself to do good.
So then why is it offensive to say that she might have had the desire? Since she didn’t do it, and was cleared of all wrongdoing by Allah, why is even the suggestion that she may have *wanted* to do it so wrong?
No comments on the prologue (I haven’t decided yet, but I don’t think I’ll be reading it) but I just wanted to cheer for all of us who have engaged in reasoned debate about what was an emotive subject for both sides. Maybe this belongs in the first JoM thread, not this one; if so, apologies for off-topic comment. And I am glad that the prologue is up so that those who want to, can read it.
Please do remember, everyone—this is fiction! If my intention was to remain completely true to the historical record, I would have penned a nonfiction book. The story is the thing!
See, *this* I just don’t grok.
If an author doesn’t want to stay true to the historical record, why write about REAL people? I know it’s much easier in today’s market to sell a book based on real people (oh, that we could all be Dorothy Dunnett), but when fictionalizing them, I feel very strongly that the writer has a responsibility to be accurate (I’m looking at YOU, Phillipa Gregory).
Sherry, I hope my thoughts didn’t attack you or offend you. I understand it’s fiction and I understand why you wrote your story like this.
I am not offended, Popin. I can take it!
Thoughtful and thought-provoking blog post. The cover of the book was very pretty.
Some questions:
1. Is the author of the book a Muslim herself? I was assuming ‘not’, but maybe that’s not a given.
2. What is the meaning of “(saws)” behind each reference to the Prophet Mohammed?
I guess I’m confused.
1) It’s historical fiction. I read The Red Tent and lurved it. Never, at any point, did I think this was a true story.
2) It would be against a Muslim’s religion to humanize/fictionalize the live of Mohammed or his wives. But the author’s not Muslim, so she doesn’t have to live by the rules of Islam, so I don’t understand the problem.
3) Jesus has been protrayed as human and weak in very human ways in soooo many books. There has always been discussion (and, I assume, fictionalization) over whether Mary was REALLY a virgin, or whether she just got knocked up. There’s lots and lots of discussion of what Jesus did with Mary Magdalene. Sooo… Adultery isn’t exactly a little Oops! in the bible either. So what? The stories haven’t broken the religion or anythng. People get upset. Sales go up. Life moves on.
4) Again, it’s fiction. How, exactly, is it going to get tangled up with thousands of years of religion and somehow confuse the issue? It’s fiction. It’s. Fic. Tion.
Still confused.
So then why is it offensive to say that she might have had the desire? Since she didn’t do it, and was cleared of all wrongdoing by Allah, why is even the suggestion that she may have *wanted* to do it so wrong?
Mainly because her thoughts are between her and Allah, and unless she openly admitted to having these feelings we (Muslims not everyone else) can’t really say that she had these feelings.
What is the meaning of “(saws)” behind each reference to the Prophet Mohammed?
SAWS is the short form of saying Sallallahu ‘Alayhi Wasallam which means Peace and Blessings upon him in Arabic.
If an author doesn’t want to stay true to the historical record, why write about REAL people? I know it’s much easier in today’s market to sell a book based on real people…
Eee, I don’t know about this, Kalen. She’s not marketing it as anything other than fiction inspired by a historical figure. Asking this question is kind of like somebody asking me why I choose to write women’s porn when I could be writing real books. Because it’s what I want to do. I think it’s a legitimate answer in both cases. The same with, “Why do you write such dirty sex scenes? I know it’s an easy market, but…” There’s a market and people like it and I like it. That’s a good enough answer to any of those questions.
Mainly because her thoughts are between her and Allah, and unless she openly admitted to having these feelings we (Muslims not everyone else) can’t really say that she had these feelings
So it basically goes back to the perception that any fictional account of any of the holy figures of Islam are equal to telling lies about those figures.
Do these strictures apply to other historical figures of less import (i.e., not prophets, say, but important imams or something), or are they specifically limited to fictional depictions of the Prophet Muhammed, his family, and other key prophets? I mean, is there, in your sense, a general disapproval of historical fiction as telling falsehoods about real people?
Of course I put A’isha in the action! She’s the protagonist! She’s got to be there! That’s the constraint of writing from first-person POV. Imagine how dull it would be to read a summary from her a month later of what she heard happened, or an account of someone else telling her everything that happened while she was at her parents’ home. That’s what you do with historical fiction—you alter the details, when needed, in service of the story. The fact is, this DID happen (if you believe every word of a history conveyed orally for centuries before ever being written down) and Ali did encourage Muhammad to divorce her, and the rest no one really knows!
Just because the historical record doesn’t say something happened doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. As for portrayals of Ali and Umar, remember—this is A’isha’s point of view. She didn’t get along with either of them. So of course she’s not going to speak of them in glowing terms.
I’m not trying to justify my work here. Just hoping to help ya’ll understand why I changed what I did. My book is true to history, but not every single detail. I have placed A’isha at battles she isn’t listed as having attended, too, because the story is from her point of view and I felt I needed to tell what happened at the battles. I gave her a sword, although there is no record of her having wielded one, as a metaphor of her growing strength and courage—and also to illiustrate that, in the early years of Islam, women fought in battles alongside men.
If you have that desire to commit adultery, but don’t because you remember Allah. You are actually rewarded for it, because you are struggling with yourself to do good.
Of what value is Aisha’s purity if she was never tempted? Can it not be argued that because she was tempted to commit adultery, and did not, that she is more “perfect”? That is, the fact that she passed a test of her convictions and belief in Islam is to be admired more than if her faith had never been tempted at all…
We all know historical accounts can vary widely depending on who’s doing the telling, and if in one version of Islam there is a belief that Aisha did act in the way and then repented, ok. If this is purely fictional though, it becomes a real problem IMO (but we all know I like my history to be, well, historically based).
Mainly because her thoughts are between her and Allah, and unless she openly admitted to having these feelings we (Muslims not everyone else) can’t really say that she had these feelings.
Okay, I hear you. But if Muslims have historically been dead set against the very idea that Aisha would have been tempted (something only she and Allah would know), it stands to reason that if she was tempted, that possibility has either been ignored or quashed.
Or, put another way, how can anyone—even those who were there—other than Aisha herself, say for sure she wasn’t tempted. But that in itself seems to be a huge objection for many—that because she was cleared of wrongdoing by Muhammad, it follows that she never had the thought. Insisting she never thought about it is, IMO, just as much a lie as saying she might have—which is to say, neither are lies, just opinions.
I liked it.
I’m going to buy it.
And I won’t be afraid to be seen reading it, either.
:)
If an author doesn’t want to stay true to the historical record, why write about REAL people? I know it’s much easier in today’s market to sell a book based on real people…
Eee, I don’t know about this, Kalen. She’s not marketing it as anything other than fiction inspired by a historical figure. Asking this question is kind of like somebody asking me why I choose to write women’s porn when I could be writing real books. Because it’s what I want to do.
This is one of those things we’ll simply have to agree to disagree about . . . purposefully altering history in the service of a fictional story chaps my hide.
This is one of those things we’ll simply have to agree to disagree about . . . purposefully altering history in the service of a fictional story chaps my hide.
Another one? *g* Strange, how we like each other so much! We’re just classy like that, I guess.
I’m not trying to justify my work here.
I don’t think you need to, Sherry! As Victoria and I have (perhaps rather stridently) been emphasizing, IT’S FICTION. You’re exercising POETIC LICENSE. You haven’t misrepresented yourself or your book, which is a NOVEL. You simply used the historical record as a springboard—something untold numbers of fiction writers have done and continue to do.
It would be against a Muslim’s religion to humanize/fictionalize the live of Mohammed or his wives. But the author’s not Muslim, so she doesn’t have to live by the rules of Islam, so I don’t understand the problem.
Maybe because a Muslim would find it sinful for anyone to write, regardless of the author’s religion? I think that as Americans, we often find ourselves looking at behavior we don’t approve of and thinking “Well, as long as they don’t hurt anyone or break the law, I’m not going to say anything about it.” Not every culture takes that approach to things they see as wrong. Someone who sees fiction about a religious leader as wrong is perfectly entitled to think of it as wrong no matter who the author is. It can offend the conscience whether it was written by a Muslim or a non-Muslim.
I have to say, I’ve been somewhat disturbed by how dismissive some are being of the opposition to the book. It strikes me as profoundly insensitive to other cultures to paint them as unreasonable for objecting strenuously to something they see as heretical. This happens in American media all the time – virtually every time another country has some sort of uprising, the protesters are painted as crazy, drunk, or unreasonable, as though only Americans (or only Western societies) are allowed to have nuanced reasons for objecting to their government’s actions. The people commenting in this entry who have a problem with the book have been calm and respectful about their objections, and yet I can’t help but feel that their objections are being dismissed because it doesn’t fit within the perspective of those who don’t find the book offensive.
I’m not a Muslim, and I don’t know as much about Islam as I should. But I find this insistence that “it’s fiction, it shouldn’t be a problem” incredibly offensive. Does that excuse blatant racism in fiction? I don’t mean a racist character in a period where racism was accepted, I mean fiction where the underlying message is that racism is good. Does “it’s fiction” excuse using fiction to push a sexist agenda? I don’t think a book fitting either of those descriptions would be getting this kind of attention if the same thing happened to it. And like Kalen Hughes, I’m very uncertain of whether this book is cultural appropriation, something I personally find objectionable. A non-Muslim could probably write on this subject matter in a respectful way, but the fact that the author rather blithely states that because it’s fiction she didn’t intend to stay true to the historical record – as though one couldn’t write fiction and be accurate at once – doesn’t bode well for me.
Did I come across as blithe? Sorry—I didn’t mean to. What I should have said is, this is MY interpretation of how things might have happened. It’s not mean to be the definitive version. It’s MY artistic vision. That’s all.
Of course people have the right to be offended about anything. I’m offended by lots of things. And, of course, as an American, my reaction is “live and let live.” I’m not sure what other reaction I’m supposed to have about a book written by an American for a US publisher. (Assuming I have my facts straight.) I’m not arguing that people shouldn’t take offense with the book. I’m arguing that offense is no reason not to publish the book.
Racist fiction? Print it the fuck out, just don’t expect me to buy it. Sexist agenda? I’m sure there have been lots of those on the bestseller lists and nary a death threat made.
People may not like the slippery slope argument, but I honestly think it applies. My books are offensive to lots of people. I know, because I’ve gotten the emails from them. I’m sure they’d be offensive to entire countries, if I could get that kind of distribution. And? I’m not volunteering to pull my books because they’re sinful in other people’s religions.
I don’t understand the argument. And yes, I admit to being shaped by my background and life and beliefs and attitudes and memories.
as though one couldn’t write fiction and be accurate at once
Huh? Then it would not be fiction obviously it would be recreation or analysis.
I have to say, I’ve been somewhat disturbed by how dismissive some are being of the opposition to the book. It strikes me as profoundly insensitive to other cultures to paint them as unreasonable for objecting strenuously to something they see as heretical.
They can object to it all they want. But it’s at the point where they insist that I, and Sherry Jones, and everyone else live according to their beliefs that I start having a problem. That doesn’t make me dismissive. It makes me not Muslim, and last time I checked there was no law against that.
I’d say it would reflect better upon Muslims in general if all those who objected simply took their concerns public and instead of pressuring the author or publisher to withhold the book, expressed their religious objections and asked people not to buy it. I guarantee you if this had been the main reaction, Ms. Jones would have gotten far fewer sales than she almost certainly will now.
I don’t mean a racist character in a period where racism was accepted, I mean fiction where the underlying message is that racism is good. Does “it’s fiction” excuse using fiction to push a sexist agenda?
Um, I may be mistaken, but as far as I know, if that fiction could not be shown to be likely to incite violence against an identifiable group, it would still be perfectly legal to publish it—not just in the U.S., but even here in left-leaning, enlightened Canada. That doesn’t mean racist material is pretty. Just that in a democracy, people are legally entitled to express themselves.
I’m very uncertain of whether this book is cultural appropriation, something I personally find objectionable.
You find it personally objectionable. Please do not dictate what things I have to find objectionable.
I find the general reaction to this action by Random House both baffling, and terribly sad. The people who have expressed problems with this book have, in general, been respectful. Those who are attacking Random House for actions that A) hardly amount to banning, and B) they should have taken from the moment the manuscript came across their desks, have not, in general, been nearly as respectful.
For a blog where we were nearly to a woman demanding that Caddie Edwards publishers take our indignation seriously, to be so dismissive of others legitimate criticisms ... I just have no words.
What bothers me most though, is the attacks being address towards the professor. I don’t know her personally, I do however know a number of female Islamic and Middle Eastern scholars. They’re generally tough cookies. I wouldn’t be so prepared to dismiss her as a nut just because she took vocal actions against this book.
Am I totally comfortable with her tone? No. Am I uncomfortable with the actions she has taken? No. Not at all.
In an age of cross promotion, it is not unreasonable of her to contact her own publisher (an imprint of Random House) and give them a heads up that she did not want her name or book associated with this one. This is not just about ego. I have a friend today who is desperately trying to do research in Turkey before the fall semester because she fully expects not to be allowed into the country again once her next book is published. And Turkey is hardly an extremist country.
I fail to see how writing to a list serve of graduate students is out of line. Academics discuss books on mailing lists all the time. My inbox currently has 10 such emails in it right now. It’s part of modern academic communication. She communicated her discomfort. Perhaps more strongly than I would have, but I am not an expert on the subject and books in my field are never going to provoke calls of religious offense. Perhaps my reaction is different than others because the operative words I read in the accounts were “muslim graduate students”.
There have been a lot of ugly accusations of censorship flying around about this book, but I’ve yet to see anyone question how healthy it is for our society to attack university professors for commenting within their field of expertise.
This is one of those things we’ll simply have to agree to disagree about . . . purposefully altering history in the service of a fictional story chaps my hide.
Another one? *g* Strange, how we like each other so much! We’re just classy like that, I guess.
We remain friends because we respect each other and agree on the fact that we can disagree on stuff like this and both still be good people. *grin* That and I love you more than ice cream.
I have to say, I’ve been somewhat disturbed by how dismissive some are being of the opposition to the book. It strikes me as profoundly insensitive to other cultures to paint them as unreasonable for objecting strenuously to something they see as heretical.
At a certain point I throw up my hands and simply state that sometimes our cultural starting points are simply too far apart for any mutual understanding to be achievable. Many Americans/Westerners believe strongly in a separation of church and state, and that someone’s ability to take offense (whatever the reason) simply isn’t a good enough reason for censorship. This mindset simply doesn’t see the logic/reason grounding the opposition to the book. The American/Western response is Fine, don’t read it. I don’t think this is a question of sensitivity, it’s simply an example of extreme incompatibility.
The fact that the author rather blithely states that because it’s fiction she didn’t intend to stay true to the historical record – as though one couldn’t write fiction and be accurate at once – doesn’t bode well for me.
This raises the issue of the accuracy of the “historical record”—which, in general, is more full of gaps and conflicting academic speculation the further back in history one goes. That record becomes additionally clouded (and let’s be brutally honest about this) when religious belief is applied to it.
How much, really, is known, beyond the shadow of any doubt, about the lives of the figures portrayed in Ms. Jones’s book? Or about any person, for that matter?
There’s a fascinating book called Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddles of Culture (1974) by anthropologist Marvin Harris that attempts to untangle taken-for-granted matters of faith from historical likelihood and cultural reality. Ashley Montagu liked the book. That, and the title, were enough to make me dive in. It was very thought-provoking and informative.
Jesus has been protrayed as human and weak in very human ways in soooo many books. There has always been discussion (and, I assume, fictionalization) over whether Mary was REALLY a virgin, or whether she just got knocked up. There’s lots and lots of discussion of what Jesus did with Mary Magdalene. Sooo… Adultery isn’t exactly a little Oops! in the bible either. So what? The stories haven’t broken the religion or anythng. People get upset. Sales go up. Life moves on.
To Victoria Dahl: Actually adultery is a big Oops in the Bible.
Adultery is defined as the commission of voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person (man or woman) and someone who is NOT his or her spouse (regardless of whether that person is married or not). It’s prohibited because it is a breach of the promise between that man and woman, and, in broader terms, a breach of the promise made towards (if not literally to) the spouse’s family and the promise to the community, whose stability relies upon its members to live by the group’s agreed-upon mores and faith.
The same voluntary sexual intercourse between two people who are NOT married (to each other, or to other individuals) is only an affair, and does not pose the same threat to the community, and as such, historically (anthropologically?) speaking it has been frowned upon, discouraged, but not as villified.
I don’t think this is a question of sensitivity, it’s simply an example of extreme incompatibility.
Agreed!!! *g*
I’m not a muslim, but I am a middle eastern studies major, which made me sit up and pay attention not only at the subject matter of the book but the controversy surrounding it.
It was interesting to read the various takes on it, and I can appreciate why it would be uncomfortable and controversial for muslims. Still, I think it deserves to be published. And to be read in its entirety and judged then, and not be censored—yes, censored, because of fear of violent outrage against it. That’s just wrong, and the publisher should reconsider.
Of course, I just love historical fiction, especially that written from a first person POV, because that is my favorite to read and write in. The language was powerful, and I just enjoyed it.
I can find out true history for myself, that’s not the reason I read historical fiction. Heck, even nonfiction can be historically inaccurate and factually biased; I believe it falls upon us as individuals to investigate the truth and history. Besides, I believe something like this provides fodder to discuss such history, and how or if it should be written about.
I am so disappointed that this book won’t be going on sale. I really do want to read the rest of it. I hope the author finds another (and better) publisher, stat, or releases it as an ebook, or self-publishes if need be—because I’d be the first to queue up and buy!
Hi, everybody!
I just wanted to take a second and express my admiration for the way everybody’s been commenting. I think it’s terrific that everybody is expressing their opinions, explaining their reasoning, and respectfully disagreeing with other people if they do in fact disagree. It’s very heartening to read.
Rational, respectful discussions! The Internet can has them!
JD
I am so disappointed that this book won’t be going on sale.
ARRRRGGH. It’s not censorship for a private enterprise not to publish something when it returns the rights to the author. She’ll find someone to publish it, of that you can be without doubt, but no one should force Random House to do it.
Should Random House have done it this far into the process? No, not really, but they should have sent it to a specialist in the field before it got to this point. They were sloppy and ignorant at the start of the process, not at the end of it.
There are ways they could have stopped it from seeing print, they didn’t take any of them.
It’s not censorship for a private enterprise not to publish something when it returns the rights to the author. ...
Should Random House have done it this far into the process? No, not really, but they should have sent it to a specialist in the field before it got to this point.
I agree entirely. Except.. For me the *attempt* at censorship is not on the part of Random House, but on the groups demanding that the book not be published. Does a censor have to have institutional power for it to be censorship? I’m asking that question honestly, because I’m not sure.
For me (as an American *g*) there is a big difference between a group trying to keep people from buying a book and a group trying to keep a book from even being published.
It was interesting to read the various takes on it, and I can appreciate why it would be uncomfortable and controversial for muslims. Still, I think it deserves to be published. And to be read in its entirety and judged then, and not be censored—yes, censored, because of fear of violent outrage against it. That’s just wrong, and the publisher should reconsider.
No book “deserves” to be published. Publishing is a business, not a charity. What’s at issue here isn’t where Jones’ book “deserves” to be published, but whether a company should change their mind about publishing a specific work based on threats and intimidation, and I’ll go to the mattress that Jones’ and her book have been treated in a manner that I find despicable.
Spider: I think we all know what adultery is. So, when Victoria D. wrote:
Adultery isn’t exactly a little Oops! in the bible either. So what? The stories haven’t broken the religion or anythng [sic]. People get upset. Sales go up. Life moves on.
She was taking the long way ‘round to say, “Adultery is a big oops in the bible.”
And on that, we can all agree.
Also, I totally agree with TeggyPig:
Just do what the Catholics do.
Put out an official banned book list.
Then the rest of us can ignore it.
And the end of Victoria’s comment.
Does a censor have to have institutional power for it to be censorship?
In my book, yes, they have to have some form of institutional power. Otherwise everyone who expresses an opinion against a piece of media is a censor. Did Paris Hilton’s parents censor John McCain for saying they were offended by the recent political ads and asking that they not be aired again?
Many Americans/Westerners believe strongly in a separation of church and state, and that someone’s ability to take offense (whatever the reason) simply isn’t a good enough reason for censorship. This mindset simply doesn’t see the logic/reason grounding the opposition to the book. The American/Western response is Fine, don’t read it. I don’t think this is a question of sensitivity, it’s simply an example of extreme incompatibility.
To Kalen Hughes: I think you’ve struck on something here. I think this reaction (which is certainly NOT held by all: consider those who wish to ban Harry Potter, The Golden Compass, The Color Purple, just to name a few off the top of my head) does stem from the way our (majority? bulk-pop-?) culture has developed through history, and leans towards the individual’s right (for himself or dependents) to decide on how to live and keeps faith a personal/private matter, separate from one’s public life.
So, if we look at the background of the Founding Fathers- the kind of religious persecution which they faced, the kind of governmental persecution which they faced led to the development of a very particular national ideal. (Heck, you can go further back to the Reformation in Europe and beyond, just not in this post. It’s too long already.)
When considering the history of the cultures predating the Muslim expansion (ca. 650 CE) as well as subsequent histories of the countries which became predominantly (or entirely) Muslim, the cultural perspective developed completely differently. Understanding how might give us more answers as to the why, but I don’t think it is necessarily going to create Empathy.
I think we can only offer Sympathy because we do not fully understand. And, even our sympathy, IMO, comes from our particular live-and-let-live view.
When I asked shewhohashope if she’d be willing to read the prologue and share her reaction, she agreed.
Sarah, I’m glad you asked for her reaction and gave her the inches to explain. As someone who has a faith most prefer to deliberately misunderstand, I appreciate it. Too, I like the insights she gave into her faith.
1. Does it tease you to read more?
Yes. But having shewhohashope’s explanation in mind makes me view it more as midrash along the lines of The Red Tent and thus, take its historicity with a grain of salt.
2. Does the writing style please your readerly brain?
Yes.
3. Do the contents shock you?
No. I’m all about combining faith with doubt and angst about sexuality versus religious culture. I need more examples of such a struggle.
4. Does the characterization offend you deeply?
No. It probably would if I were Muslim, but again, my faith and its leaders have been ridiculed for so long (ah, including Cross Cuntry) that I’m just used to it. Water. Duck. You know the drill.
5. Does the fiction make the idea of Mohammed and his life more or less accessible to you as a reader?
I never thought much about Mohammed. Now I’m intrigued to study more.
6. Did you like it?
Yes.
I guess what I don’t understand is the feeling I get that if non-Muslims read it and are NOT offended, that we have sinned. Am I reading that correctly or are my internet goggles just not working properly?
This raises the issue of the accuracy of the “historical record”—which, in general, is more full of gaps and conflicting academic speculation the further back in history one goes. That record becomes additionally clouded (and let’s be brutally honest about this) when religious belief is applied to it.
History is not the same as fact. The historical record is no more than surviving people’s subjective accounts of events they experienced or were told about, and can’t be considered to be any more accurate than any number of conflicting eyewitness accounts of contemporary events. A historical work based entirely on information generally accepted as factual may in fact be just as inaccurate as any historical novel.
Religion is notorious for taking “facts” and skewing them for its own purpose—e.g., the fact Christmas is celebrated on December 25, when in reality Christ’s birthdate has never been reliably substantiated. So religious history should be viewed with even more skepticism than secular.
To Rebecca:
The internets ate my comment, but the gist was: I totally got longwinded. I get frustrated at the confusion of adultery with all extramarital sex, and I wasn’t trying to call anybody out!
So, if we look at the background of the Founding Fathers- the kind of religious persecution which they faced,
*eyebrow raised* The “Founding Fathers” did not face religious persecution. The Puritans might have, but the “Founding Fathers” were born half a century later, and most of them were extremely privileged individuals.
And Deists, which so often gets overlooked in American history.
I’ve yet to see anyone question how healthy it is for our society to attack university professors for commenting within their field of expertise.
Katherine, you can’t seriously be calling one professor’s attempt to quash publication of a NOVEL “commenting within their field of expertise”? “Commenting” is saying, “I found this book disrespectful of its sources, inaccurate, and potentially offensive. I have been in contact with graduate students who have expressed an interest in seeing this book and ask the author for an apology for her depiction of holy figures.”
Academic freedom should not be limited—but it goes more than one way. I may hate—and I do mean HATE—David Horowitz and his cronies with their books filled with filthy lies, and yet you don’t see me rallying the troops to get them silenced by having their publishing contracts revoked, do you? Even though their message could corrupt my own?
If you find something offensive, make your argument against it stronger. Speak louder. Don’t silence the other person.
(And, by the way, I would say that Random House’s actions do amount to a kind of temporary censorship. They have institutional power over the publication of that novel, and they opted to revoke their publication of it due to external pressure. Until Ms. Jones finds another publisher, the novel has, in effect, been censored.)
Should Random House have done it this far into the process? No, not really, but they should have sent it to a specialist in the field before it got to this point.
Why, exactly? Again, I think we’re confusing people’s expectation that their rights not be infringed with their displeasure at being offended.
I think my reaction boils down to:
(1) I am not a Muslim, but I appreciate that the content and implications of this book offend Muslims.
(2) I absolutely despise historical fiction that distorts historical record because it’s easier to write the story the author wants when the author tweaks a bit of truth to fit his/her plotlines.
(3) I probably would not find the rest of this book enjoyable for that reason.
(4) The book was pulled for cowardly reasons and ought to have been published as originally planned. In that event, the people who disliked it would have been free to express their dislike, and the people who liked it would have been free to enjoy it.
“The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters! They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. ... It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.
....
“Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator.”
—from Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, 1953. With apologies for potentially offensive language and the implication that cultural sensitivity is always bad, it is nevertheless a passage that always haunts me in discussions like these.
Katherine, you can’t seriously be calling one professor’s attempt to quash publication of a NOVEL “commenting within their field of expertise”?
Actually, yes, I can. Especially when the novel is historical fiction set in what is the bulk of the reading public unfamiliar territory. Fiction is used as a method of teaching history all the time. Students in universities today are being asked to read and write papers on the Kite Runner. The fact that is a novel does not exclude it from historical discussion.
She is, by every definition I can moster, one of the worlds leading experts on the subject matter covered by this novel. If it’s not her field of expertise, I don’t know whose it would be.
As for the demands it not be published? Lots of people make demands. The professor didn’t put a gun to Random Houses head. She pointed out a fact that should have been ragingly obvious to them from the start. She thought the offense so great that Random House shouldn’t publish it. It’s her opinion. That shouldn’t be any less valid because you disagree with her than the authors is for thinking she shouldn’t be held to the standards of historical fact.
People may not like the slippery slope argument, but I honestly think it applies. My books are offensive to lots of people. I know, because I’ve gotten the emails from them. I’m sure they’d be offensive to entire countries, if I could get that kind of distribution. And? I’m not volunteering to pull my books because they’re sinful in other people’s religions.
V. Dahl
My problem with this kind of righteous indignation, in this particular situation is that, as far as I know, there is no slope in existence to make us credibly worried about anything slippery. Random House has not supplied any evidence of death threats only the likelihood on them occurring; an evaluation they got from anonymous sources that are described as “credible”. The only real *threats* to clearly manifest themselves is some protesting grad students who put together a bullet list. Ooooooo, scary.
I’d say it would reflect better upon Muslims in general if all those who objected simply took their concerns public and instead of pressuring the author or publisher to withhold the book, expressed their religious objections and asked people not to buy it. I guarantee you if this had been the main reaction, Ms. Jones would have gotten far fewer sales than she almost certainly will now.
- Kristen S
Shit, it sure is tough being a minority. Others are so much quicker to judge you in relation to whatever group you represent to them rather than recognise what is more unique (and therefore illuminating and probably relevant) about your situation. Ambassador work 24/7 with no pay. :(
I think that as Americans, we often find ourselves looking at behavior we don’t approve of and thinking “Well, as long as they don’t hurt anyone or break the law, I’m not going to say anything about it.”
Many Americans/Westerners believe strongly in a separation of church and state, and that someone’s ability to take offense (whatever the reason) simply isn’t a good enough reason for censorship.
Am I the only one seeing some serious idealization of American culture going on here? Seems to me a lot of Americans have no problem looking at behavior they don’t approve of based on their Judeo-Christian morality and creating laws that make it illegal (abortion and homosexual relationships come to mind). They might believe in a separation of church and state, but that certainly doesn’t seem to apply to the legal system.
And the FCC likely would take issue with the second statement (aren’t “Jesus Christ!” and “goddamn” still forbidden on network television?).
We are not nearly as tolerant some of these comments would make us seem. When my partner recently had surgery, I had to provide all manner of legal paperwork before hospital staff could even tell me she was a patient, let alone allow me to visit her.
Why, exactly? Again, I think we’re confusing people’s expectation that their rights not be infringed with their displeasure at being offended.
Because the American media willfully and sometimes with blissful ignorance paints with a very wide brush. The injustices done to both Arabs and Muslims are so great that they have, IMO, a moral obligation to make sure they do not needlessly offend.
Might want to check out a book called Reel Bad Arabs by Jack Shaheen. it’s about Hollywood, but I think the indictment is against western media in general.
If you find something offensive, make your argument against it stronger. Speak louder. Don’t silence the other person.
Off topic, but: why not silence them? If you were in charge of a publishing company, and in your judgement David Horowitz (don’t know who he is, but still) wrote lies, why would you publish his writings? I can’t see why the more moral course would be to promulgate untruths.
My problem with this kind of righteous indignation,
Eh, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even indignant, much less righteously so.
The injustices done to both Arabs and Muslims are so great that they have, IMO, a moral obligation to make sure they do not needlessly offend.
So basically you’re saying that any text depicting Arabs and/or Muslims should be run through a vigorous screening process to make sure we don’t offend anyone.
While we’re at it, can we do that for books/movies depicting Native Americans/Amerindians/First Nations peoples? Because they’ve gotten an incredibly nasty rap from Hollywood and mass media, too.
Oh, and come to think of it, shouldn’t someone do something about the depiction of African Americans in media?
Get a fucking grip. We all offend each other all the time. NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT NOT TO BE OFFENDED. We can do our best to be culturally sensitive, to be aware, etc., but censorship is absolutely NOT the way to do it. The best way is to talk, talk, talk, talk, until such images are widely recognized as negative and inappropriate.
And, again, I maintain that Spellberg was doing far more than “commenting” on the book. It is NOT in the realm of an academic to go around shutting down books they disagree with. And using a novel to teach history is LAZY TEACHING. You can use a novel to SUPPLEMENT the teaching of history, but history does not equal literature.
Ok, you can scratch that if you like, but the rest of my comment about the slippery slope being, at this point, a very weak illusion still stands. Unless grad students are particularly feisty on your side of the border.
Personally, I think this is all part of Random House’s genius plan to cut their own PR budget for the book after they publish some token apology and give whoever came up with the idea a huge promotion/bonus.
So basically you’re saying that any text depicting Arabs and/or Muslims should be run through a vigorous screening process to make sure we don’t offend anyone.
snarkhunter
Whoa whoa whoa! She typed “needlessly offend”. “Needlessly”! Big change in meaning there. I’m going to tag this as another fit of needless righteous indignation ;).
Edit: And what kind of “vigorous screening process” is “send book to specialist in the field earlier in the book deal process”? This is the only recommendation Katherine made, far as I can see. (Although I don’t agree, from what we’ve read so far, that the academic’s entire response was a responsible one.)
So basically you’re saying that any text depicting Arabs and/or Muslims should be run through a vigorous screening process to make sure we don’t offend anyone.
No, actually, I’m saying text about the life of the Prophet should be run by experts. That’s a no brainer to me, not just for reasons of cultural balance, but for basic fact checking. If you are going to go down this path in this climate, you better have a defensible position.
If you were in charge of a publishing company, and in your judgement David Horowitz (don’t know who he is, but still) wrote lies, why would you publish his writings
Well, for one thing, my claim that he writes “lies” is largely based on interpretation. I believe with every fiber of my being that he’s wrong about just about everything (he’s a big deal in anti-peace studies, anti-women’s studies, etc.), but I believe he has every right to be out there saying these things. He’s an American. So am I. In the United States, his right to be full of shit and to stand around saying it is something that I hold absolutely sacred. Because once we start supressing speech for being offensive or wrong, where does it end? Much of what I say can be offensive to a person who believes a woman should learn in silence. Why should that opinion have greater sway over my voice than I do?
Now, were I a publisher, and his books went against my stated mandate? Then, no, I wouldn’t publish them. But I also would never contract a book with him and then reject it based on vague threats and one person’s opinion.
Random House has the right to publish whateverthehell they want to publish. If they want to only publish books about purple pandas, more power to them. But they also have a duty, in my opnion, to fulfill their contracts, and not be swayed by vague threats and the opinion of a single individual, no matter how powerful she is within her field. If nothing else, they should’ve run the book by a panel of experts.
No, actually, I’m saying text about the life of the Prophet should be run by experts
Did you look at Jones’s 29-page bibliography? She did her research. And the book is not meant to be used as or taught as fact. Why is this so hard? Fact is not fiction. Fiction is not fact. I understand why Muslims are distressed by this book, but this is something that Ms. Jones should not back down on. She wrote a novel in what appears to be an attempt to celebrate A’isha. You can disagree with that or with her method, but why in the world should every book on sensitive subjects have to be approved by a panel of “experts”? I mean that—why?
You’re at the top of a very scary slope here. Are we seriously going to cower in fear because of a few extremists? Are we going to edit every single thing we write, fiction or non, because it might offend some loons with guns? It’s ridiculous, and by catering to such behavior, we only encourage people to use threats to get what they want.
(Although I don’t agree, from what we’ve read so far, that the academic’s entire response was a responsible one.)
And even I don’t think her entire response was responsible. I’ve said a couple of times I didn’t think her tone was helpful, but that doesn’t mean her entire response was irrational and without merit.
No, actually, I’m saying text about the life of the Prophet should be run by experts. That’s a no brainer to me, not just for reasons of cultural balance, but for basic fact checking. If you are going to go down this path in this climate, you better have a defensible position.
And why exactly is that? Why should the Prophet be given that much consideration by a non-Muslim? It would be nice if he was, but it is not a requirement for a non-Muslim who wishes to write a book about him. Nor should it be.
As a writer I highly disapprove of anybody telling me what I should or shouldn’t do in order to write the story that I want to tell.
As has been said above, nobody in America has the right to not be offended whether they be Muslim, gay, Pagan, or purple men from the planet Zool.
Yes, basic facts should be checked, but anybody can do that without have their work analyzed by an expert. Especially if you have a 29 page bibliography like Ms. Jones does.
Whoa whoa whoa! She typed “needlessly offend”. “Needlessly”! Big change in meaning there. I’m going to tag this as another fit of needless righteous indignation ;).
Okay, fair enough. I did miss that word. My point was that her comment about the injustices done to Arabs and Muslims can be said about many, many other ethnic and religious groups, and yet people aren’t falling all over themselves to make sure there’s “accuracy” in their depictions, particularly in fiction. And why is that, do you suppose? Is it because people think those minority groups don’t matter? Or is it because they’re not afraid of those minority groups? I suspect a combination of both.
As an academic myself, I believe Spellberg overstepped her bounds. She had every right to comment on the book and to preach against it in her classrooms. She could pick it apart to death with her grad students or whomever she wanted to talk about it with. But she had no right to stop its publication in the manner she did.
Did you look at Jones’s 29-page bibliography?
A 29-page bibliography does not mean that the book is well researched. Have I inspected the bibliogrpahy in question? No. I will say that I have taken enough middle eastern history and religious studies classes in my life to see a lot of problems with Jones’ entire attitude. That makes me question the validity of the book.
You want to say fiction is fiction. Fine. We’ll agree to disagree on that subject. I am of the opinion that fiction is neither written nor read in a vacuum.
To Snarkhunter: Poor word choice on my part. I should have reworked/clarified by saying that I think that religious persecution was a consideration in developing the government.
Why should the Prophet be given that much consideration by a non-Muslim?
Because we live in a world where the response by a lot of people to this controversy is to equate a single academic and a listserv of grad students with a power point presentation and a petition to a mob of terrorists.
Because we keep telling the world we are not in a cultural war with Islam while we throw hand grenades over the wall at them.
I am of the opinion that fiction is neither written nor read in a vacuum.
Of course it’s not. But censoring one’s self out of fear creates an enviroment in which I do not want to live. And given your comments about “this climate,” it seems to me that that’s where your comments lead.
Anaquana said it better than I did. In the United States (and I will only speak for that country, as it is an American author and an American publisher in question), no one has the right to not be offended. No one.
To take it out of the realm of this particular book and into the realm of the hypothetical/historical, do you also think that Rushdie should have withdrawn The Satanic Verses and had it pulped? Why/why not? How is that different? (Although Rushdie, having grown up Muslim, may have more cultural authority to speak, I think the issue of cultural appropriation is actually a bit of a red herring here, only b/c I wonder why people are so up in arms about *this* instance of it, but not the 80000 others we can see every day.)
petition to a mob of terrorists.
Because we keep telling the world we are not in a cultural war with Islam while we throw hand grenades over the wall at them.
Bingo.
So we cave in. And where else do we give in to the demands of other faiths? Shall I start wearing a headscarf (no offense intended to those who do) while going about my regular life, because I may offend a conservative Muslim man whose path crosses mine?
It’s been said a number of times, but WOW: great discussion everyone. I have completely forgotten anything and everything I was going to add because I’m all caught up in trying to untangle the ins and outs of all of this.
I can’t seem to come to terms with myself at all. ...so rambling ahoy:
I generally enjoy historical fiction. I like “interpretations” of stories. For example, I like to pick through various versions of Anne Boleyn to see the moments from history that may have prompted the author to make a particular character decision.
Someone above, apologies for the lack of direct quote, remarked about westerners liking their leaders humanized, and I can connect with that. (Unapologetic Humanist here.) Everybody is, or was, a flesh and blood, eating, walking, breathing entity at one point with wonderful flaws and/or nobility to be explored. (And…strangely, THIS is where I could make a connection to Brett Favre…agh. *is such a nerd* The sixteen-year-old that watched him win a Super Bowl feels crushed and betrayed. Anyway….) Historical fiction need not be 100% representative of What Actually Happened for me to like it.
This being said, I also think that one should be really careful before writing in a culture that one is not part of and really take pains to make the setting as Spot On as possible. (I could write about icy stadiums and cheese hats, but not hooligans in rival football club hangouts in Glasgow). In this particular case, though effort was certainly made, I just wasn’t being sold on the cultural details which may possibly make the situation that much more touchy. Culture needs to bleed through the pages to make characters older than a 20th century brain feel like people that did not come OUT of a 20th century brain. (I will grant that all we had was a prologue.)
I can certainly appreciate the intent in writing… to express personal fascination with the historical events and to make people interested in finding out more.
We (the US) do still have a Muslim-maligning problem, and anything to further understanding is a Good Thing, but umm….iffy subject matter to dive into. At least we’re discussing here. Hurrah! (And I’ve learned some things! Thanks more educated posters!)
On the flip side, my sensibilities are somewhat offended by the removal of the book from circulation. This conversation is good, but it’s such SPECULATIVE conversation. If the book had been out there and circulating, just think of the dialogue!
I feel like, NOT having the book out there makes this more a conversation about whether or not there was censorship or if there was overreaction, and not as much a conversation about the issues that cause the offense. (Everyone above has done a fab job talking about issues of historical accuracy and representation of important religious figs though.)
End in sight, I swear.
Personally, I can sympathize with people who would be offended by the subject matter, even if I don’t (from my very agnostic perspective) understand what it’s like to live so thoroughly in a religion that the fictional presentation of its characters is Not Cool. ...though I think I just realized that, though I am agnostic now, this lack of understanding comes in equal amount from my Christian upbringing. Christians are SO used to seeing their holy folk acted out and represented (for hundreds of years), that this sort of thing is baffling. Eek. Nothing like a revelation “in public.”
Done. Sorry for the disorder. I tried to think it through. Probably failed.
Thanks for sharing everyone. This sort of thing takes nads.
Shit. I screwed up my last comment. I should’ve said that I felt Katherine was actually making that equation herself, based on her comments about “climate,” and then gone forward.
The “bingo” was unnecessarily snarky, and I tried to edit it out, only to be stymied by the computer. Sorry. :(
At this point I’m just waiting for more detailed reporting on what actually went down. I have quite a few Muslim friends who are immigrants or only first-born generation and are therefore a bit closer to an environment or a general philosophy in which an entire society is more reverential towards a deity. I think it’s why I get less het up when I hear or read about different Muslims groups actively demanding (on printed paper!) that any particular product relating to Muhammed not be published/aired. For them it’s not a virtue that Christians have become so lax—this is how some would see it—that any and every sort of blasphemy can be spread (fictional or otherwise) and nothing much can be done about it. And I’m sure that a lot of Christians envy at least this aspect of how Islam has developed in their countries.
I am no more congenial to the idea of acquiescing to their demands I just get where they’re coming from.
Bingo.
Which comes back to needless offense.
I don’t see it as caving in. I see it as trying to stop two of the worlds great civilizations from destroying each other in one big oil fianced, bomb laden, meltdown. It may be comfortable for you to sit back and say you are not responsible for the ongoing conflict, that the Islamic world is overly sensative.
I am of the opinion that Americans and the American media (to include people like Random House) are far too willing to disclaim all responsiblity any offense directed at Islam and Arabs in favor of casting protests in the Arab Street as inherently irrational.
It’s comforting to say we are right and we should have our freedoms be damned who it offense. Me… I’d like the world not to implode in the next 50 years.
Because we live in a world where the response by a lot of people to this controversy is to equate a single academic and a listserv of grad students with a power point presentation and a petition to a mob of terrorists.
Because we keep telling the world we are not in a cultural war with Islam while we throw hand grenades over the wall at them.
Uhhh… color me stupid, but that makes absolutely no sense.
So, a non-Muslim writer of fiction giving the Prophet more consideration than their own chosen Deity is going to stop people from making knee-jerk reactions?
Or are you saying that it will stop the supposed cultural war that we are supposedly having with Islam?
I don’t see how writing a book of fiction can be equated with throwing a hand grenade at them. That to me is a knee-jerk reaction right there.
I can turn your words around and say that we live in a world where the response by a group of people to a controversy surrounding a Pagan teacher who showed his class a magic trick (as in a stage illusion) led to his being branded a Satanist and fired from his position for teaching witchcraft.
Are you going to speak out against those Christian writers who portray anybody of a Pagan faith as evil baby-eating Satanists in an effort to stop a supposed cultural war between the two?
Granted, Pagans don’t have as scary a reputation as Muslims have. People don’t worry that a group of Pagans are going to bomb their city or send suicide bombers into their schools. (Again please note that I am not saying that Muslims are going to do this or that all Muslims are evil scary terrorists)
As for the demands it not be published? Lots of people make demands. The professor didn’t put a gun to Random Houses head. She pointed out a fact that should have been ragingly obvious to them from the start. She thought the offense so great that Random House shouldn’t publish it.
You don’t think the fact that she also has a book deal with an imprint within the same publishing house might have perhaps constituted a wee bit of conflict of interest?
The more that emerges about this situation, the more my focus narrows to the academic. As a writer, someone messes with my career that way? Wouldn’t be pretty. Sherry Jones spent five years working on this book. What we think of it, as a work of fiction, should have been left up to us, as readers to decide. Not up to some academic who decides she wants to play God.
You don’t think the fact that she also has a book deal with an imprint within the same publishing house might have perhaps constituted a wee bit of conflict of interest?
Actually I think it gives her more right to comment not less. I find it easy to believe that some marketing guy at Random House already had ideas of marketing her non-fiction book with this one. The fact that she was concerned that her name would be associated with this book is not irrational.
I don’t see it as caving in. I see it as trying to stop two of the worlds great civilizations from destroying each other in one big oil fianced, bomb laden, meltdown. It may be comfortable for you to sit back and say you are not responsible for the ongoing conflict, that the Islamic world is overly sensative.
I am of the opinion that Americans and the American media (to include people like Random House) are far too willing to disclaim all responsiblity any offense directed at Islam and Arabs in favor of casting protests in the Arab Street as inherently irrational.
It’s comforting to say we are right and we should have our freedoms be damned who it offense. Me… I’d like the world not to implode in the next 50 years.
But, in a way it is caving in. It is saying that Islamic sensibilities are more important than our own and that they have every right to tell us how to act and how to believe so that we don’t “needlessly” offend them.
I’m pretty sure that just about everything about me and my life would offend a devout Muslim’s sensibilities. Should I change my life so that I don’t needlessly offend them?
I mean, I don’t have to walk around with my head uncovered. I don’t need to wear short skirts and skimpy tops. And since I believe that all Gods that have ever been worshiped exist then I should just go ahead and worship Allah since me worshiping other deities is causing a needless offense.
Where does trying not to needlessly offend anybody end? And what is a needless offense? What might seem like a needless offense to one person might seem like a perfectly rational act to another.
I refuse to give up any of my rights and liberties just because there is the possibility that the world might get nuked out of existence at some unspecified point in the future.
I find it easy to believe that some marketing guy at Random House already had ideas of marketing her non-fiction book with this one.
Not likely. Different imprints, working within different arms of a giant publishing conglomerates. They might even have differing PR & marketing departments. She was sent an ARC off a list provided by the author (if I’m recalling correctly) to provide a blurb if she so desired. It’s a big moment—we all have our dream authors who we hope will like our books enough to blurb them. And once we’re on the other end, most of us, we’re sent books for blurbing, we either blurb, or we decline politely.
Was Spellberg within her rights to tell her editor that she had strong objections to the book? Absolutely. Rock on. Her methods, however? By the standards of academia or commercial publishing? SUCKED.
Okay, fair enough. I did miss that word. My point was that her comment about the injustices done to Arabs and Muslims can be said about many, many other ethnic and religious groups, and yet people aren’t falling all over themselves to make sure there’s “accuracy” in their depictions, particularly in fiction. And why is that, do you suppose? Is it because people think those minority groups don’t matter? Or is it because they’re not afraid of those minority groups? I suspect a combination of both.
snarkhunter
Actually, I don’t think that there is a very wide, significant movement to ensure people gain accurate depictions of various Arabs nationally or individually, or the Muslim religion as a global faith. Co-orporations may stay far, far away from products that might even carry the *whiff* of controversy in relation to them, but that doesn’t mean they’re compensating by scooping up or scouting for a bunch of general reader books on Sunni matriarchs, for example.
I will say that the Muslim issue definitely gets more attention. But in addition to your reasons I do think that’s in no small part due to the fact that the rhetoric immediately preceding 9/11 and the actions thereafter encouraged very much an East vs. West slant which helped to unify Muslims worldwide in feeling they were being attacked even though all these different groups and individuals shared diverse views much as any other group. It’s a support system (of sorts) that the various indigenous nations across the globe don’t have. Neither do those of African descent. Why? Well, it’s a harsh answer—their populations (esp. in the West) were decimated or controlled for far longer and far more effectively than the comparatively newer Muslim immigrants. Muslim Westerners have never been controlled on reservations and have stronger ties to their other cultural homes (America + [insert country here]) unlike African-Americans who are left with the vague “Africa” prefix because most of them have little to no idea which country they came from only, at best, the port from which they were exported.
Anaquana I’m just gonna go there and ask right now if you’ve been following this discussion so far? Because your response reads as though you came out of the middle of no where—maybe from just reading about the Guatanamo trial on Bin Laden’s driver?—read Katherine’s comment and leaped to the most hare-brained, quack assumptions possible. I can’t begin to list all of your huge misinterpretations (I hope someone else helps me out here) but just to get this one out of the way.
So, a non-Muslim writer of fiction giving the Prophet more consideration than their own chosen Deity is going to stop people from making knee-jerk reactions?
No. No one here has commented anything of the kind. Katherine’s only suggestion has been that the book should have been sent to an expert earlier in the book deal process to prevent “needless offence”.
Or are you saying that it will stop the supposed cultural war that we are supposedly having with Islam?
Yes, this is what she meant, absolutely. (By which, I obviously mean, NO.)
I don’t see how writing a book of fiction can be equated with throwing a hand grenade at them. That to me is a knee-jerk reaction right there.
*head on desk* I need a break. I’ll come back a bit later to clarify if Katherine hasn’t done it herself by this point. All I can suggest is to read this thread from the top…maybe skim through the first comment thread on this book two posts down?
I’m pretty sure that just about everything about me and my life would offend a devout Muslim’s sensibilities. Should I change my life so that I don’t needlessly offend them?
It’s about your life, nor is about a book about your life. It’s about the life of the leading figure in the worlds second largest religion.
While we’re at it, can we do that for books/movies depicting Native Americans/Amerindians/First Nations peoples? Because they’ve gotten an incredibly nasty rap from Hollywood and mass media, too.
Oh, and come to think of it, shouldn’t someone do something about the depiction of African Americans in media?
And this would be a bad thing why? Seems that being more culturally sensitive, not less, should be what we argue for. Yes, I really do think mass entertainment material - including books - should be checked for the potential to offend and to spread misinformation or reinforce negative stereotypes. I see no virtue in declaring ‘no one has the right not to be offended’ and not taking basic precautions not to cause offend. That’s not pandering to terrorism - it’s common courtesy. It’s also recognising that people not part of the dominant culture also deserve respect.
Random House should not have pulled this book, because they did so not because they believed the book was poor or unnecessarily offensive, but because they caved into manipulation by an unscrupulous academic. At the very least, they made a cynical decision that it was cheaper to yank the book now, than withdraw it from stores later. The book deserves a proper assessment from the reading public, Muslim and non-Muslim. The whole business is shabby.
Oh, and the non-fiction book for which Spellberg has the contract with Knopf is on Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an, not A’isha.
The more that emerges about this situation, the more my focus narrows to the academic.
Absolutely. It’s been so frustrating to me to see this discussion be all about those horrible Muslims and their uncomfortable sensitivities, when this is at its heart, nothing to do with Muslim sensitivities or opinions at all. It’s an nasty, blatant academic hatchet job and Spellberg should be facing calls for her dismissal or at the very least, having to answer to a disciplinary committee or the like for her behaviour. What’s going on is a classic case of misdirection - hey, don’t look at me feathering my own nest at the cost of a fellow writer’s career, watch out for the terrorists!
Ann, to be fair I don’t think snark hunter is arguing against cultural sensitivity—only lodging protest at a certain group getting more attention than others. Like I said, though, global politics shapes this more than anything else. There is a war going on in two predominantly Muslim countries and agitations about the probability of starting another. And both are primarily supported by a leader who has not shunned the use of religious terminology in describing the two conflicts and who rose to power by catering to a particular religious base.
I’m afraid African-Americans and Native issues just aren’t as sexy right now. I also think my apparently self-appointed role as mediator and all-round interpreter is about to get annoying so I’ll try to stop. Fair warning though—I love to argue. :(
I have no idea how savvy Spellberg is when it comes to the ways of commercial publishing. And I agree that a lot of the action in this seems to revolve around her and around the way Random House acted as a result of her comments/concerns.
BUT, I would caution against concluding as to her motives or her sympathies, because I could see numerous scenarios in which she would be acting entirely in good faith and still inadvertently open up an enormous controversy. She could, for example, have been truly alarmed at what she thought would stir up some in the Muslim community and acted to forestall what she believed would be worse trouble. She could have believed that once she disassociated her name from the project that her influence would be moot. As I said in the other thread, academics have notoriously low self-esteem when it comes to believing that they have any cultural influence.
What I would hate to see happen here is that Spellberg becomes the fall person for a huge publisher with huge resources at its disposal, a publisher with enough power and influence that it had all sorts of options to exercise regarding this book. Including, as I said in the other thread, trying to reach out to the Muslim community if there was a real belief that things were going to get hot. Not only was it Random House who made the decision to withdraw the book, but it seems to me that they have taken an incredibly small amount of heat, even in these threads. Whatever Spellberg said or did, there’s no way you’re going to convince me that Random House was clueless about the potential controversy when they signed Jones.
Also, there is a concern—that non-academics may not be aware of—that Spellberg could be targeted as anti-awholebunchofstuff based on this publicity, a targeting that can result in much more than a few critical comments on SBTB. The casual, unsubstantiated targeting of academics as anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Islamic has become a real problem in the aftermath of 9/11, and the pressures exerted because of these labels is not insignificant (there’s my understatement of the day).
Robin, you’re so smart. What’s your secret?
One last thing, then I’m taking a break myself.
From an article from one of our own favorites around here, Hillel Italie:
NEW YORK — At a time when government reports ask whether Americans care about reading anymore, the legacy of Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn reminds us that books can matter as much as life and death.
Solzhenitsyn, who died Sunday at age 89, never stood before a tank in Tiananmen Square, but novels such as “Cancer Ward” and “The First Circle” landed like roadblocks before Soviet might, their power confirmed and magnified by his government’s determination to stop them.
“Writers are a problem, they are a great problem, thank God,” says Jason Epstein, a longtime editor at Random House who worked with Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal and others. “Without them we would be lost.”
Kinda love that they quoted a Random House editor.
His books were were seen as a danger and a menace to an entire society and government and way of life that many people held, if not necessarily sacred, then at least as the ideal that all should aspire to, but he saw it differently and he wrote his take on what he saw.
He was willing to take his punches and God knows, the man took them. Sherry Jones appears prepared to do the same. Who is Denise Spellberg to attempt to stifle Sherry Jones’ voice?
Since, as has been said a hundred times in the two threads dealing with this, the terrorists and extremist Muslims are a very vocal minority and the vast majority of Muslims are decent people who would sooner slam their heads into their desks than perpetuate violence as a form of protest then we should have no fears that the world will end in “one big oil fianced, bomb laden, meltdown. “
This idea that we shouldn’t offend the Muslim community because it will cause a massive world ending war is just another form of bigotry IMO.
And, I should have added that the thing that will cause a massive world-ending war is our moron of a president who doesn’t know how to keep his nose out of the rest of the world’s affairs, not a book or even a hundred books.
I don’t think snark hunter is arguing against cultural sensitivity—only lodging protest at a certain group getting more attention than others.
Possibly so. I’m just saying that being sensitive to any group who gets as raw a deal as Muslims or the other groups she mentions, isn’t a bad thing. At the moment, Muslims/Arabs are the default bad guys in any story telling, so balancing that with more attention to the real issues, is only fair, IMO.
Robin, wise words of course, but I can’t cut Spellberg much of a break when she’s the one acting as the mouthpiece for the supposed threats. That’s when she crossed a line from outraged innocent to deliberate fomentor of hatred - at least, so far as I’m concerned. Is it improper that her role in this should be examined properly?
But no, it doesn’t let RH off the hook in the slightest. They’ve behaved appallingly. They should be forced to tell the truth about the threat they perceived and why they weren’t prepared to stand by their author and their contract.
Also, there is a concern—that non-academics may not be aware of—that Spellberg could be targeted as anti-awholebunchofstuff based on this publicity, a targeting that can result in much more than a few critical comments on SBTB. The casual, unsubstantiated targeting of academics as anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Islamic has become a real problem in the aftermath of 9/11, and the pressures exerted because of these labels is not insignificant (there’s my understatement of the day).
QFT. Thank you.
Since, as has been said a hundred times in the two threads dealing with this, the terrorists and extremist Muslims are a very vocal minority and the vast majority of Muslims are decent people who would sooner slam their heads into their desks than perpetuate violence as a form of protest then we should have no fears that the world will end in “one big oil fianced, bomb laden, meltdown. “
That didn’t help the Iraqis, did it? May not help the Iranians either although most of the world is crossing fingers over that one I’m sure.
One question though: why is that obviously exaggerated scenario provided by Katherine dependent on whether Muslims are peace loving or not? Is there something you’d like to share? :) Seriously, though I have no idea what this comment of yours is related to. Someone else help me out here.
Edit: Oh, I get it! You’re being fatuous here, right?
This idea that we shouldn’t offend the Muslim community because it will cause a massive world ending war is just another form of bigotry IMO.
No one wrote that.
Anything else?
My response was in regards to this post by Katherine:
I don’t see it as caving in. I see it as trying to stop two of the worlds great civilizations from destroying each other in one big oil fianced, bomb laden, meltdown. It may be comfortable for you to sit back and say you are not responsible for the ongoing conflict, that the Islamic world is overly sensative.
I am of the opinion that Americans and the American media (to include people like Random House) are far too willing to disclaim all responsiblity any offense directed at Islam and Arabs in favor of casting protests in the Arab Street as inherently irrational.
It’s comforting to say we are right and we should have our freedoms be damned who it offense. Me… I’d like the world not to implode in the next 50 years.
This comment of hers came from the discussion on needlessly offending Muslims. So, again I ask, why would needlessly offending Muslims result in a world ending war if Muslims are for the most part peaceful people?
This discussion has nothing to do with American politics and the stupidity of a certain power-mad Commander In Chief. It is about a book and the offense that Muslims feel about it.
And, yes I have read every single comment in both threads. And, my reading comprehension skills are such that I understand 99.9% of them.
He was willing to take his punches and God knows, the man took them. Sherry Jones appears prepared to do the same. Who is Denise Spellberg to attempt to stifle Sherry Jones’ voice?
My difference of opinion here may be traced to that divide on the subject of reader pressure—that authors can interpret reader comments as pressure, whereas readers just think they’re offering an opinion. Academics are used to making strong statements of opinion, even though to non-academics they might appear as pressure or as pronouncements. I know from personal experience how difficult it sometimes is to modulate a strong opinion so it does not sound like an order. And I could most definitely see Spellberg in a position where she believed that she was simply delivering a word of caution, because we still don’t know what was said and what ultimately made Random House pull the book.
So I can absolutely see a scenario under which Spellberg did not see herself as trying to shut the book down, even though that’s what happened. I am not, however, defending what Spellberg did or her motives (both of which we don’t completely know at this point). I wish she had handled the situation differently, and perhaps in hindsight would have. I believe that no matter what her motives and intentions she helped set an unfortunate series of events in motion that go against what academics, as a rule, value (unfettered intellectual debate). However, I am not, on the basis of existing evidence, willing to convict her of trying to shut Jones down out of some professional competition or whatever.
Robin, wise words of course, but I can’t cut Spellberg much of a break when she’s the one acting as the mouthpiece for the supposed threats. That’s when she crossed a line from outraged innocent to deliberate fomentor of hatred - at least, so far as I’m concerned. Is it improper that her role in this should be examined properly?
I’m all for knowing what happened and talking about it, but I’m nervous about some of the conclusions that are being drawn on so little evidence. After all, what we know is that she appeared to be concerned about violence and made that complaint to at least one source, Amunullah, and perhaps Random House. But I don’t think that *necessarily* makes her an opportunistic fear monger. Perhaps her actions were the product of inexperience, or naivete, or heaven knows what based on her own experience. After all, she’s an Islamic Studies scholar, so it wasn’t like she was trying to sully the reputation of Muslims. I would simply like to see more pressure exerted on Random House for their decision before we take the torches to Spellberg.
Arethusa: LOL; I just spit water all over my computer screen!
Katherine: What does QFT mean?
Katherine: What does QFT mean?
Quoted for truth.
But I don’t think that *necessarily* makes her an opportunistic fear monger.
True, and I don’t have direct evidence of what she said, only second and third hand reports. Has anyone thought to contact her and ask her to join this discussion?
I would point out, however, that Shahed Amunullah called Ms Jones to apologise for what had happened and express his dismay - he, at least, was unaware the book could be pulled as a result of anything he was involved in. Has anyone seen or heard a report of Spellberg expressing any like dismay or regret?
So I can absolutely see a scenario under which Spellberg did not see herself as trying to shut the book down, even though that’s what happened.
What we have, apparently (according to the WSJ), is an academic expressing revulsion at a book’s content, expressing that revulsion to someone in charge of a Muslim website and “asked him to warn Muslims”, warning the publisher at least twice of the risk of violent reprisal, and threatening to sue if her name was associated with the book. You can assign benign motives to each action individually, but as a collection of actions, they can’t be seen as anything less than a deliberate attempt to stop publication. Regardless of motive, that’s really poor from an ethical standpoint.
Someone needs to ask her about it.
Really, this needs a whole bunch of discussion. This is FICTION. It’s not REAL. Isn’t their something real to get your panties in a wad about?
Examples:
The whole Sudan thing
Did you know Equatorial Guinea is a crazy-assed dictatorship?
Plummeting economy, etc. in U.S.A.
I’m all for escapism in books, but this kind of discussion totally kills that for me. I don’t even want to read the book now that I know everybody is being all fussybritches about it.
Isn’t their something real to get your panties in a wad about?
You came over a romance reading and critique blog looking for political analysis?
Are you new to the internet or something?
No. If you have that desire to commit adultery, but don’t because you remember Allah. You are actually rewarded for it, because you are struggling with yourself to do good.
It’s jihad of the heart (jihad bil qalb) and of the mind.
“The goal of true jihad is to attain a harmony between islam (submission), iman (faith), and ihsan (righteous living).” ~ Mahmoud Ayoub
Just running that up the flagpole, not to start a debate on jihad, just to add to the discussion and to further the notion of what it is to struggle (jihad) in Islam.
Aquanana But the book and how it offends Muslims, frankly the fact that anyone in the USA would even *care* about offending Muslims, springs directly from “American politics” (I’d say global). In fact the two issues have been closely intertwined in both of these discussions. That particular comment of Katherine’s was part of one with snarkhunter that covered, at one point, the different ways Christianity and Islam revolved in their respective countries and how that shapes our current reactions to art relating to their respective deities. And this is why I can’t help but see your comments as willful misinterpretation at worst and selective reading at best, when you cherry pick Katherine’s comment like that, tie it directly to Sherry Jones book and summarise Katherine’s argument as “Publish this book -> WWIII”. You simplify the entire discussion situation to “a book and the offense that Muslims feel about it” when in the first thread the initial reactions to the information that some grad student group had put together a bullet point list was “OMG TEH TERRORISTS WILL NEVAH TAKE MY FREEDOM”. It’s about the book and, judging from the first thread’s argument, about a lot more, wouldn’t you say?
I guess it just seems to me that for a while the conversation had taken on some nuance and you came in with a lot of blunt, rough points. But maybe what for me is nuance and (perhaps arguably) off-topic convo because we just don’t have the book in front of us you see as irrelevant topics.
And I guess my reading comprehension skills are shot because your question about peaceful Muslim people makes no sense to me unless peaceful is a synonym for pacifist. (Actually the entire question confuses me. Again it’s if you’re reading her remarks without any context—in this case the current political situation. Surely, we’ve seen how a mixture of ignorance, fear and willful deceit has led to chaos in two countries now?)
Personally, I’m just disappointed that we’ve fallen into the “violent Muslims” image. Curse you, Katherine, and your WWIII!
You came over a romance reading and critique blog looking for political analysis?
Are you new to the internet or something?
Ann
Actually, I think she’s pissed off *because* there is political talk on this blog and it’s caused by a lowly fiction book rather the latest NYT non-fiction bestseller.
Smart Bitches—where we’re not afraid to take fiction seriously. Plakate you may not be new to the internet but you certainly seem to be new to Smart Bitches. Shall I link you to all the deep deep discussion that our favourite frothy romances have started or try to find you some cover art mockery?
Robin then my work here is done ;).
Someone give me an internet slap the next time I re-interpret a poster’s comment to someone else.
Just a comment on Spellberg and then I’m not saying anything else about her, because I only know her via her scholarship, which I am quite excited about in American Islamic Studies: the woman is tenured and frankly, no one in Middle East Women’s Studies has mentioned this controversy at all. It is a blip if it is anything at all. I was just blindsided with it yesterday and frankly, with the school year starting in three weeks (I am not a great example of this, but other people are), there are far more important things going on besides chasing Denise Spellberg around and tearing her down. More than likely, no one will even remember this fiasco by the start of classes. It may come-up here and there, but it’s certainly not going to be like the Rushdie Affair.
Further, just to clarify, a fatwa is a religious ruling, it is not a death sentence, so be careful sort of flinging that word around. I know that it has been conflated with Rushie to mean a death sentence, but in his case it is more that he was ruled to have committed apostasy and thus subject to death. The easiest way to contextualise that or express it was to just call it a fatwa as opposed to trying to untangle the Shari’a for the masses.
More than likely, no one will even remember this fiasco by the start of classes.
Shame because it raises important questions about academic integrity and independence, and deserves more than to be swept under the carpet as a ‘blip’.
Arethusa, all the really big arguments in my marriage have been about penises (monkeys, but still) so it doesn’t surprise me that heavy stuff comes out of a devotion to mantitty :)
Shame because it raises important questions about academic integrity and
independence, and deserves more than to be swept under the carpet as a
‘blip’.
It really does deserve more discussion in the classroom, unfortunately at the moment we have a larger body of issues to deal with when it comes to America’s college students, chiefly their inability to remove themselves completely from the womb and to think outside of a textbook. This is particularly profound in Islamic Studies and under the umbrella of Religious Studies.
There may be discussions at MESA or amongst colleagues, however if it isn’t ruled important enough by the matriarchs, it doesn’t fly. Sad but true.
History is not the same as fact. The historical record is no more than surviving people’s subjective accounts of events they experienced or were told about, and can’t be considered to be any more accurate than any number of conflicting eyewitness accounts of contemporary events. A historical work based entirely on information generally accepted as factual may in fact be just as inaccurate as any historical novel.
That’s pretty much the point I was making. But many people perceive such accounts to be factual (especially if they’re accepted as such by a majority) and, therefore, take umbrage when the accounts are “altered” by writers! I’m only bothered when incontrovertible fact is violated . . . in terms of, say, archeological or photographic evidence. But that doesn’t seem to be the case with Ms. Jones’s novel.
My apologies for being “blunt and rough”, but that is just the type of person I am.
No, I am not reading her comments out of context. I am well aware of the current political situation. Yes, I jumped into the middle of a conversation, with my own comments and questions regarding what was being said by her and what she meant by her comments. Does that make me “fatuous”? Or cherry picking comments? No, I took it all into account and thought it through when I asked the questions.
Katherine’s comments came across, to me, as saying that anybody writing about the Prophet should give him more consideration than they would normally give to even their own religious figures so as not to needlessly offend Muslims.
I asked why that was necessary and was told
Because we live in a world where the response by a lot of people to this controversy is to equate a single academic and a listserv of grad students with a power point presentation and a petition to a mob of terrorists.
Because we keep telling the world we are not in a cultural war with Islam while we throw hand grenades over the wall at them.
I then asked (in a roundabout way admittedly) how a non-Muslim giving the Prophet more consideration would change that. At which point you added some snide comments to a post you had made previously which I missed initially because there had already been several comments made before your edit.
Snarkhunter replied to the above quoted post and made a comment about caving in which Katherine replied to by saying
I don’t see it as caving in. I see it as trying to stop two of the worlds great civilizations from destroying each other in one big oil fianced, bomb laden, meltdown. It may be comfortable for you to sit back and say you are not responsible for the ongoing conflict, that the Islamic world is overly sensative.
I am of the opinion that Americans and the American media (to include people like Random House) are far too willing to disclaim all responsiblity any offense directed at Islam and Arabs in favor of casting protests in the Arab Street as inherently irrational.
It’s comforting to say we are right and we should have our freedoms be damned who it offense. Me… I’d like the world not to implode in the next 50 years.
And that post says to me that the sensibilities of Muslims should be protected else the world is going to go kerflooey. Which comes across as bigoted and hypocritical to me because it places the blame on Muslims for needing their sensibilities protected.
Please do remember, everyone—this is fiction! If my intention was to remain completely true to the historical record, I would have penned a nonfiction book. The story is the thing!
I understand your point, but I completely disagree. I know you have said this is not a “romance” it is historical fiction… but let’s take a look at some of the historical romances (my personal favorite) that are sloppily written/ researched. There are some where the author takes extreme liberties and has the characters behave in such a manner that never would have happened, or they would not have gotten away with it if they did. Or they wear things that were not real during certain time periods(tartan plaids anyone?), Or use inventions that did not exist yet, or make someone random friends with William the Conquer and completely change the invasion of Saxon England.
For me those books become wall-bangers, despite the fact that they are “fiction”. Sure you can press the bounds, but there has to be a really good explanation for it to make it plausible. Unless there is an explanation later in this book, I do not find the situation plausible (though I will admit I liked your voice).
So yeah, I see how this could become a wall-banger for someone who KNOWS that the “character” never acted in that manner. Still, I don’t think it should have been yanked off the publishing schedule. I find several authors offensive for various reasons… I simply will not read them, and if a friend asks, I make my objections very clear.
Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator.
YAY, Snarkhunter! I knew as soon as I saw the name Montag that you’d resurrected Bradbury to carve this issue to its core:
Where the bloody hell does this kind of thing END?
Nearly every human being on the face of the planet finds something offensive or upsetting. So who will become the ultimate arbiter of what material is “acceptable” and what isn’t? Who? (I sure as shit don’t want that job. Do any of you? Maybe we should dust off Orwell and drag Big Brother into the discussion.) Must we all ultimately become brainless, cat-pawed androids, devoid of tastes, predilections, opinions, affinities, aversions, and convictions?
Fahrenheit 451, indeed.
Because we keep telling the world we are not in a cultural war with Islam while we throw hand grenades over the wall at them.
Uhhh… color me stupid, but that makes absolutely no sense.
Is there something you hold so sacred that if it was sullied you would go to war for it? That’s what you need to ask yourself?
If your president was assassinated? No. If your child was murdered? No. If the fundamental tenets and truth and sanctity of your religion were sullied by a fiction writer?
That’s the type of grenades that are being thrown over the wall ( this book, the Danish cartoon scandal and there are really too many too count. But they can be seen as acts of war.)
I believe with every fiber of my being that he’s wrong about just about everything (he’s a big deal in anti-peace studies, anti-women’s studies, etc.), but I believe he has every right to be out there saying these things. He’s an American. So am I. In the United States, his right to be full of shit and to stand around saying it is something that I hold absolutely sacred. Because once we start supressing speech for being offensive or wrong, where does it end?
Exactly!!!! You hold that sacred and you think that is an inviolable right. Many Americans and Europeans think so too. But its not. Western hegemony would like to try to make it so. But everyone on this earth doesn’t think that is a universal truth. In fact many someones think that there are somethings that are so precious and so sacred that affronts to sanctity can, should and must be suppressed.
oops fucked up my own post let me retry.
Because we keep telling the world we are not in a cultural war with Islam while we throw hand grenades over the wall at them.
Uhhh… color me stupid, but that makes absolutely no sense.
Is there something you hold so sacred that if it was sullied you would go to war for it? That’s what you need to ask yourself?
If your president was assassinated? No. If your child was murdered? No. Murdering babies in the womb??? If the fundamental tenets and truth and sanctity of your religion were sullied by a fiction writer?
That’s the type of grenades that are being thrown over the wall ( this book, the Danish cartoon scandal and there are really too many too count. But they can be seen as acts of war- cultural or othwerwise. Or at least fighting words.)
I believe with every fiber of my being that he’s wrong about just about everything (he’s a big deal in anti-peace studies, anti-women’s studies, etc.), but I believe he has every right to be out there saying these things. He’s an American. So am I. In the United States, his right to be full of shit and to stand around saying it is something that I hold absolutely sacred. Because once we start supressing speech for being offensive or wrong, where does it end?
Exactly!!!! You hold that sacred and you think that is an inviolable right. Many Americans and Europeans think so too. But its not. Western hegemony would like to try to make it so. But everyone on this earth doesn’t think that is a universal truth. In fact many someones think that there are somethings that are so precious and so sacred that affronts to sanctity can, should and must be suppressed.
Okay, this is GRIPPING stuff, people, and I’m still processing the situation (clearly need to go back to read the previous posts on the matter) and trying to work my way through what I think is right here.
The ethical point about the professor’s actions and Random House’s reactions is one thing, but for the moment I want to concentrate on a different part of this situation - namely the very notion of writing and publishing this particular book in the first place, and what it means, and what it IS SEEN to mean.
And here we come to a collision of paradigms. For a non-Muslim, a Westerner, not only does this choice of subject matter seem pretty innocuous (within the context of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’, ‘The Da Vinci Code’, Anne Rice’s recent ‘Christ the Lord’ etc - ie a context in which [even unflattering] fictionalizations of key religious figures are fairly commonplace), but a book like this actually looks like a *positive* thing. It doesn’t seem (from a Westerner’s pov) to be mocking Aisha or the Prophet Mohamed, (in the manner of Jesus Christ on ‘South Park’), so what’s the big deal? If it makes the Prophet and his people feel real, and sympathetic, and interesting, then that’s giving us a new perspective on Islam (something about which the vast majority of Westerners know precious little, and which is now inextricably linked in the public consciousness with 911 et al). The writer is trying to make us empathise with these people, rendering them more human, familiar, understandable, sympathetic, rather than leaving them as vague, frightening strangers. Moreover, this is an American writer and an American publisher - surely in America one should be upholding freedom of speech? Defending to the death a person’s right to be a jackass/racist/misogynist if they so wish? So even if it WERE a character assassination, they’re still allowed to write such a thing. And anyway, it’s FICTION, for crying out loud! It’s not purporting to be be reality!
I can see that side of it.
But then there’s the way this plays out if you’re Muslim.
In Christianity, we’ve abandoned that whole ‘no graven images’ thing and made Christ’s humanity and accessibility a touchstone. Artists’ representations of his tortured body hang from millions and millions of crosses all over the world. Artists’ representations of his trials and tribulations glitter in stained glass windows in millions of churches. Even God Himself is depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Our Holy Texts are retellings of events and teachings - the New Testament comprising accounts of Christ’s life and teachings told at second, third, fourth hand, mostly written hundreds of years after he’d died - and then translated from the original language, and perhaps retranslated, so that our English-language bible is already a palimpsest even before the various different sects of Christianity start differing on interpretation. We sing songs about Christ and about God the Father. We watch movies about his life.
This whole idea of fictionalising, of retelling, of reimagining is PIVOTAL to how Christianity functions. Mystery plays, murals, Mel Gibson’s ‘Passion of the Christ’ - this is what we do. Our connection with God is via Jesus Christ - ie the physical form He translated Himself into. Our connection with Jesus Christ is via the writings of his followers, penned long after his death - and then translated again (and again) into our own languages.
In Islam, it’s a whole different kettle of fish.
In Islam, the key holy text is not a mixture of different voices from different times, is not a collection of poems and oral histories translated and re-translated.
Pause for a moment and consider the implications of this: The Qu’ran is THE WORD OF GOD brought into the world by the Prophet Mohamed. End of story. It is read in the original Arabic, and the very language of the Qu’ran is lyrical, beautiful, moving, poetic, profound. There are no hymns in Islam, no songs of praise. The Qu’ran itself is that, and many people choose to listen to it on the radio as they drive around, as they study, as they cook, losing themselves in the beauty and cadence of the words given DIRECTLY to them by God, in their own language.
(The other main texts - the Hadith - come with built-in attributions [‘told by The Prophet Mohamed to A, who told B, who told C, who told me’]. If there is uncertainty as to their provenance or authenticity, that is made clear. Again, the focus is upon NOT having poetic license.)
Mosques are designed to focus one’s attention directly on God with the beauty coming from mathematical designs - patterns, abstract expressions of platonic purity. There are no murals, no statues, no stained glass windows telling stories of the life of the Prophet, because this is a very different paradigm of faith.
This is NOT a faith where narrative and artistic interpretation plays the kind of facilitating role it does in Christianity. Instead, that very device is seen as profoundly disrespectful, because it’s not considered truthful.
So then we have a first-person piece of historical fiction about the wife of the Prophet Mohamed, in which it is/may be implied that she was (or wanted to be) promiscuous. Poetic license to Ms Jones; something else entirely if you’re Muslim.
What we are talking about here is something offensive and provocative in the gut-level way that taking a sh*t on the American flag is offensive, or that promoting paedophilia is offensive and provocative.
Now we’ve seen how incendiary the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed were, and what happened to the school teacher who let her children name the class mascot teddy bear Mohamed (after one of the kids in the class). Although educated Muslims with personal experience of how Western culture works can see these incidents as the misunderstandings they were, for a huge number of uneducated people in the Middle East this kind of thing is an incomprehensible attack. It’s a “Yo’ Mama sucks donkey dick”-style slur on the grandest of scales.
And this feeds in to all the terrible sense of frustration, fear and anger at injustice that’s already so rife in the Middle East, where people are seeing neighbouring countries like Afghanistan and Iraq and, of course, Palestine, being invaded and occupied by rich, well-armed, powerful Westerners imposing unfamiliar philosophies and systems, and followed by Western companies hungry for profit.
This book, as and when it’s published (and I’m pretty damn sure that it will be published) is going to be, as Katherine so incisively put it up above, a hand grenade lobbed over the wall in the ongoing cultural war with Islam.
I don’t think it’s INTENDED to be a hand grenade - in fact it may look very much like a bunch of flowers as we throw it from this side of the wall, but when it reaches the other side, it’s going to be a hand grenade.
Am I saying it shouldn’t be published? No. No, I don’t think I am. And actually, I have a lot of sympathy for Richard Dawkins’ feeling that we shouldn’t pander to religious sensibilities at all, that we shouldn’t worry about offending people by pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes on. Intellectually, I agree with him.
But I was living in the Middle East when the Danish cartoons thing happened, and I have a pretty clear sense of how baffled and angry people are likely to feel about this. And how THAT can be manipulated and increased by articulate people in positions of power. There is already more than enough resentment and frustration and powerlessness being felt in the Middle East, as a result of our foreign policies.
Do I think that this book, however lovingly researched, however well written, is likely to be worth the pain, confusion, anger and backlash it’s liable to engender? Frankly, no. I love books, and I understand that within the context of US writer and readers this book is just a story, but within the context of the world stage, it’s a hand grenade. Perhaps worse. And I’m going to have to live with the consequences. And so are you.
That’s the type of grenades that are being thrown over the wall ( this book, the Danish cartoon scandal and there are really too many too count. But they can be seen as acts of war.)
I just can’t agree with that. Those aren’t grenades, and to call them that trivializes people who are actually killed by violence. That Danish cartoon didn’t kill anyone.
And they’re not acts of war. They are actions performed by individuals, not countries, no matter how distasteful you or anyone else finds them.
Exactly!!!! You hold that sacred and you think that is an inviolable right. Many Americans and Europeans think so too. But its not. Western hegemony would like to try to make it so. But everyone on this earth doesn’t think that is a universal truth. In fact many someones think that there are somethings that are so precious and so sacred that affronts to sanctity can, should and must be suppressed.
It’s not a universal truth, but it’s true under the law in this country.
I’m not trying to say that authors shouldn’t try to be more sensitive of cultural and/ or religious boundaries, Muslim or otherwise. But conflating a creative act with one that destroys lives is incendiary. A novel is not an act of war.
many someones think that there are somethings that are so precious and so sacred that affronts to sanctity can, should and must be suppressed.
Doesn’t make it a desirable approach, does it? I mean, a good many people in the world think homosexuals should be considered second class citizens, or even killed for their sexuality, but that doesn’t make it right either.
I live in the West, and I believe in free speech. I’m not going to privilege someone else’s sensitivities to the point where I go against that fundamental principle. I will respect their right to use the privilege of free speech to argue that free speech should not apply in all cases, and use that same privilege to argue that they’re wrong.
It’s not a universal truth, but it’s true under the law in this country.
Whoops, I just wanted to clarify that I thought that was worth mentioning because that’s where the book is putatively going to be published (or not.)
Fay, you said so eloquently, evocatively and delicately what I tried to say and did so blunty and crudely. Thanks.
But conflating a creative act with one that destroys lives is incendiary. A novel is not an act of war.
I am not trying to be reactionary and inflammatory. But Rene, symbolically this novel is throwing down the gauntlet. It is literally shitting on the faith of millions of people. It is saying this is what I think of your religion and what you hold sacred.
Do you remember the piss Christ- where the artist tried to recreate an image like the Turin shroud but did it by pissing on it? This is so many orders of magnitude worse. Because it reifies images, depictions of sacred personages that cant but be lies.
Couple this with actual acts of war (Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan) and you have a horrible mix. And here’s the thing. I am not Muslim but I completely get it. There are some things that are sacred and there are some things that are profane. There are some things that I think you shouldnt mess with.
I am not trying to be reactionary and inflammatory. But Rene, symbolically this novel is throwing down the gauntlet. It is literally shitting on the faith of millions of people. It is saying this is what I think of your religion and what you hold sacred.
I just don’t see this at all. I see a novel based on a figure of history that someone found interesting. And, honestly, I think that most Muslims are pretty much regular people and most of them can handle it the way adults do - by refusing to purchase or read it. Treating them as if they’re some kind of wild animal that you’re poking with a stick by writing a piece of fiction that they can choose not to read or endorse, is just as insulting as using the Shroud of Turin as a urinal.
Here’s what I said:
That’s the type of grenades that are being thrown over the wall ( this book, the Danish cartoon scandal and there are really too many too count. But they can be seen as acts of war- cultural or otherwise. Or at least fighting words.)
So an act of war, or a cultural act of war or fighting words- could be the interpretation depending on how you look at it.
The people who look at it as an act of war will likely have one set of responses ( ie violent reprisal, boycotts, calls for retraction). People who see it as a cultural act of war will have another set ( which may overlap with the first or not). Finally those who see those a fighting words might have an altogether different set or responses (ditto).
But I didnt lay down what the reactions to Jones novel may be—but you did.
And, honestly, I think that most Muslims are pretty much regular people and most of them can handle it the way adults do - by refusing to purchase or read it.
There is nothing juvenile about standing up for what you believe in. One persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter ( dont believe me look up MauMau or any of the liberation struggles in Africa if you dont believe me).
But back to the point. Its about degree and definition. Lets take abortion. For some its murder. For other its the premature ending of life. For others its an unfortunate medical procedure.
For the person who thinks its murder- the right thing to do- may to take up arms to defend innocent life or maybe engage in boycotts and legislative action. For the person who think its the ending of life they may resort to lobbying, fundraising, legislative action. For others it might be a different set of responses. Depending on your viewpoint these might be just, ethical, called for and right action.
snarkhunter said about David Horowitz
I believe with every fiber of my being that he’s wrong about just about everything (he’s a big deal in anti-peace studies, anti-women’s studies, etc.), but I believe he has every right to be out there saying these things. He’s an American. So am I. In the United States, his right to be full of shit and to stand around saying it is something that I hold absolutely sacred. Because once we start supressing speech for being offensive or wrong, where does it end?
Then Trumystique said
Exactly!!!! You hold that sacred and you think that is an inviolable right. Many Americans and Europeans think so too. But its not. Western hegemony would like to try to make it so. But everyone on this earth doesn’t think that is a universal truth. In fact many someones think that there are somethings that are so precious and so sacred that affronts to sanctity can, should and must be suppressed.
Then Rene S said
It’s not a universal truth, but it’s true under the law in this country.
Whoops, I just wanted to clarify that I thought that was worth mentioning because that’s where the book is putatively going to be published (or not.)
I agree with everything I’ve just quoted. I prefer the approach “you have the right to believe as you wish, but it can’t stop me saying what I want”, but I acknowledge that this probably comes from my Euro-centric cultural background, and that there is an alternative view which is made most obvious to me by Islam. I can’t see a solution to the difference in views, so we all need to learn to live with it - although how we do that I don’t know.
I’d just like to add one thought. US law applies in the US, and I’m happy to respect that. I just wish the US (and I’m referring here to the Government, not to any individuals posting here, none of whom have made this error) paid a little more respect to the fact that other countries have other laws, and to the international law which tries to make all those different national systems work together.
I just can’t agree with that. Those aren’t grenades, and to call them that trivializes people who are actually killed by violence. That Danish cartoon didn’t kill anyone.
I live in Pakistan. The Danish cartoons did kill people in Pakistan. Those who killed and those who got killed were Muslims. It was nothing but mob instinct at work, whipped into a frenzy by those with political agendas. In this case using Islam.
As to the cartoons or this new book; I am afraid it shall cause similar distress, while Sherry Jones, can laugh her way to the bank. Is it worth the price? Can you live with yourself, knowing what shall happen, people shall die?
Nato forces attacking villages in Pakistan, Taliban, suicide bombers; I live a life surrounded by them. My children go to school and I pray they come home alive. The War in Afghanistan is extracting its price. Is it my fault that the Pakistani, American and Nato forces have a bungled up operation going on.
Sorry about this diatribe, but most Muslims are peaceful. I shall most likely ignore this book. My problem lies with those, who shall not read it, and go around hitting blindly at what comes in their way. Yes, I am afraid of rabid mullahs, whose loyalty is to money.
There is another angle though that Katherine has articulated well. In this day and age, we need less polarization, not more. My biggest fear at the start of the ‘American Crusades’, as Bush so eloquently said, was that there would be a shift to the right of the moderate Muslims. I have seen it happen.
Now there is a cultural crusade in the name of free speech. Then why ban books and articles related to denying the Holocaust. There are actual laws against it.
Why is this freedom of speech, used so expressively on anything to do with Islam; even at the cost of distorting the religion. If Sherry jones wanted to write about The Prophet’s wife because she found her life interesting, she could have written a true account. Why disfigure it in the name of artistic license.
I am not as worried by the book and its contents, as to what shall happen on the streets of my city. Academic discourse, cultural differences, sanctity of religions, the importance of our written word and opinion are more important right.
I need to figure out a way to save my shop from being burned, when the violence starts.
I apologize if this comes across as an angry letter. But, I am worried.
For my part, I’m inclined to buy the book simply because I don’t like people dictating what I can or cannot read because it offends their personal sensibilities. I live in Canada and I disagree with any kind of book banning, even though my own government has done a fine job with it. Let fools write their tripe; I’ll write something better and get better reviews.
What happens if people manage to keep this book under wraps? What’s going to set these people off next? If some crazies are going to get offended enough to cause violence because of a work of fiction, then they were cracked to begin with and the book is only an excuse.
I just can’t agree with that. Those aren’t grenades, and to call them that trivializes people who are actually killed by violence. That Danish cartoon didn’t kill anyone.
The Danish cartoon incident was the catalyst for violent demonstrations in a host of countries, resulting in 100 deaths, according to Wikipedia.
Do I think they were wrong to publish the cartoons? Not neccesarily. I’m not sure that I know enough about the context (whether Jyllands-Posten is given to xenophobia, for example), but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they genuinely WERE making a sincere point about their own value system, and the importance of free speech. ( Of course, it might have seemed braver if it were taking a swipe at a majority, rather than a small minority of their countrymen, but never mind.)
Once lobbed over the wall, though, the cartoon stopped being a statement about freedom of speech, and turned into something else. It failed to communicate the idea of equality and freedom that it (may have) intended, and instead it communicated pretty straight-forward contempt. Which was indeed incendiary (and the way it was presented to people in the Middle East may have been given conscious spin by some Muslims too - I’ve read various accounts, and I’m not clear on that) and did lead to rioting, picketing, and dozens of deaths.
And, honestly, I think that most Muslims are pretty much regular people and most of them can handle it the way adults do - by refusing to purchase or read it. Treating them as if they’re some kind of wild animal that you’re poking with a stick by writing a piece of fiction that they can choose not to read or endorse, is just as insulting as using the Shroud of Turin as a urinal.
I see where you’re coming from, and I agree that most Muslims living in the West probably would handle this with dignity, and understand the context in which it was written and received. Whilst I doubt many Muslims would be rushing out to read the book, I don’t think that many of them would build bonfires with it.
But I don’t live in America. I haven’t lived in the West for the past five years, so I’m looking at this as a stone thrown into a pond, and thinking of the ripples it’s going to create. It’s the power of this book as a symbol that I find worrying - its potency as a rallying point, as yet another sign of contempt. Ms Jones may well have written a beautiful, sympathetic and richly-detailed novel; she may have been scrupulous about adhering to her sources and have only the very best of intentions, but what it’s going to boil down to in the retelling is “This American woman says that the Prophet’s wife was a slut.” I mean, we really are talking “Yo’ mama”, almost literally.
In light of that, I can’t fault Random House for crapping themselves, albeit belatedly - I can fault them for not chickening out until the last minute, because they were spectacularly unprofessional in their dealing with poor Ms Jones - but they can pick and choose what they want to publish, and what fights they think are worth starting. It’s a damn shame they didn’t realise this way the hell back when, and Ms Jones certainly has my sympathy - she must be gutted by this whole situation. I hope that she is handsomely reimbursed.
Do I think the book should be banned? No, certainly not - because I agree that this would be the thin end of the wedge. (Ironically enough, only last night I led a play reading of a text that’s banned in this country.)
But I don’t think we should be naive about the potential repercussions of a piece of art like this, or its potency as a symbol. I’m sure it’s an interesting book, and I’d probably enjoy reading it rather a lot - but I’m still wincing at what it is likely to be made to stand for.
UR, I am so sorry that you live surrounded by such violence. I can’t imagine how frightening it is to send your children out into the street not knowing how or if they will come home again.
This:
I am not as worried by the book and its contents, as to what shall happen on the streets of my city.
breaks my heart, and I understand why you’re worried. Living your life under the threat of constant violence can’t be at all easy.
I apologize if this comes across as an angry letter. But, I am worried.
It doesn’t come across as angry, and if it does, I think you have the right, when your family’s at stake.
I sympathize with what you have to go through every day. But I can’t agree with this:
I live in Pakistan. The Danish cartoons did kill people in Pakistan. Those who killed and those who got killed were Muslims. It was nothing but mob instinct at work, whipped into a frenzy by those with political agendas. In this case using Islam.
The cartoon did not kill people. Other people killed people. I think it’s disgusting that some with agendas, as you say, will use any excuse to further their own cause with no regard to human life.
I still think that a novel is not an act of war. Nor is a cartoon. The people that use them as an excuse for violence are despicable.
And of course, those that express their disagreement, as so many eloquently have on this thread, are entitled to their disagreement and their viewpoints.
Just do what the Catholics do.
Put out an official banned book list.
Then the rest of us can ignore it.
- Teddypig
“The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters! They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. ... It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.
....
“Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator.”—from Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, 1953. With apologies for potentially offensive language and the implication that cultural sensitivity is always bad, it is nevertheless a passage that always haunts me in discussions like these.
- Snarkhunter
Because the American media willfully and sometimes with blissful ignorance paints with a very wide brush. The injustices done to both Arabs and Muslims are so great that they have, IMO, a moral obligation to make sure they do not needlessly offend.
No, actually, I’m saying text about the life of the Prophet should be run by experts. That’s a no brainer to me, not just for reasons of cultural balance, but for basic fact checking. If you are going to go down this path in this climate, you better have a defensible position
-Katherine (both previous)
Teddy - right on. The Church had a coronary over Dan Brown’s “The DaVinci Code” *and* put pressure on the publisher, but the book is still a huge hit. And it made Christ out as a normal guy, the Church out as a psycho hit-squad bent on keeping its secrets, and a museum employee into a holy figure, of sorts. Talk about going whacko with the Bible and Doctrine.
I come from a time when book burning and banning was prevalent, so Snarkhunter, I can tell you that “Fahrenheit 451” had a powerful effect on me. It remains to this day my favorite novel. And that is a most telling, and applicable, passage.
To Katherine, the first comment I quote offended me. I’m not exactly certain what you mean by ‘needlessly’, but I surely know that I - as an American - have zero intention of pussyfooting around Muslims. Period. Or any other minority group. When I start censoring myself because I might ‘needlessly’ offend someone else, well, that’ll be the day I croak. There’s a huge difference between ‘tolerance’ and ‘acceptance’. I tolerate Muslims and rejoice with them the right they have, in America, to worship their faith. As I do for everyone in America who enjoys the freedom of religion. That doesn’t, however, mean that I accept their religion as right and the only truth. No more than I accept Christianity, Judaism, or any other organized religion.
And your second suggestion, that ‘in this environment’ we should have a ‘defensible position’, frankly offends me. Exactly what position should that be? I’d really like to know. Because ‘in this environment’ their really doesn’t seem to be a defensible position for Americans, other than total conversion to Islam. Not only am I not going to do that anytime soon, but the idea that the geopolitical environment should have any bearing on the publication of a fictionalized account of one woman in Islamic tradition, is ridiculous. A failure to publish this book is not suddenly going to make Muslim extremists love America - and if this country started trying to do things in order to cater exactly that response - I’d defect to China. At least there, I know I’ve got no rights from the get go. Further more, this is America. Where we do publish everything from racist propaganda to hard core, way-off-the-vanilla-path, skat pornography - this isn’t Saudi Arabia or Iran, where frankly the book would most likely never see the light of day.
I am an old woman. And I refuse, read that again, refuse to be terrorized by anyone: man, woman, child, religion, or government. And I don’t care how anyone reads or interprets that. I have to assume that Ms. Jones understood that she could come under fire from the Muslim community for attempting to publish this book. She doesn’t strike me as stupid. Random House no doubt saw the same possibilities. They showed poor judgment in asking an academic to read the work - perhaps if they’d done better research, it wouldn’t have been an issue. Because if they’d done better research, they’d have known not to ask a Muslim to review a work of fiction based on the life of an important Islamic character. Then maybe they could have asked Dan Brown to blurb the book, in which case, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Hopefully.
The only thing that should prevent a book from being published in the United States of America is shitty writing. And from what I read, the prologue, that can’t exactly be said of Ms. Jones.
I surely know that I - as an American - have zero intention of pussyfooting around Muslims. Period. Or any other minority group. When I start censoring myself because I might ‘needlessly’ offend someone else, well, that’ll be the day I croak.
So what you’re saying is that you’re proud that other nations perceive Americans to be obnoxious, intolerant and ignorant bores, and will do nothing to overturn that stereotype.
I have read some jaw-dropping statements today, but congratulations, madam, you have left me bereft of any sensible response. I have no words.
Because if they’d done better research, they’d have known not to ask a Muslim to review a work of fiction based on the life of an important Islamic character.[emphasis mine]
Because ‘Spellberg’ is a famously Muslim surname.
So what you’re saying is that you’re proud that other nations perceive Americans to be obnoxious, intolerant and ignorant bores, and will do nothing to overturn that stereotype.
Ms. Somerville, if American’s spent twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year ass kissing the rest of the globe, we’d still never be able to completely dispel this belief. All we can do, as a whole, is try to live the best lives we can, being the best human beings we can be. And maybe elect a less retarded leader, but I digress.
But you know what, you’re perfectly entitled to perceive my comments however you like. I didn’t say anything even remotely similar to what you infer. I said I am not going to pussy foot around anyone, or walk on eggshells if you rather, because someone might be offended. I presume you take that to mean I’m some sort of epithet spewing, racist, bigoted hag. No, thank you, I am not. I was raised with both manners and a healthy respect for mankind as a whole. But I strenuously decline to act as if - simply by virtue of differing religious views, racial background, or class status - I am worth less than anyone else. We are all worth exactly the same, poor or rich, black or white, Jewish, Muslim, or other. And that’s one human life.
If this were the Middle East, it wouldn’t be a discussion because the book would never have been considered for publication. This is not, however, the Middle East.
As to the latter, you must be kidding. You mean to tell me that instead, you think the people at Random House said, “Let’s send this to this lady Spellberg. She can’t be Muslim with that last name, even if she is the leading professor of Islamic studies in the country.” That’s even more unintelligent than what I initially inferred.
I presume you take that to mean I’m some sort of epithet spewing, racist, bigoted hag.
You might say so. I can’t possibly comment.
Spellberg is not Muslim, from all I can find on her. You can be a leading figure in an area of study without being a subject of that area of study. Last time I looked, my husband wasn’t a monkey, after all.
I was raised with both manners and a healthy respect for mankind as a whole.
How you marry a claim to both manners and respect, with an avowed dismissal of any attempts to avoid needless offence, I have no idea. I was always taught manners were all about avoiding needless offence.
Spellberg is not Muslim, from all I can find on her. You can be a leading figure in an area of study without being a subject of that area of study. Last time I looked, my husband wasn’t a monkey, after all.
Certainly you can. And she may not be Muslim, but according to all the news coverage I could find about this incident, instead of returning the galley to Random House and saying, “I can’t favorably review this,” she decided she had to ‘warn Muslims’ that the book ‘made fun of Muslims and their history’. And considering all the hard work she’s done on the Prophet and his life, and how often her work is cited for use in Muslim studies or other reasons related to Islam, I’d still say Random House didn’t do their research.
ROFL, you’re really tickling me pink here. Considering that everyone’s sensitivity is different, no I’m not going to spend my time trying to make sure I don’t offend anyone. Someone will always get their toes stepped on. As you obviously have here. Been offended, that is, and taken my comment to a whole new level. Spending all of my time trying not to offend someone else is a waste of time.
What I will do is be the best person I can be. That’s all anyone can do. I don’t treat others as less than myself. I appreciate goodness in every thing and everyone. Even in your insinuations here. We don’t have to agree on the point at all, Ms. Sommerville. And that’s absolutely fine.
However, neither of us is going to ‘call’ the Smart Bitches and demand the others comments be pulled because we were offended by one another. And neither of us is going to call up all of our friends and stir up a hornets nest which could possible cause physical harm to another because we don’t agree with each other’s comments. And we aren’t going to do that because even though we obviously disagree, we can still be respectful of each other and have tolerance of the other point of view. We don’t have to accept what is said as right, but we can tolerate the difference.
And considering all the hard work she’s done on the Prophet and his life, and how often her work is cited for use in Muslim studies or other reasons related to Islam, I’d still say Random House didn’t do their research.
You mean, sending the book to an expert in the field the book was set in, was a mistake? Of course! They should have sent it to my husband, who could have brought his boundless views on primate taxonomy upon it and produced a blurb perfect for the back cover. “Jewel of Medina - no one’s idea of monkey business.”
Seriously, write to Random House and tell them off for not doing that.
ROFL, you’re really tickling me pink here.
Glad you find me so amusing. I wish I felt the same about you.
We don’t have to accept what is said as right, but we can tolerate the difference.
Well, I’m kind of forced to, considering there’s the Pacific Ocean between our two countries. A fact that, in many ways, reassures me greatly.
Why is this freedom of speech, used so expressively on anything to do with Islam; even at the cost of distorting the religion. If Sherry jones wanted to write about The Prophet’s wife because she found her life interesting, she could have written a true account. Why disfigure it in the name of artistic license.
Freedom of speech is used in tons of ways that have nothing to do with Muslims and still bug the fuck out of me. So I’d have to say Muslims aren’t being singled out any more than anyone else is. It’s just the rest of us have learned to ignore it, because if we don’t, the homophobes and racists and ultra-liberal lefties and uber-conservative right-wingers and sports fans will drive us batty.
And maybe I missed something, but I was under the impression that even if Ms. Jones had been meticulous in her facts and distorted nothing, the book would still offend Muslims.
I need to figure out a way to save my shop from being burned, when the violence starts.
I apologize if this comes across as an angry letter. But, I am worried.
You don’t come across as angry, just someone who has valid and very everyday concerns that are being lost amid highminded issues. And I’m sorry you have to deal with such things. Truly.
But I don’t live in America. I haven’t lived in the West for the past five years, so I’m looking at this as a stone thrown into a pond, and thinking of the ripples it’s going to create. It’s the power of this book as a symbol that I find worrying - its potency as a rallying point, as yet another sign of contempt.
Sigh. Just sigh. If this is where the majority of Muslims are coming from, then I just don’t see any way to bridge the gap that doesn’t involve everyone else just caving in and converting. If Muslims aren’t willing to bend a little when it comes to people who are not of their faith and who are under no obligation to live by its tenets, there’s no basis to build any kinf of dialogue between the two cultures. Us being able to understand what’s important to them doesn’t mean shit if they aren’t prepared to at least try to do likewise.
As for the flower/hand grenade analogy, well, it just reminds me of that scene in Mars Attacks. “Maybe to them, doves mean war.”
Seriously, write to Random House and tell them off for not doing that.
Did that earlier today, but thank you for the suggestion :)
“We don’t have to accept what is said as right, but we can tolerate the difference.”
Well, I’m kind of forced to, considering there’s the Pacific Ocean between our two countries. A fact that, in many ways, reassures me greatly.
Me too. Especially considering that, despite your personal blog post to the contrary, the Smart Bitches aren’t on an anti-Islam tear. It seems difficult for you to understand, but most of the commentators here have a hard time comprehending why a publisher would pull a work of fiction just because some people would be offended. They don’t pull racist fiction, they don’t pull Christian fiction, so why would they pull this one book?
What it boils down to is this, Random House canceled the book because it might offend some Muslims and(quote) “... it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.” And this is pretty much intolerable to most of us - that we should censor an author or a book due to threat of physical harm or death or because it might offend some people.
We don’t all have to agree with what the book is about, we don’t have to like it, but Americans seem to prefer to make that decision on sinking or swimming with our wallets or our votes and not because we were bullied or terrorized into the choice.
I surely know that I - as an American - have zero intention of pussyfooting around Muslims. Period. Or any other minority group. When I start censoring myself because I might ‘needlessly’ offend someone else, well, that’ll be the day I croak. -Shirley
So what you’re saying is that you’re proud that other nations perceive Americans to be obnoxious, intolerant and ignorant bores, and will do nothing to overturn that stereotype. -Ann
What I see is someone who feels she has a right to speak her mind. And that’s a right you exercise on a regular basis, Ann, and sometimes with not so much effort to avoid offense. Common courtesy is always a good thing. But I’m no more considerate, courteous, polite or tolerant to a Muslim, Jew, Christian, gay, lesbian, black, white, or asian man, woman, or transgendered person than I am to anyone else. Nor should I have to be. Nor should anyone have to be, thanks.
Constantly worrying about avoiding offense is not the way to have a happy, productive, meaningful life. Do you bend over backwards to avoid “needlessly offending” everyone, Ann? You write gay fiction. Many people are (wrongly in my opinion, but not in theirs) offended by that. If you didn’t write your books, the world wouldn’t end. Your family would still have food to eat. Life would go on. Congrats, Ann, by writing what you choose to write, you have just “needlessly offended” lots of folks, some of whom, I’m willing to bet, are the very ones needlessly offended by the Jewel of Medina.
Spellberg is not Muslim, from all I can find on her. You can be a leading figure in an area of study without being a subject of that area of study.
Um, isn’t that the dreaded cultural appropriation?
despite your personal blog post to the contrary, the Smart Bitches aren’t on an anti-Islam tear.
Look, I know it’s hard to pay close attention while you’re so busy doing your Ma Kettle imitation, but please note Sarah and Candy are not the same as the people commenting on their blog. I said:
“commentors over at the Smart Bitches blog are on an Anti-Muslim tear”
And that’s true - not for all, certainly, but for many - including you.
this is pretty much intolerable to most of us - that we should censor an author or a book due to threat of physical harm or death or because it might offend some people.
It’s intolerable to all right-thinking people, at least in the West. Americans don’t have a monopoly on libertarian thinking. The number of times I’ve read ‘As an American blah blah’ on this post and wanted to punch the screen in frustration, I can’t tell you.
I’m not having any difficulty understanding the issues. I’m having difficulty with the blatant disjunct between those who claim to stand for freedom of speech and personal liberty, but in practice slam those who voice dissent and insult people because of what religion they follow.
Freedom of speech is used in tons of ways that have nothing to do with Muslims and still bug the fuck out of me. So I’d have to say Muslims aren’t being singled out any more than anyone else is. It’s just the rest of us have learned to ignore it, because if we don’t, the homophobes and racists and ultra-liberal lefties and uber-conservative right-wingers and sports fans will drive us batty.
And maybe I missed something, but I was under the impression that even if Ms. Jones had been meticulous in her facts and distorted nothing, the book would still offend Muslims.
Sigh. Just sigh. If this is where the majority of Muslims are coming from, then I just don’t see any way to bridge the gap that doesn’t involve everyone else just caving in and converting. If Muslims aren’t willing to bend a little when it comes to people who are not of their faith and who are under no obligation to live by its tenets, there’s no basis to build any kinf of dialogue between the two cultures. Us being able to understand what’s important to them doesn’t mean shit if they aren’t prepared to at least try to do likewise.
That about sums it up. If we spent all our time being offended by everything or hoping we never offended anyone, well we wouldn’t be talking at all. We do our best to ignore the bad and look for the good and hope that we’ve lived lives that spread more positive than negative.
It isn’t just America that needs to gain more knowledge and understanding of the rest of the world. The rest of the world might try to do the same, instead of assuming all the asshats they see on television are somehow the exact embodiment of the whole of the American citizenry.
I’m not having any difficulty understanding the issues. I’m having difficulty with the blatant disjunct between those who claim to stand for freedom of speech and personal liberty, but in practice slam those who voice dissent and insult people because of what religion they follow.
I did no such thing - anywhere. I don’t care what religion you follow - your religion doesn’t make you a good person or a bad person. And I didn’t slam your voice of dissent either. In fact, I’m pretty sure I said it’s perfectly okay to disagree. That despite not agreeing with you, I could still respect your point of view on the subject.
As to my misquote, I do apologize. I was sure I had ‘commentors’ in the quote. It was my intention to do so. My eyesight isn’t what it was and I missed the slip when I reread the post. No, you didn’t say Smart Bitches were anti-Islam, just the commentors.
Kirsten, I’m bewildered by the pride you and Shirley apparently take in the ability to needlessly offend people. “Needlessly” means pointlessly. Sherry Jones writing a literary novel about Aisha is going to offend, but I would never call it pointless. Conflating all Muslims with the hardliners who bomb innocent civilians and hang homosexuals, and pretending all Muslims are exactly the same, is pointless. Like walking up to an Arab and calling them a towelhead.
I’m objecting to the pointlessness of rudeness and thoughtlessness, and insulting people by lumping them in with others they themselves object to. When did that become admirable behaviour?
Do you bend over backwards to avoid “needlessly offending” everyone, Ann?
Strangely enough, I do. When I offend someone, I’m either doing it accidentally, or I’m doing it to make a point.
isn’t that the dreaded cultural appropriation?
I don’t think you understand this concept at all.
I don’t think you understand this concept at all.
Perhaps I don’t, but I’ve heard it used in these discussions to criticize Ms. Jones for having dared to write a book about Muslim religious figures. Yet those same people who object to it seem to have no problem with the fact that Ms. Spellberg has done the same thing.
Conflating all Muslims with the hardliners who bomb innocent civilians and hang homosexuals, and pretending all Muslims are exactly the same, is pointless.
I agree. But so is according one group more respect and tolerance than any other, based solely on their religion. I wouldn’t serve ham sandwiches at a potluck if there were Jewish or Muslim guests attending. I kneel and cross myself before I seat myself in my grandmother’s Catholic church, and bow my head when she says grace, despite the fact I have no real belief in any god. I do these things to show respect for others.
But I don’t eschew ham sandwiches at home, either, nor do I say grace myself when my grandmother isn’t there. I should not be held to the tenets of a religion that is not mine by choice.
And I refuse to behave as if this:
... for a huge number of uneducated people in the Middle East this kind of thing is an incomprehensible attack. It’s a “Yo’ Mama sucks donkey dick”-style slur on the grandest of scales.
And this feeds in to all the terrible sense of frustration, fear and anger at injustice that’s already so rife in the Middle East, where people are seeing neighbouring countries like Afghanistan and Iraq and, of course, Palestine, being invaded and occupied by rich, well-armed, powerful Westerners imposing unfamiliar philosophies and systems, and followed by Western companies hungry for profit.
This book, as and when it’s published (and I’m pretty damn sure that it will be published) is going to be, as Katherine so incisively put it up above, a hand grenade lobbed over the wall in the ongoing cultural war with Islam.
......is what we’re up against. Because I just can’t accept that there is no compromise here, no common ground as human beings, no bend at all except the one in my back as I go about doing everything I can to avoid needlessly offending anyone. Perhaps, just perhaps, there ought to be some onus on them to not find offense where it is not intended?
Or am I to assume the average Middle Eastern Muslim is so uneducated and incapable of reason that they don’t know any better?
Strangely enough, I do. When I offend someone, I’m either doing it accidentally, or I’m doing it to make a point.
You must have a lot of points to make, then.
As for the flower/hand grenade analogy, well, it just reminds me of that scene in Mars Attacks. “Maybe to them, doves mean war.”
You know what this discussion needed? A comparison between Muslims and aliens.
And we have gone an awfully long way down the path of ‘why do they hate our FREDOOM?’ for an incident that has approximately nothing to do with any Muslim. Spellberg raised the alarm to a listerv of Muslim grad students, and I’ve already said exactly how I feel about how people responded to the tangential involvement of the students in the book not being published.
Since consensus is that I’m not one of the Muslim students of the Axis of Evil (I’m ony an undergrad, give me time), I will explain what has been troubling me here.
No, there is too much. Allow me to sum up:
- People talking about ‘universal values’. Which sound oddly, exactly the same as how they describe Western values. No bias here.
- The whole judging the book ‘as a Muslim’ and ‘as a person’ approach. biasbiasbiasbiasbias.
- I don’t want to perpetuate what has gone from a simple academic on novelist/book grudge match to Clash of the Civilisations the smartbitches way, but here goes:
Like I have said many, many times, there is no real equivalence between pop cultural representations of Christianity and Islam. Not that christians don’t have the right to be ofefended by anything, but the subtext is entirely different. How many people honestly think that Christianity is a mysterious sub-culture within society that can never truly be understood due it’s barbaric ways? Not. Many.
And the anthropologist in me (let this joke slide, please) is distraught at all the comments about how different cultures can never be understood, or possibly someone from a different culture is the best person to understand it! Sometimes both of these together, as difficult as it may be to credit. I thought that this went out in the sixties?
There is a long, long history of anthropologists being used by colonial powers to help them in understanding/controlling the natives. Is it any wonder that people often do not respond well to firstly, their culture been taken in and broken down by an outsider from their POV, possibly in ways that are deeply offensive. This is why (as there is no mention of Ms. Jones collabrating with any Muslim/Arab groups) this book does come across as being a little ‘blithe’.
I’ve had to sit through religious education classes where the mosque was described as God’s house and the Prophet (saws) was described as Islam’s example of the religious tradition of having God incarnate on earth (along with Jesus (saws) and Krishna). Guess who had the authoritative knowledge in that room? If you guessed the person/people who lived their entire lives based on the principles being described you guessed wrong. The person who had maybe read a book (or… 29?) would be the right answer.
This is why people who keep saying that they would rather read this book than one written by biased Muslims (unlike the non-biased non-Muslims?) are annoying me. Still, it’s no surprise that a white American can come along and do something (write aqbout Muslim women) and have it proclaimed as mind-blowingly revolutionary, when the people in question have been writing about and for themselves for a long, long time already. If school has taught me nothing, it’s that nothing exists until a white (wo)man has written about it.
I’ll probably think of more when I hit [submit] but that’s enough tl;dr for now.
[Ignore the many, many typos that are probably lurking here]
Perhaps, just perhaps, there ought to be some onus on them to not find offense where it is not intended?
Did you even read the text you quoted before you said this?
You know, there’s a world of difference between telling dead baby jokes to a bunch of giggling fourteen year old boys, and to a room full of women who’ve lost their children to SIDS. I’m not arguing this book should not be published - I’m arguing the opposite most vehemently - but if the West is going to deal with the cultural important icons and figures of other nations and peoples, then they have to be aware of the effect this will have. There is simply no way Ms Jones or anyone schooled in Islamic studies can be aware of the potential for offense here. The onus really is on the authors and the publishers to handle the issuing of such material in a sensitive manner - this doesn’t mean *not* issuing it, but it might mean consulting with community leaders and so on about how best to handle it, so it doesn’t look like a random slap in the face.
You live in a peaceful democratic country with full rights and privileges. If someone puts out a book attacking Canada, you can brush it off because you know it doesn’t destabilise your life. If, as the poster above, you live in Pakistan and every time America sneezes, your country gets pneumonia, you’re going to be a lot more worried about issues which can rock your world because changes of government in Pakistan usually mean people die. Lots of people die. That lady doesn’t have the luxury of telling the radical Muslims to suck it up and stop being so sensitive. She can’t sit back and fold her arms and expound like you do from the safety of your cosy Canadian life.
am I to assume the average Middle Eastern Muslim is so uneducated and incapable of reason that they don’t know any better?
A good many people in the Middle East are living in a war zone, and a lot of them feel, with good reason, that America and her allies have got it in for them. Dropping bombs on people isn’t likely to make them give much of a shit how hard it is for poor little Canadian you to watch your Ps and Qs. They’re going to think - with some reason - that publishing blasphemous and pointless books about a very central part of their existence, on top of ripping their lives apart, is really adding insult to injury in the most egregious way.
The whole judging the book ‘as a Muslim’ and ‘as a person’ approach. biasbiasbiasbiasbias.
Sorry to be slow - could you explain what you mean here? I get the rest of what you said, I think.
And sorry to be asking questions again when you must be sick of it.
You live in a peaceful democratic country with full rights and privileges. If someone puts out a book attacking Canada, you can brush it off because you know it doesn’t destabilise your life. If, as the poster above, you live in Pakistan and every time America sneezes, your country gets pneumonia
This!
I have lived in the UK for many years and I have never lived in fear of my life. I was on the underground on the day of the 21/7 almost-attacks in 2005 and I never really felt that my security was threstened. Now when I lived in [country redacted] as a child it was pretty constant. Bombs overhead, gunshots day and night, relatives being injured and killed. You have probably never lived at the whim of another country, because you get to have your soveriegnty respected and not just as long as you play to the tune of more powerful nations.
This book is not being written in a vacuum.
[Repeat disclaimer: Not a terrorist, not in the publishing industry.]
Sorry to be slow - could you explain what you mean here? I get the rest of what you said, I think.
And sorry to be asking questions again when you must be sick of it.
No, I was trying to be clear.
What I meant was when people said things like judged as a Muslim the books were direspectful, but by the rules of human courtesy, they weren’t?
That got to me. We’re people too!
Ms. Somerville, if American’s spent twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year ass kissing the rest of the globe, we’d still never be able to completely dispel this belief.
As the duly elected representative of The Rest Of The Globe (okay, maybe not so much with the due elective process - I took a leaf out of George Bush’s book), I’m happy to reassure you that we don’t want our arses kissed. I think mostly it’s more a case of not wanting them kicked, or indeed fucked without lube. Provided that’s not going on, we’re quite content for our arses to modestly go about their arsely business without getting naked and importuning any American mouths.
Because if they’d done better research, they’d have known not to ask a Muslim to review a work of fiction based on the life of an important Islamic character.
I’d been assuming she WASN’T Muslim, based on the name - Googling seems to be implying that she’s Jewish, but I’ve not yet found any authoritative-looking source, and she would most likely have retained her name if she’d converted to Islam. Interesting. Anybody got any links to clear this one up?
Sigh. Just sigh. If this is where the majority of Muslims are coming from,
then I just don’t see any way to bridge the gap that doesn’t involve
everyone else just caving in and converting.
??? Sorry, I obviously expressed myself badly. (And I should make it clear - I’m not Muslim myself. I’m an Atheist, and British. Presently living in a Buddhist country, but lived in a Muslim country for 3 years previously.) But I’m a bit thrown by your interpretation of my words as implying some kind of Muslim missionary zeal - that because there are profound differences or perspective, it follows that no kind of rapprochement can be reached other than obliteration of one group.
I mean, seriously - how much does Joe Q Public know about Islam? Or Ahmed Q Public know about the West? Not very much, really, other than crap from the movies. What they DO have on their doorstep is Israel, armed to the teeth, heavily financed by the US, occupying holy territory and eager for expansion, and Western armies of occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq (and likely Iran or Syria next).
I mean, seriously - under these circumstances, OF COURSE people don’t see us as the Good Guys. We’re invading their territories because we want their oil. They know it. We know it. This does put a bit of a damper on our relationships.
But even so, I’ve not abandoned hope. I don’t think we have to crush them, or they us.
If Muslims aren’t willing to
bend a little when it comes to people who are not of their faith and who are
under no obligation to live by its tenets, there’s no basis to build any
kinf of dialogue between the two cultures.
Traditionally Islam has done a pretty good job of allowing Jews and Christians to live alongside them peacefully - all the Peoples of the Book were respected. Obviously things went pretty downhill when we decided to create the Nation of Israel in the middle of Palestine, and booted the Palestinians out while lots of rich Jewish Westerners moved in, but that’s hardly surprising. Sometimes the things that seem no big deal to one group are actually a very big deal to another group. People who have no particular opinions about how you should live your life one way or the other may still be offended by the idea of this book - much as you’d be offended if someone posted a picture of your grandmother on a porn website, regardless of whether you were opposed to porn websites in principle.
For any group, symbols are very powerful as a simplistic (indeed reductive, and often misleading) shorthand for larger, more complex ideas. I think that this book (which I’m sure WILL be published) may well become another symbol, like ‘The Satanic Verses’ before it. Or not - I really hope not. But heaven knows, it’s easily got the makings of it.
The clash of cultures we’ve got going on at present ISN’T just about religion - it’s largely about money, and colonialism, but that’s entangled with religion and with identity. We’re invading and occupying Arab countries *right now* and imposing our own political systems on them - hell, we’ve been bombing Afghanistan for years, and they never did a damn thing to us in the first place. We’ve decided to throw out the rules of civilized warfare, the Geneva Convention, and resorted to setting up torture camps like Guantanamo Bay. Really - there are LOTS of reasons why we aren’t seen as just a bunch of nice people minding their own business and living our lives as best we can. We AREN’T minding our own business. Our armies are in their back yards.
Us being able to understand what’s important to them doesn’t mean shit if they aren’t prepared to at least try to do likewise
Plenty of educated Muslims are more than prepared to do likewise. As to our willingness to understand what’s important to them - stripping prisoners naked, photographing them being abused and forcing them to eat bacon kind of implies that we still have a ways to go on that one. And, frankly, we’re the ones with the big guns, whatever anyone might claim about WMD in bunkers. But the nature of 21st Century warfare is such that might isn’t enough any more.
As for the flower/hand grenade analogy, well, it just reminds me of that
scene in Mars Attacks. “Maybe to them, doves mean war.”
Okay, you made me giggle - but it’s funny ‘cuz it’s true (as Homer Simpson once said). Seriously - we do need to recognize that we’re working from different contexts in order to pinpoint misunderstandings. Which means education on both sides.
We’re people too!
I’m really sad that it’s remotely necessary to even say that.
I’ve been a bit boggled by the constant theme of how unreasonable Muslims are, reacting to such material, because what strikes me as an atheist, and particularly moving back from Britain to a much more obviously Church dominated society, is just how fucking touchy Christians are about things that offends them. Bad words, slight nudity, ‘adult’ story lines, gay rights movements - bound to get angry quotes from some church group or other in Australia, and the same in America. In both countries, a fundamentalist Christian leads the government, and they are leading very obviously theistic and not at all church/state separated countries. The assumption in the society is, offending Christians==bad. No one questions it. I don’t even tell people I’m an atheist unless I’m really comfortable with them. I’m readier to tell them I write gay erotica than that :)
In America, the biggest terrorist threat, even now, doesn’t come from Islamic fundamentalists, but homegrown nutbags, very often from the Christian right. America might not hang homosexuals, but it executes mentally impaired people, juveniles at the time of the crime, and a disproportionate number of non-whites, and if you’re talking about torture and oppressive regimes - Guantanamo Bay anyone?
In other words, while I absolutely condemn the excesses of Iran and Iraq and other fundamentalist states, and don’t hold them up as models of good governance by any means, America doesn’t stand up to well in comparison either. I know Americans largely don’t see it that way, but from the outside, a lot of us are scratching our heads at George Bush lecturing China about human rights and going, what the fucking fuck?
Sorry, off on a tangent.
Fay, you and I must be sharing a brain :) Only you got the smart half.
Because once we start supressing speech for being offensive or wrong, where does it end? Much of what I say can be offensive to a person who believes a woman should learn in silence. Why should that opinion have greater sway over my voice than I do?
(Snarkhunter)
Sorry for not replying - I went to bed.
It would end where society thought it should end. Most rights are qualified to some extent - if a country does have laws against holocaust denial (supressing speech because it’s offensive and wrong) it doesn’t follow that it will suppress other kinds of free speech.
But they also have a duty, in my opnion, to fulfill their contracts, and not be swayed by vague threats and the opinion of a single individual, no matter how powerful she is within her field
(I keep losing your post when I look for quotes. Numbered posts would be dead useful.)
Yes, I agree that you should ignore the threats. Easy for me to say, no-one’s threatening me.
In general, I just want to say thanks again for these two threads. They’ve been both interesting and informative.
Haven’t reached any conclusion - I don’t know enough to think sensibly about the issues.
What I meant was when people said things like judged as a Muslim the books were direspectful, but by the rules of human courtesy, they weren’t?
That got to me. We’re people too!
Fay, you and I must be sharing a brainHa! Atheist? Check! Write gay erotica? Check! Not a big fan of George Bush? Check! I see your point…And you know, nobody has ever seen us a room together at the same time…hmm…clearly we are two halves of the same person! I wonder which one of us is Clark Kent? (I’m thinking me. Which hopefully means I get to shag Lex in cornfields, rather than have to defend Truth, Justice and The American Way simulltaneously, while wearing lycra and primary colours.)
despite your personal blog post to the contrary, the Smart Bitches aren’t on an anti-Islam tear.
Look, I know it’s hard to pay close attention while you’re so busy doing your Ma Kettle imitation, but please note Sarah and Candy are not the same as the people commenting on their blog. I said:
”commentors over at the Smart Bitches blog are on an Anti-Muslim tear”
Actually, I thought that the tag Smart Bitches referred to people who read the blog, not just Sarah and Candy.
I get to shag Lex in cornfields
You’re welcome to him - my heart belongs to Batman :)
I thought that the tag Smart Bitches referred to people who read the blog, not just Sarah and Candy.
Oh no. Many of us are bitches, many of us are smart, but there are only two Smart Bitches. Or at least there are to me.
the woman is tenured and frankly, no one in Middle East Women’s Studies has mentioned this controversy at all. It is a blip if it is anything at all.
Kat, I suspect if it had been academic to academic, there might have been more notice, but because it was academic reacting to a commercial fiction author, it’s not likely to raise as many antennae within the academic community. That’s just a guess, but it makes sense in my addled morning brain.
And see, here’s the thing about the notoriety this book is experiencing. IF Spellberg had simply declined to blurb the book and IF she’d not reacted the way she had, setting off a domino effect of events, and IF Random House hadn’t reacted the way they had by canceling the book, in all likelihood, the book would have been quietly published (given that right now, all the publishing news is focused on Breaking Dawn) and the likelihood that all of us who have commented would’ve even known about the book’s existence would’ve been limited to those of us who browse the New Release shelves or have a particular interest in historical fiction.
I subscribe to Publisher’s Weekly and Pub Marketplace/Lunch and regularly check out other publishing sites and I’ve been wracking my brain and can’t recall seeing mention of this book, even though, especially by debut book standards, it got a very good deal.
We might have heard about it after it was published, especially if it started coming up for awards, but the harsh truth of the matter is that commercial fiction publishing these days is a very swimming with the sharks proposition. You’re dropped into the ocean and expected to fight your way to shore.
This book is very important to Sherry Jones, as all our books are to those of us who write them—but in the scheme of the greater publishing world as a whole? It certainly wouldn’t have made this big a splash. Hell, Margaret B. Jones’ “memoir” got more pre-pub press than this book appears to have.
Just trying to bring a different view in here.
Kat, I suspect if it had been academic to academic, there might have been
more notice, but because it was academic reacting to a commercial fiction
author, it’s not likely to raise as many antennae within the academic
community.
Yes, good point. That also never crossed my addled brain. Let someone else clean-up the mess. I’m sure an article on it will come out in on a journal in the next five years.
I think my biggest concern here is—will this set a prescedent for the future… what kind of message is Ramdom House sending when they cave in to this type of pressure. What will happen, when some other group comes in and wants another book “banned.” How does this affect first ammendment rights, and “censorship.” Or will it become a matter of “you have the freedom to write anything you want, but we won’t publish it, because….”
And see, here’s the thing about the notoriety this book is experiencing. IF Spellberg had simply declined to blurb the book and IF she’d not reacted the way she had, setting off a domino effect of events,
This is what I keep coming back to, no matter where else this conversation goes.
I get that some persons may be offended by the content of the book and Ms. Jones’ authoring of the story. I’ve been there - and it’s not a pleasant place to be, to be hurt, upset, offended, saddened by someone not even getting what it is that they have done. I feel this every blessed time I read a newspaper article covering my own in-the-news-lately religion. So, yep, all the commentors who are just really upset that the book exists at all get both my empathy and my sympathy.
BUT! I honestly don’t think this mess would exist at all without the actions of Professor S. Oh, she’s totally within her rights to contact some folks and give a heads up that there’s a book coming out and yikes is it an eye-roller. But it’s another thing entirely for this woman to go back to persons whom she can reasonably expect NOT to be able to make a discerning judgement about what she’s planning to say and go all “OMG teh violence! it is coming!”
Is anyone who is upset about the book also mad at the professor? *She’s* the one who could be expected to have more knowledge on the history, tenants and current disposition of the Islamic faith than the publisher and SHE’S the one going around claiming that violence is about to ensue. Is no one upset with *her* for fanning the flames of public anxiety and reinforcing stereotypes? I’d think she’d rather NOT have people envisioning Muslims as hair-trigger hysterics, yes? She’s the one who has spent years studying the faith with and around the faithful and SHE’s the one who comes up violence as the top-of-mind image? That’s way more offensive to me than anything I’ve read in or about the book so far.
Where did Muslims get the you-can’t-write-fiction-about-my-religion award? Yes, I’m coming from a Canadian perspective, in all my privileged glory. No doubt I am woefully unaware of the ins and outs of the Muslim condition. And, as unfortunate as it may seem, I’m also not caring very much.
I am a woman, pro-choice, an atheist, an animal lover, who is a big fan of sex. These attributes have all come under attack by people, somewhere, who think that women are second-class citizens. Some people kill abortion doctors and threaten people who support the rights of women. Some people think caring about animals is stupid. And let’s not even get started about teh ebil sehcks.
December 6, 1989, date of the Montreal massacre of fourteen women at the École Polytechnique by Marc Lépine. They were murdered because they were women. Because “feminists had ruined his life”. Not to mention that he was CRAZY.
So, should I not attend higher because someone might be crazy enough to take offense that I have a pair of breasts? No doubt, Marc’s worldview included a reaction that resulted in death and injury for women who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If they hadn’t been there, they would probably still be alive. So, should they have stayed home and not sought training?
I keep coming back to see if I cooled down enough to say something but it seems every new comments, something would make my blood again.
As it is a personal reaction, I stepped away so I wouldn’t say anything I regret later.
So I would not really comment on the other comments, but I really have to response to the first few comment to this post . Ive been waiting to see if if this would addressed but it was not. So between work I was trying to search for the corroborating links to make this clear
Kalen Hughes did ask, was there any alternate version of what happened to Aisha, especially about the adultery.
The writing isn’t bad (in fact, I rather like her voice), but starting with the idea that Aisha really did run away with adulterous intentions seems problematic to me.
I’d be curious to see what Jones based this on. Are there alternate versions of Aisha’s history out there that support this, or is it pure fictional invention? If it’s the former, that’s one thing. We all know historical accounts can vary widely depending on who’s doing the telling, and if in one version of Islam there is a belief that Aisha did act in the way and then repented, ok. If this is purely fictional though, it becomes a real problem IMO (but we all know I like my history to be, well, historically based).
While this may not be the be the most accurate* version, it is the best I could find
*accurate as in supported by ulama
http://www.ahmadjibril.com/students/seerahIfk.html
Basic summary:
Saidatina Aishah ra did not run away from home as implied by the author. Instead she got left behind while on a expedition. She was carried in a covered carriage and when the caravan stopped for a rest slipped away to take care of personal business. I recall from the book that I had at home, she was rather embrassed to tell her escorts . Her beads broke and because of that she did not realize the caravan had left without her. You can read the rest of the story there
I’ve had another link which mentioned that the prophet (saw) actually pick lot on which wives were to actually accompany him, (sorry I found the links while at office earlier and forgot to copy the address to home). So it was actually by chance Aisha was on the expedition at all. It could have been one of his other wives
So what’s the point?
You see it was slanderous to imply that Aisha was intending adultery at all. I think that may have caused the severe reaction.
and I quote from the site
Aisha (radhi Allahu anha) said she knew that Allah (azza wajal) would declare her innocence but she did not expect that it would be in the Qur’an and for all to know until the day of judgment. In her honor, we have ten verses in the Qur’an.
Yo see she was declared innocence even in verses of Quran, so any attempt to said she intended to committed adultery itself is considered slander.
so yeah when I read the part Popin quoted in the first comment
Scandal blew in on the errant wind when I rode into Medina clutching Safwan’s waist
it was rather shocking
I would like to ask the author (politely of course) why is she so certain that Aisha intended to commit adultery? She said it was fact, but now you see my fact and her fact is quite different.
The author did mentioned
Thank you for your insightful reviews! I would like to point out that the Qur’an refers to a “lie” but does not say whether that lie refers to accusations of adultery or of intent.
Quran, for us refers to words of Allah (swt) and for us due to our Belief that Allah swt is All Knowing, we would haven taken that as declaration of both intent and action as Allah swt would know what lies in our heart
Saying that, I will move back to lurking
I would like to ask the author (politely of course) why is she so certain that Aisha intended to commit adultery? She said it was fact, but now you see my fact and her fact is quite different.
I would put the implication of the supposed thought into the category of the actual Satanic Verses (not talking about Rushie here) as a firm belief that alternate powers were at work in order to construct some kind of apparent deviancy.
Perhaps another way to look at it would be to just briefly observe how the Virgin Mary was treated when she was unwed and pregnant, but she was absolved by God because her virtue was intact, however deviant thoughts and voices attempted to misconstrue her condition as something sinful.
That’s sort of abstract, but with an ear infection, my brain is sort of off of its equilibrium.
In the end, I blame the jinn!!! :o)
You hold that sacred and you think that is an inviolable right. Many Americans and Europeans think so too. But its not.
But in the United States, it IS. And that’s why I limited my comment to that. I get that outside of the US, and outside of the Western world, things like freedom of speech are not seen as sacred, and that depictions of the Prophet are blasphemous. I do understand. I understand why Muslims are offended by this book.
But *within the borders of the US*, if nowhere else, their right to be offended does not trump the author’s right to write such a novel.
Well, obviously, we should preclude this publication and cut off the author’s head. It’s the only rational thing to do.
Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot would be in agreement.
What really scares me is that one author (Spellberg) would go to such lengths to sabotage another. Sherry Jones is a dear, sweet person, a talented writer, and meticulous researcher. She didn’t deserve to be torpedoed like this, and I get a huge charge out of the fact that all this fladder yap will end up benefitting her in the long run.
I’m just trying to figure out how my agent can hook me up a fatwa. (C’mon, man. I write soft core porn WAY pornier than this!)
I know Americans largely don’t see it that way, but from the outside, a lot of us are scratching our heads at George Bush lecturing China about human rights and going, what the fucking fuck?
Some of us do see it that way, thanks. And, just for the record, we no longer execute people who were juveniles at the time of their offense. The Supreme Court handed down that decision two or three years ago—too little, too late when it comes to our disgusting death penalty record, but for accuracy’s sake…
The number of times I’ve read ‘As an American blah blah’ on this post and wanted to punch the screen in frustration, I can’t tell you.
Speaking ONLY for myself, when I said that, it was because I was trying to be upfront about my biases and my limitations. I am not familiar with the free speech laws in other Western nations. I know that Germany punishes Holocaust denial, for instance, but is that true in other nations? I have no idea. So I limited my comments to my point of view as an American—I was trying to be culturally sensitive and not offend.
Ann, I really get the impression that you are determined to be offended in this thread. Shirley was not advocating going around offending people deliberately. She very clearly stated the importance of being sensitive and respectful of others, while at the same time not bending over backwards for any one group.
Let me give an example. A good friend of mine is a vegetarian. When I cook for her, I cook strictly vegetarian meals. But when we go out to eat, I order whatever I want—usually a nice slab of cow. I like meat. Now, should I not order meat because she might be offended by its presence on my plate? Where do her rights end and mine begin?
Is no one upset with *her* for fanning the flames of public anxiety and reinforcing stereotypes? I’d think she’d rather NOT have people envisioning Muslims as hair-trigger hysterics, yes? She’s the one who has spent years studying the faith with and around the faithful and SHE’s the one who comes up violence as the top-of-mind image? That’s way more offensive to me than anything I’ve read in or about the book so far.
That is what gets me. Spellberg, to all appearance, didn’t go to her editor with a well-reasoned argument about how this novel would be offensive to Islam (as, say, a number of very erudite people have on both threads) but instead played the terrorist card rather blatantly (to the extent that apparently she feared for her own life) without any evidence beyond her own breathless hysterics.
Offensive as the novel might be, the damage she’s done far outstrips anything the novel might have done. If you just scroll through Google News you can find a brushfire of outrage about the threats of violence against Random House, and people taking Spellberg’s alarmist bigotry to heart.
as a librarian, I do not believe in censorship of books for adults. In a democracy adults have the right and the obligation to inform and educate themselves on every issue, secular or religious.
Ann, I really get the impression that you are determined to be offended in this thread. Shirley was not advocating going around offending people deliberately.
I have to say, I found Shirley’s comments offensive as well. (If it matters, I’m Canadian and Pagan also.)
The fact of the current world situation is that the Coalition of the Willing, this time led by the US, illegally invaded a sovereign, unoffending (if not unoffensive), middle eastern, mostly muslim country in a blatant money grab. Again. After centuries of the same thing, committed by various Western powers, in a seemingly-endless series.
In that context, for Shirley to essentially say, in her initial post, “how dare you be offended! Fuck you!” is rather offensive.
It’s somewhat akin to my coming into your house (“me” and “you” being general populations, not specific people), shitting in the middle of your living room, killing your dog, using the carcass to wipe my ass, and then painting your walls with shit and dog blood—and then being offended by your outrage.
Which is a disgusting analogy, but I don’t think it’s entirely off-mark.
Fay, thank you for your very clear explanation of why the comparison to the Da Vinci Code outrage just doesn’t compute.
Is there something you hold so sacred that if it was sullied you would go to war for it? That’s what you need to ask yourself?
If your president was assassinated? No. If your child was murdered? No. Murdering babies in the womb??? If the fundamental tenets and truth and sanctity of your religion were sullied by a fiction writer?
That’s the type of grenades that are being thrown over the wall ( this book, the Danish cartoon scandal and there are really too many too count. But they can be seen as acts of war- cultural or othwerwise. Or at least fighting words.)
Actually, Trumystique, my religion and Deities are dragged through the mud ALL THE TIME by fiction writers. Writers have no qualms about using Deities that I hold as sacred in their books without doing a lick of actual historical research on them.
Oh, Kali is a goddess of destruction, so let’s make Her the supreme villain out to destroy the world. Hera didn’t appreciate the fact that Her husband was screwing around on Her with a bunch of human women, so She gets to be the big bad who despises all men. And we can’t forget The Morrighan, she’s a war Goddess so she must be some bloodthirsty bitch.
At least Islam is respected as an actual religion. Whenever I tell people that I am Pagan, I have to explain what it means and assure them that I’m not making this shit up. Pagans, in America no less, routinely get their children and their jobs taken from them in some parts of the country just because of their chosen methods of worship.
One woman in South Carolina, because she had the temerity to ask that she be allowed to say a prayer to her chosen Gods before a town meeting (which always started off with a prayer to Jesus), had her animals slaughtered and mutilated, her home vandalized, and death threats made against her. In the past several years there have been numerous cases of young teens being expelled from school or worse, hazed so badly they committed suicide. All because they or their parents were Pagan.
Do I consider myself at war with Christianity because their Holy Book says “suffer not a witch to live” and teaches that any God other than their God is nothing more than at best a false idol and at worse an agent of their Satan? No, absolutely not.
This may be off topic, but I get a little pissed off when people assume that their religion is the only one that gets routinely shat upon.
And ironically enough my spamword is army96…
n that context, for Shirley to essentially say, in her initial post, “how dare you be offended! Fuck you!” is rather offensive.
I’m sorry, where did she say that? Where did she even imply that? She didn’t argue that people shouldn’t be offended. She argued that she’s not going to squash her own right to free speech (again, within the context of the US only) in order to make sure that no one else in the world is offended.
I feel like we’re conflating the US’s godawful foreign policy—and the years of Western imperialist policies—with a well-intentioned work of fiction. And while there is a connection—via Orientalism, Islamophobia, etc.—between the two, this book is NOT the equivalent of our unlawful invasion of Iraq. While Sherry Jones may have written out of ignorance of or disregard for the Muslim prohibition against representations of the Prophet, as a non-Muslim, she is NOT REQUIRED by law or faith to follow those prohibitions. If she were writing this book with the express intent to send it to Muslim countries or to see it taught alongside the Qu’ran, then, yes, that would be like shitting on someone’s living room floor. As it is, it’s more like forgetting to take off your shoes in a home where wearing them is verboten. It’s offensive, certainly. But it’s neither malicious nor tantamount to a declaration of war.
And, seriously, I want to know why this issue gets a level of consideration that similar issues among other minority groups are afforded. Until she got caught out for her plagiarism, no one was screaming for Cassie Edwards’s books to be banned, despite her wildly offensive depictions of the people of the First Nations. The Cleveland Indians’ mascot still leers his damned face all over Northeastern Ohio. I honestly don’t get it—it seems to me that many of the concerns over this, while valid, indicate a xenophobic terror of Muslim aggression, rather than a real concern with representation.
OK, here goes.
1) Random House found Ms. Jones’s book to be good enough for a $100,000 advance. That means they were betting it was going to sell well.
2) Dr. Spellberg is the one who did the disservice to the people of the Muslim faith She is the one who went on the presumption that if the Muslims were insulted by the book, then Random House would be in danger. Sorry, she’s playing the race card no one else.
3) Random House did a disservice to publishing by taking the easy way out. Being afraid of publishing a book JUST BECAUSE someone might be offended or even might become violent is an anthema to me. I believe in standing up to bullies (particularly when the bullies are only in some professor’s mind).
4) I am sorry that many Muslims may be offended by Ms. Jones’s book, but many of other faiths and beliefs have been offended by the written word as well. Many have mentioned DaVinci Code. Personally I just found it a boring, badly written work of fiction that I didn’t finish. As a Christian, I didn’t find it offensive (just boring), but I can see how some Christian sects would have been greatly offended. BUT I think Dan Brown had every right to have his book published without his publisher bowing to the pressure of various Christian groups.
5) I firmly believe in treating everyone with respect, but I don’t believe everyone can live in fear of the butterfly effect of a book or cartoon being published in the West causing riots in the East.
6) I hope that Ms. Jones finds another publisher for her book (because it obviously is good enough to be published, see #1). I hope that if people of Muslim faith consider it offensive, they do not read it, as is their right and understand that it is the right of everyone to decide whether or not to read it.
At the risk of making people throw up in their mouths at the sight of the words “As an American…” For me this reaches back to my original post. As an American—as one of those Americans who believes firmly in both Freedom of Speech and Separation of Church and State—my confusion still stands. For me there is no connection between “This book will offend millions of people” and “This book should not be published.” I understand that that connection exists for other people in the world. *shrug* It matters not to me. Am I sympathetic? Well, that is an entirely different question. If you want THAT question answered, don’t tie it up with not publishing offensive materials. The actuality of living in the US is certainly imperfect. I’ll be damned if I’ll start backpedaling on the ideal.
And the slippery slope for me is not even Random House deciding not to publish the book. The slippery slope is intelligent people nodding along and saying, “Yes, that book is offensive. It should not be published.”
This is why people who keep saying that they would rather read this book than one written by biased Muslims (unlike the non-biased non-Muslims?) are annoying me.
I would simply rather read a novel than a textbook. If there are novels on this subject that are written by people living within the religion and the culture, I would be happy to read them. But there aren’t.
As for the flower/hand grenade analogy, well, it just reminds me of that scene in Mars Attacks. “Maybe to them, doves mean war.”
You know what this discussion needed? A comparison between Muslims and aliens.
I’m not comparing Muslims to aliens (at least, that isn’t what I was trying to illustrate). But judging by many of the comments here, the two cultures are so far apart that there is NO WAY for us to understand one another. What seems innocuous to us (and I’m using “us” and “them” not in an adversarial sense, but in the sense that it is easier to type than the alternative) is a mortal insult to them, and we are told there is no hope they can be made to see it any other way. That we must struggle to accept their ideology and how they feel about it, but that they will never be able to understand that we hold other things dear. That a book is a hand grenade. That a dove=war.
I’m not arguing this book should not be published - I’m arguing the opposite most vehemently - but if the West is going to deal with the cultural important icons and figures of other nations and peoples, then they have to be aware of the effect this will have. ...this doesn’t mean *not* issuing it, but it might mean consulting with community leaders and so on about how best to handle it, so it doesn’t look like a random slap in the face.
And I would think it needlessly offensive if RH had decided to market the book in Muslim countries, but they didn’t. And I’ve read it stated here that simply issuing this book at all is tantamount to lobbing a hand grenade.
But I’m a bit thrown by your interpretation of my words as implying some kind of Muslim missionary zeal - that because there are profound differences or perspective, it follows that no kind of rapprochement can be reached other than obliteration of one group.
It has nothing to do with missionary zeal and everything to do with the double standard that seems to be applied here, where the onus is on us (again, no insult intended with the “us” and “them”) to be understanding and avoid offense, when there is no onus placed on them to do the same. I understand that Muslims in the Middle East are human beings, and human beings are prone to believe what they are told by their media and governments. And I see a lot of people here giving them tacit permission to think your average American is evil because of that. But North Amerians are human beings, too, and their government and media tell them that Muslims are a threat to their way of life in subtle and not-so-subtle ways every day. Yet we are expected to be able to somehow think past that and see it for the lie it is.
Well, to me, that’s not doing Muslims any favors. Affording them special treatment and letting them get away with stuff we don’t let ourselves get away with, to me, is like saying we’re better than them, we’re more able to be rational and think for ourselves, and I don’t believe we are. You can’t say someone whose life was destroyed on 9/11 or whose son was killed in Afghanistan should be any more able to set aside the impact of those things and see through to the goodness in all people any more than you can expect an Iraqi whose family was killed by or as a result of the U.S. occupation to do so.
I’m not saying free speech is a universal ideology. I’m saying that the ability to understand that people are different, and hold different things important is (or should be) universal, and that we should not be expected to set aside what is important to us simply because it is not important to someone else. Hence, I am okay with Muslims being offended or even angered by this book. I’m okay with them expressing their anger and asking people not to read it. I’m okay with them trying to educate others on why this issue is so important to them. But I’m not okay with any plan (even a non-violent one) to have an author or publisher pull a book and “apologise to all Muslims around the world”.
Okay, you made me giggle - but it’s funny ‘cuz it’s true (as Homer Simpson once said). Seriously - we do need to recognize that we’re working from different contexts in order to pinpoint misunderstandings. Which means education on both sides.
I’m glad you read that in the context it was intended. And I wholeheartedly agree that eduation is needed on both sides. But what I keep seeing is that we have to educate ourselves so that we understand them better, we have to take extra care not to offend, we have to modify our behavior. I see very damn few people saying that they should try to see that the things important to us are not the same as the things important to them, that we do things differently and that this book is not intended as an insult.
Shewhohashope, Ziggy, Popin, they make me feel hopeful, because even though they are offended by this book, they are able to see past their initial reaction to it and look at where the book is coming from, which is not an intent to mock their beliefs, but perhaps a desire to learn about them in a way that is most familiar and comfortable to us.
I would like to ask the author (politely of course) why is she so certain that Aisha intended to commit adultery? She said it was fact, but now you see my fact and her fact is quite different.
She never said it was fact. She said it was conjecture. And she also said her book was fiction. Argghhh!
Ann, I really get the impression that you are determined to be offended in this thread. Shirley was not advocating going around offending people deliberately. She very clearly stated the importance of being sensitive and respectful of others, while at the same time not bending over backwards for any one group.
I frequently get this impression too.
In that context, for Shirley to essentially say, in her initial post, “how dare you be offended! Fuck you!” is rather offensive.
She never said that. She just said she would not go out of her way to be any more respectful of Muslims than of anyone else. Jeez, you guys! And when did Shirley do all those horrible things you ascribe to her in your disgusting analogy? Holding her up as responsibe for the cesspool that is American foreign policy is no different from calling all Muslims extremists and suicide bombers.
And the slippery slope for me is not even Random House deciding not to publish the book. The slippery slope is intelligent people nodding along and saying, “Yes, that book is offensive. It should not be published.”
Oh yes.
Am I missing something, or does no one else find it strange/problematic that the “source” for so much outrage expressed here, and this whole story (not the novel, but how it came not to be published) is an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal? Not that editorials aren’t held to high fact-checking standards, but it is, as an “opinion and editorial,” written to prove a particular point of view. Of course no media is truly unbiased, but this was a piece openly meant to persuade, and, in part, to indict an academic for fear-mongering (or, at best, for setting off an unreasonable chain of events), and if the response on this forum is any indication, the op-ed writer sure managed it. I sympathize with her aims, which are, I assume, to foster greater understanding between peoples of different faiths in part through historical re-imaginings. But wow! the hating on academics! Consensus here is much harder on Ms. Spellberg than the op-ed itself even is. Have a heart, people! She’s a tenured faculty member, her book on Aisha is long out, and her next project is completely unrelated; I think the diabolical professional plot is slightly overstated.
As for this information coming from a WSJ op piece, Random House people were quoted in it. Have they come back and said they were quoted incorrectly? I try to take all news with a grain of salt be them from the WSJ, NYT, FoxNews, PBS, NPR or the National Review. Nothing contradicting the original op piece has been published (to the best of my knowledge).
I frequently get this impression too.
Kirsten, you keep making these personal attacks on me, but that’s all right. I’ve come to the conclusion you are simply too unselfaware to realise what you sound like. When you grow up, I hope you’ll see things differently.
she also said her book was fiction.
Demonstrating just how little you’ve understood of what people have explained at very patient length here. Writing fiction about A’isha is actually what’s causing the offence.
I think you should go back to the first post, and read all the comments again, and then read all the comments on this post. Then read them again.
But in the United States, it IS. And that’s why I limited my comment to that. I get that outside of the US, and outside of the Western world, things like freedom of speech are not seen as sacred, and that depictions of the Prophet are blasphemous. I do understand. I understand why Muslims are offended by this book.
But *within the borders of the US*, if nowhere else, their right to be offended does not trump the author’s right to write such a novel.
-Snarkhunter
Or for such a novel to be read by those who want to. And that’s it, period.
I won’t apologize for being proud to be American. And when I say, ‘as an American’ I mean that in all totality, as a person who can express themselves how they like, when they like, where they like. As a person who can protest something I feel strongly about. As a human being who thinks all people should be treated with respect and dignity, but no one person or group should be shown more deference or praise than another either.
But then maybe that’s a big, big part of the disconnect. I cannot fathom, and neither can most folks I know, how a religion can at once hold one half of its believers in high esteem as well as relegating them to second class and of no more value than a cow. I cannot fathom how a learned group of people - and let’s be honest, the middle east was the place of learning and knowledge for millenia - can blame the victim of a crime for the criminal act itself. Maybe America and the Muslim Nation won’t ever be friends - there are many, many things we don’t understand about the other - but we can be respectful neighbors, as it were.
The part of Shirley’s comments that hit my buttons was this:
I surely know that I - as an American - have zero intention of pussyfooting around Muslims. Period. Or any other minority group. When I start censoring myself because I might ‘needlessly’ offend someone else, well, that’ll be the day I croak. There’s a huge difference between ‘tolerance’ and ‘acceptance’. I tolerate Muslims and rejoice with them the right they have, in America, to worship their faith. As I do for everyone in America who enjoys the freedom of religion. That doesn’t, however, mean that I accept their religion as right and the only truth. No more than I accept Christianity, Judaism, or any other organized religion.
And your second suggestion, that ‘in this environment’ we should have a ‘defensible position’, frankly offends me. Exactly what position should that be? I’d really like to know. Because ‘in this environment’ their really doesn’t seem to be a defensible position for Americans, other than total conversion to Islam. Not only am I not going to do that anytime soon, but the idea that the geopolitical environment should have any bearing on the publication of a fictionalized account of one woman in Islamic tradition, is ridiculous. A failure to publish this book is not suddenly going to make Muslim extremists love America - and if this country started trying to do things in order to cater exactly that response - I’d defect to China. At least there, I know I’ve got no rights from the get go. Further more, this is America.
Fay explained quite nicely that fictitious portrayals of the founders of Islam are deeply, blasphemously, disgustingly offensive. Westerners don’t get that, I think we’re baffled by it. I completely don’t understand the anthromorphization of good and evil that most religions entail, but I can recognize that people can get extremely emotional about it. Hence my disgusting analogy.
To me, these comments I’ve quoted say “I’m offended by someone pointing out that I’m being insensitive to very real issues.”
I’ve spent way too many years working and dealing with people who blunder their way through interactions, obliviously treading on sacred cows all around them, and getting righteously indignant when it’s pointed out to them. Myself included, by the way. And that’s how this statement reads to me.
There’s a huge difference between censoring yourself and making an effort to be respectful of cultural differences. If you choose not to make the effort, fine, but don’t get offended when people get insulted by that.
Also, pointing out that a statement or action is against the teachings of a religion is not stating that the religion is the only acceptable one.
My reaction to the comments I quote is completely separate from the book being pulled, or whether this is all hysterical overreaction, or whether Spellberg is an ass. I oppose censorship, and it surely seems as thought Spellberg is pulling some academic-political shenanigans.
But:
the idea that the geopolitical environment should have any bearing on the publication of a fictionalized account of one woman in Islamic tradition, is ridiculous.
I don’t think it’s ridiculous. Considering political ramifications to any action, especially when they’re likely to be violent, is only prudent. Taking into consideration the emotions of the masses is why Weight Watchers pulled the ads of the Duchess of York being chased by the paparazzi when Princess Diana died. It wasn’t caving to pressure, it was being sensitive to the emotions of millions of people who may well have become violent.
And this:
Because ‘in this environment’ their really doesn’t seem to be a defensible position for Americans, other than total conversion to Islam.
is just bullshit.
Kirsten, you keep making these personal attacks on me, but that’s all right. I’ve come to the conclusion you are simply too unselfaware to realise what you sound like. When you grow up, I hope you’ll see things differently.
Likewise. It just sounds a little off when you go out of your way to misinterpret things I (and others) say, refuse to see when others are actually agreeing with you, and criticize others for the very things you frequently do yourself. I can admit I’m not perfect. But I don’t go around telling people they suck, either, no matter how tempted I am.
Demonstrating just how little you’ve understood of what people have explained at very patient length here. Writing fiction about A’isha is actually what’s causing the offence.
I’m aware of that. If you had actually read what was quoted in that comment, you’d realize I was replying to a commentor who claimed Jones said the prologue/adultery/temptation thing was fact. Jones never said it was. I don’t think he shouldn’t be offended, just that he shouldn’t be offended over something the author never actually did.
I think you should go back to the first post, and read all the comments again, and then read all the comments on this post. Then read them again.
Again, likewise.
I mean that in all totality, as a person who can express themselves how they like, when they like, where they like.
*you* might be able to, but I’m guessing you’re not black, homosexual, or pagan.
Tell me, if America is this great liberal paradise, why aren’t gays allowed to serve openly in the military?
How likely is it that a presidential candidate can ever admit to being gay or atheist - or Mulsim?
Why are pagans and homosexuals losing their children in custody battles?
Free speech in America is a myth, like democracy. And liberalism, for that matter. The ‘As an American’ statement that really got up my nose was the ‘As an American I believe in tolerance’ someone said. My reaction to that was a great big ‘Hah’.
Iran is hanging gay people and stoning women to death and a whole lot of revolting things that I absolutely deplore and which are clearly wrong and vile, but two hundred years ago, sodomites were hanged in Britain, and this justified by Christian belief. Homosexuals are still suffering the death penalty in America, even if it’s at the hands of rednecks and their fists, rather than the courts. Two hundred years ago, Americans owned slaves. A hundred years ago, blacks and whites couldn’t marry, at the risk of going to jail. Progress is possible, and to be urged. But you don’t bomb or insult people into progress, especially when they already feel hounded and oppressed and grossly misunderstood. You don’t make friends with your neighbour by tossing a dead cat over their fence.
If Muslims are telling you patiently and calmly how profoundly and completely upsetting this book is to them, the very least that’s expected is that their views be listened to with respect. You don’t have to agree with them, or not publish the book. But you don’t dismiss them as being unreasonable for not holding the same views as you.
Writing fiction about A’isha is actually what’s causing the offence.
boo hoo hoo
they need to get over it and grow up - anyone offended by that is a moron and should receive no consideration. i do understand those people - they suck
furthermore, anyone who not only is offended but thinks action needs to be taken against the offendor - ban books, burn books, burn people - sucks even more
the simple fact is that that culture, one of ignorance and misogyny, is wrong and the liberal west is right; the end
we arent the ones who need to change
scr3w them, the big babies
And when did Shirley do all those horrible things you ascribe to her in your disgusting analogy? Holding her up as responsibe for the cesspool that is American foreign policy is no different from calling all Muslims extremists and suicide bombers.
Thanks, Kristen. :) I never said anything close to what some are inferring. I may be a proud American - but that doesn’t mean I’m proud of everything she’s ever done. I just refuse to be ashamed because I love the country I was born into. Just like I don’t expect - or want - Muslims to be ashamed for having great love and respect for their faith.
Fay explained quite nicely that fictitious portrayals of the founders of Islam are deeply, blasphemously, disgustingly offensive.
And I find the execution of people for being gay deeply, blasphemously, disgustingly offensive. But that doesn’t mean I have a right to go to Iran and demand they stop doing it (keeping in mind that I am not responsible for American foreign policy, thanks, and have no control over what Bush will do). It’s their country, their laws, and no matter how awful and sick I find them, my options are to either deal with them, or not live there.
To me, these comments I’ve quoted say “I’m offended by someone pointing out that I’m being insensitive to very real issues.”
If you felt you were being sensitive to them (and everyone), and people kept accusing you of being the opposite, it would offend you. Saying you afford Muslims the exact same respect and tolerance as you do anyone else is NOT BEING INSENSITIVE, unless you treat everyone like shit, in which case that’s another issue entirely.
There’s a huge difference between censoring yourself and making an effort to be respectful of cultural differences.
There’s also a huge difference between being respectful of all cultural differences, and bending over backwards to placate one group over all others.
If Muslims are telling you patiently and calmly how profoundly and completely upsetting this book is to them, the very least that’s expected is that their views be listened to with respect. You don’t have to agree with them, or not publish the book. But you don’t dismiss them as being unreasonable for not holding the same views as you.
If you have read any of the comments I’ve made in this thread (without your personal dislike for me foremost in your mind), you wouldn’t be able to find anything in them to contradict this. You will, however, find I have repeatedly said that expectations of understanding and civility need to go in both directions, or they’re pointless.
I don’t speak for the American government (and refuse to be held responsible for the mess in Iraq, thanks), I speak as an agnostic, very secular Canadian who feels more strongly about plagiarism and internet piracy than any god. And I can see why people are insulted by the very idea of a novel about this subject, no matter how accurate it is, or how many Muslim experts might have been in the hypothetical panel people think should have been consulted. I can also see why some westerners out there will never be able to understand the depth of that insult, even when you go to great pains to try to put it in a context they can wrap their heads around.
All I’m saying is that both sides have to make an effort. I see that happening with Muslims who have participated in this discussion—moreso than some on the other side of the fence (Elron Hubbard, I’m talking to you). But I also see a lot of excuses being made (mostly by westerners) as to why Muslims should not be expected to make any effort at all.
The solution is not to berate and bully, but to try to foster understanding through meaningful dialogue on BOTH SIDES of a disagreement.
To me, these comments I’ve quoted say “I’m offended by someone pointing out that I’m being insensitive to very real issues.”
That isn’t at all what I said, but it’s silly to squabble that point, as you infer what you want from the words. As does everyone. There’s nothing wrong with that.
There’s a huge difference between censoring yourself and making an effort to be respectful of cultural differences. If you choose not to make the effort, fine, but don’t get offended when people get insulted by that.
Again, I didn’t even come close to saying, or implying, anything even remotely similar to this comment. I don’t get offended when people are insulted by something I’ve said. I’m too damn old to, LOL! It just makes me a bit sad. Listen, I told an old lady joke the other day to some of my girlfriends. Most of them laughed, but one got irritated. Said she wasn’t losing her mind and she hated jokes implying all the elderly were senile. I didn’t apologize for telling the joke. But I was sad that she couldn’t appreciate the humor with me. Life is too short to get angry over perceived slights against your person. Hell, generally it’s too short to get angry over real slights to your person.
As an aside, I don’t think all people my age are losing it, but I know I don’t remember everything as well as I did once and the punch line was a real kicker.
I don’t think it’s ridiculous. Considering political ramifications to any action, especially when they’re likely to be violent, is only prudent. Taking into consideration the emotions of the masses is why Weight Watchers pulled the ads of the Duchess of York being chased by the paparazzi when Princess Diana died. It wasn’t caving to pressure, it was being sensitive to the emotions of millions of people who may well have become violent.
First of all that add was in poor taste to begin with and the pulling has as much to do with poor taste as any sensitivity. Really.
And excuse me, or not as you will, but changing a choice because someone threatens to hurt you - for political reasons or other - is absolutely ridiculous - no matter how well intentioned. That’s why terrorism works - and no there is no inference on the word terrorism tying it exclusively to any race, creed, or nationality. It works because it scares people into doing what they are told instead of choosing right or wrong for themselves. And it doesn’t matter on what scale, from domestic abuse to political action. Fear is not, and should not, be the reason to make a poor choice. Hell, unproven fear and greed is what got us into Iraq - a helluva poor choice, if you ask me. And most of America.
*you* might be able to, but I’m guessing you’re not black, homosexual, or pagan.
I was raised Catholic, but fell from that Grace long ago. I’m an atheist, thanks much, but that doesn’t stop me from being invited to the Sunday Church social. It also doesn’t stop the high believers from telling me I’ll burn in hell, either.
As for homosexual, I did my experimenting. I married a man, had his children, raised them and loved them all. But I have also loved a woman since he’s been dead and we enjoy a relationship that is as fulfilling to me, and to her, as our married lives were. I’m old, so no, we don’t have sex, but I love her as much as I love myself, and my family. Does that answer your question sufficiently?
And thank you very much, but racial and religious minorities do not hold the corner on subjugation and persecution. My mother and my grandmother fought for the right to vote. I was one of the first women in my area to vote - and not without plenty of men standing in the way. I’ve seen more than my fair share of injustice and cruelty dealt on mankind by mankind in my lifetime. Enough that if I focused on it, I’d lack any hope for a bright future. So please, do not lecture to me about how stupid Americans are to think that everyone should be like them or any other silly bone of contention I hear bandied about from one country’s news to another. I don’t think everyone should be like us - to each his own. I also don’t think that we should come to the rescue every single time someone calls - for money, guns, or aid. IF America is so loathsome, then stop asking for help all the damn time.
And I’m not talking about the Iraq War. That was wacko from the get go. We should have stayed in Afghanistan(after all we armed and trained them). And that’s all I’ll say about the war.
I won’t say I’d buy it, because I’d only be doing it out of spite, but this would be the type of book that would have be standing in the isle for a half an hour, reading the first 2-3 chapters of until I was or wasn’t hooked. The odds are in Ms. Jones’s favour, though, since I can’t walk away from an adaptation.
Like many commenters, I’m more outraged that a group of people whom I’ve never met, nor will I meet, would like to decide for me what I should be allowed to read. I’m sure there are many Christians who would have loved to have deprived me of the joy that is Chris Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Christ’s Childhood Friend, Biff, but thankfully they didn’t. I would prefer it if I was given the same opportunity to read Ms. Jones’s book and make up my own mind as to whether it’s garbage or not.
Fay explained quite nicely that fictitious portrayals of the founders of Islam are deeply, blasphemously, disgustingly offensive. Westerners don’t get that, I think we’re baffled by it. [...] Hence my disgusting analogy.
Suze also mentioned that “Weight Watchers pulled the ads of the Duchess of York being chased by the paparazzi when Princess Diana died” so I wondered if maybe another analogy would help.
Imagine you’re in your house, having a bath, and someone uses a telephoto lens to take a photo of you. You weren’t very clearly visible in the photo, so they touch it up a bit and then they sell it. They say that it’s a really beautiful photo, it makes you look good, and other people who look at it will think so and will understand you better. You think that this was your house, you didn’t want them taking a photo and the photoshopping they’ve done on the photo distorts what you really look like.
It’s not a great analogy, but it maybe picks up on some of the issues about truth (the photoshopping of the photo) and cultural appropriation (going into someone else’s house and treating it as public property), as well as being an example of a situation where an individual’s right to privacy would trump the rights of the author (the photographer) to publish what they want.
Another analogy might be some authors’ attitudes towards fan fiction. It’s generally thought understandable that some authors don’t like the idea of other people writing about their characters. And because an author has copyright, they can stop other people writing sequels or other derivative works (at least, I think they can, but my knowledge of the law on this is next to non-existent). Anyway, I think this could be considered as somewhat similar. You’ve got an Author (God, and also writings by prophets and some others) and fans (believers) who are not at all happy at the Author’s words or characterisation being in any way tampered with. There are generally more provisions for academic fair use, so they might be happy for someone to write an academic, non-fiction work which explores the original text, but they’d be very unhappy if someone made up a work of fiction which drew on the Author’s original text.
And then there’s the fact that the law does limit free speech if it’s slanderous, and freedom of expression if it’s libelous.
As I said, maybe these aren’t very good analogies, but I’m trying to think of cases in which freedom of speech/expression do not trump the rights of certain other individuals, and in which fiction/the arts might be constrained.
I’m really sorry, I messed up my formatting. The first paragraph was a quote from Suze’s comment, but the rest is all by me.
If I put in the code for ending italics after this comment, will it stop them infecting the entire thread? Sorry Sarah and Candy.
Did that fix it?
Kalen Hughes wrote ....
If an author doesn’t want to stay true to the historical record, why write about REAL people? I know it’s much easier in today’s market to sell a book based on real people (oh, that we could all be Dorothy Dunnett), but when fictionalizing them, I feel very strongly that the writer has a responsibility to be accurate (I’m looking at YOU, Phillipa Gregory).
This I good-naturedly disagree with. There’s nothing I love more than an author plonking down at their computer with a primary source and muddling it all up into a big, steaming pile of what-ifs. Shakespeare did it, as did scores before him and scores after.
Books I’ve read, good or bad, are too numerous to name, so I’ll cheap out and point a finger at HBO’s “Rome.” About half of those characters were based on real individuals, but had everything been played as historical record described these characters and events without any creative license and re-imagining, the whole series would have been one big yawn. One character, Atia, had been described by contemporaries as a very religious and delicate matron. With her, HBO created one of the best villainesses that I have ever read or seen.
Actually that was my fault, kirsten saell - sorry! Who would have thought the whole thread would suddenly go squirrelly?
It’s happened before at Dear Author, IIRC. All you need to do is make another comment with a close italics tag, and that fixes it. Blogger won’t let you post without closing your tags—for good reason, I guess, lol!
Tell me, if America is this great liberal paradise
And, again, no one said that.
Victoria Dahl said it best, actually:
The actuality of living in the US is certainly imperfect. I’ll be damned if I’ll start backpedaling on the ideal.
God forbid we actually try to live up to the tenets of our Constitution by defending free speech within the borders of our country, by voting against racist, homophobic, borderline theocratic fuckwits, or by believing the possibility of our country, even when its reality is ugly.
God forbid we actually try to live up to the tenets of our Constitution by defending free speech within the borders of our country, by voting against racist, homophobic, borderline theocratic fuckwits, or by believing the possibility of our country, even when its reality is ugly.
By golly, snarkhunter, this actually moved me. I truly believe that this is what most Americans work and fight for - we want this country to be as great - as in good - as we know it can be.
...both sides have to make an effort. I see that happening with Muslims who have participated in this discussion—moreso than some on the other side of the fence (Elron Hubbard, I’m talking to you).
I do get offended by things sometimes; things people say, things people do - i realize though, that it is my problem (we arent talking murder or child porn here, ok - in which case it isn’t just my problem).
Case A: i am sitting on a park bench and say out loud “Jesus is definately not the son of god, nor anyone’s savior”. A true believer walks by, hears me and says, “i disagree and in fact, because of my deep beliefs, what you have said offends me greatly.” In this case, i will feel guilt, apologize and regret having inadvertantly offended my fellow human being.
Case B: i am sitting on a park bench and say out loud “Jesus is definately not the son of god, nor anyone’s savior”. A true believer walks by, hears me and begins screaming at me (damages my hearing perhaps =), tries to get other folks in the area to assist him/herself in physically assaulting me and perhaps later attempts to have me evicted from my home and/or arrested.
In case B i feel absolutely no guilt, no remorse, nor do i have any sort of ethical, moral or intellectual obligation to make any attempt to ‘see it from their perspective’ or ‘go half way’. The offended person in case B is wrong, the end.
You are likely able to guess which case above i feel corresponds to the fatwah givers, the rushdie threateners, the danish embassy attackers, etc. This includes the whiney, YELLING legions of the offended faithful on the internet as well.
Getting back to aliens…. if a fleet of 20-armed flesh eating fungus lifeforms from the planet Zyx descended on the earth to eat all of us, will i still need to try to see their side of things? Let me know so i can be ready.
I don’t believe yelling FIRE in a crowded theater is equivalent, either - fire is a chemical reaction, lunatics allegedly have brains they could use if they so choose.
I told myself I would not return to this thread because I’ve had my say and I really have better things to do than repeat myself. But
Case B: i am sitting on a park bench and say out loud “Jesus is definately not the son of god, nor anyone’s savior”. A true believer walks by, hears me and begins screaming at me (damages my hearing perhaps =), tries to get other folks in the area to assist him/herself in physically assaulting me and perhaps later attempts to have me evicted from my home and/or arrested.
the whiney, YELLING legions of the offended faithful on the internet as well.
OK, so Shewhohashope, Popin and myself amount to a legion? And our legitimate objections to this book amount to PHYSICAL ASSAULTING YOU? Is that what you’re saying? You think freedom of speech doesn’t work both ways? If you don’t like what we’re saying, but you have nothing more constructive to say than compare us to ALIENS, then go away from this thread. You are not contributing to this discussion in a meaningful way.
Something just came to my attention, so I want to clarify, just in case.
I am not the author Shirley Jones. I wouldn’t want anyone to infer she were I and then malign her for any comment I may have made with which they didn’t agree.
And Ziggy, I’m certain I’m coming from this from a different angle, but I inferred Mr. Hubbard was speaking back to the ‘threats’, which got the book pulled, and not by any comment you or another made. But I could be wrong. And I agree his initial comment could have been less spiteful, though the gist of it had some merit - that those leaders were extremely hard on any medium that painted them in a bad light and so actively obliterated the product and the producers. And that in America, we don’t support that kind of action.
Then again, I could be giving Mr. Hubbard much more credit than he deserves. Just trying to keep cool heads all around.
Thanks shirley. Um, I may be mistaken, in which case I totally apologise for losing my temper - but there weren’t ACTUALLY any threats made, am I right? Didn’t RH pull the book because they were Spellberg told them there might be problems, but no one ACTUALLY made any threats? Didn’t the Hussaini (sp?) Youth actually plan nothing more than a campaign against the book?
t isn’t just America that needs to gain more knowledge and understanding of the rest of the world. The rest of the world might try to do the same, instead of assuming all the asshats they see on television are somehow the exact embodiment of the whole of the American citizenry.
As someone who has traveled pretty extensively, including to the Middle East, I am continually embarrassed at how little Americans know about other countries and cultures. By contrast, people I meet in other countries, including the Middle East, are incredibly educated about world affairs and about different countries. And we seem to revel in our ignorance, convinced that we are at the center of the universe. Which is why, IMO, America is despised in a number of quarters. Thomas Friedman did a fascinating documentary several years ago in which he interviewed a number of young Muslims from the Middle East. The consistent refrain was that while they admired American democracy,freedom, and different aspects of our culture, they saw us as a nation as imposing in our perceived superiority to other countries and our aggressive insistence that we know what’s good for every other country.
On the more general point of taking and giving offense that is circulating through this thread, I have a bit different take on it, I guess. First let me say that I am a First Amendment disciple; at this point my entire career is focused on it, so I have a deep and abiding faith in the wisdom and importance of the broadest possible free speech protections. I know that the US is increasingly unique in terms of our First Amendment, as numerous countries that people admire for being more socially progressive (e.g. Canada) have more limited speech protections. And I am very, very concerned about the state of the First Amendment in the current political and social climates.
That said, I am glad that people are talking here about the fact that free speech is not always without cost. Because while I believe that even the most stupid and offensive speech MUST be protected in the US, it would be really really great, IMO, if people were more thoughtful about what they say. Because while the First Amendment is a protection *from,* it does not do anything but secure a baseline for a democracy—it does not magically create a viable, functional society. IMO we SHOULD be thinking more carefully about what we say and how we say it, because sure we have the right to say almost anything, but we also, IMO, have the responsibility to do what we can to sustain our democracy. And that is about more than pointing to our rights and reminding everyone that we have them. It’s also about reaching for those political and social ideals embedded in our founding documents—“with liberty and justice for all” —and striving to apply them as equitably and judiciously as possible.
We have all these civic ideals focused on equality and freedom, but those values must be worked for; the Constitution was drafted in anticipation of an engaged citizenry. In the same way that we know how slavery and other forms of discrimination do not serve democracy, we know that only so much social and political divisiveness is possible before a democracy turns in on itself and becomes something *other* than a democracy. Democracy is fragile, it is unstable, it is dynamic in nature. And IMO we are becoming increasingly thoughtless on a national level, increasingly disengaged and increasingly overwhelmed in terms of our day to day challenges. This does not mean we should support or tolerate censorship, even self-censorship; it simply means that we all influence the character of our society, and the way we exercise our choice to be thoughtless or mindful makes a difference.
Does that mean people HAVE to be pay more attention to what they say and do? Obviously not. But sometimes I wonder why the hell people seem so intent on NOT doing so.
Bleh, sorry for all the typos.
Once upon the present, you’ve heard that a chef somewhere has developed a new kind of cinnamon milk chocolate bar based on a recipe that goes back to the dawn of time. This chef isn’t actually a cinnamon milk chocolate chef, but she’s done a lot of cinnamon milk chocolate research and, damn if that recipe doesn’t sound like something you’d like to try.
So you go, “Hell, yeah, I’m so there!” and… the chocolate company has decided not to make and market it because there’s a group of cinnamon milk chocolate chefs who claim the ancient recipe is a holy recipe and are utterly pissed that someone has dared profane their sacred dessert special.
Now the chocolate company is afraid of repercussions by maddened cinnamon milk chocolate chefs, waving butcher knives and hurling fondue pots at innocent sweet shop patrons.
Now, this chef wasn’t claiming that her chocolate was the exact original recipe or that it was intended to replace the ancient recipe. She publicly acknowledged that it was an adaptation (which it obviously was, because the ancient recipe and its devotees were pretty well known), with extra ingredients that she thought tasted good, and she was marketing it to the public, with the hope that they would think that it tasted good. Since the original recipe had no patent in her country, she was legally free to adapt the recipe as she saw fit.
However, some cinnamon milk chocolate chefs started a campaign saying that her cinnamon milk chocolate tasted bad and that no one should eat it. Some people said that people should not make adaptations of that recipe because it was offending cinnamon milk chocolate chefs. Keep in mind that no one was making cinnamon milk chocolate chefs eat or even look at this particular chocolate. The very presence of it was offending them.
You remember when someone marketed a recipe of white chocolate with added almonds and another marketed a new concoction of dark chocolate with peanut butter swirls and there wasn’t this kind of fuss. The volatile nature of some cinnamon milk chocolate chefs was to be feared, apparently - those fondue pots HURT when they’re aimed at your temple.
Interestingly, the focus wasn’t “What are we going to do about people who try to hurt other people”, it was “What are we going to do to avoid offending chefs who might randomly start stabbing us with cake knives if they happen to see this recipe featured at the local chocolate potluck?”
Another point was, “There are some recipes that should just not be made because the combination of certain ingredients really offend a large number of people who believe that their chocolate recipe is the best.” You have personally eaten chocolate-covered blueberries, something that some chefs have assured you will send you to the Big Bread Oven Beneath the Kitchen, but you don’t see what’s so awful about them. In fact, you don’t understand why the hell those chefs don’t simply refuse to eat chocolate-covered blueberries and leave it at that. Maybe in Chocolate Orange Land, things are different, but you live in Fondutopia and you’re allowed to eat whatever chocolate you like here.
Epilogue:
Eventually, you find that a different chocolate company has chosen to market the chocolate bar and sales have soared, partly due to the hype. The chef who created this recipe is now rich and living in Cocoa Butter Estates and the chocolate is now sold in most major stores (and a few minor ones). Eventually, the popularity of the brand got to the point where the chef came out with cinnamon milk chocolate covered blueberries, which ensured her place in the Big Bad Kitchen, but also in the hearts of chocolate lovers everywhere.
The End.
The main part of the controversy that bothers me is the thought of death threats to the author or publishing house. “Nor take life” should apply even when someone writes something that offends us.
I was born and raised Roman Catholic. There are some representations of Jesus and God in books with which I don’t personally agree, but I don’t support book banning lists either.
I will say that I have learned a lot more about Muslim beliefs in the discussions here than I knew. Thank you to all show shared their faith and knowledge.
Thanks shirley. Um, I may be mistaken, in which case I totally apologise for losing my temper - but there weren’t ACTUALLY any threats made, am I right? Didn’t RH pull the book because they were Spellberg told them there might be problems, but no one ACTUALLY made any threats? Didn’t the Hussaini (sp?) Youth actually plan nothing more than a campaign against the book?
I can’t actually get a clear answer on the ‘threats’. That’s why I quoted them, you know, like saying possible threats? but not typing it all out. Sorry, a bit of laziness on my end.
I do know that Spellberg was the one that initially suggested threats to life and limb, though. And I’m all for the Husseni(sp) Youth campaigning against the book here in the States. They have every right to. It’s what ticked off Catholics did when ‘The DaVinci Code’ came out.
This does not mean we should support or tolerate censorship, even self-censorship; it simply means that we all influence the character of our society, and the way we exercise our choice to be thoughtless or mindful makes a difference
For what it’s worth, and it may not be clear from my comments in this thread, I completely agree with this. I actually (usually) try very hard to be mindful in what I say and do. I try to educate myself—and others, and not just b/c it’s my profession—but I get very balky when mindfulness is aligned with silencing, which I feel like is being gestured toward on this thread. And not, oddly enough, by any of the people who most strongly object to the book’s content.
Maybe I’m naive or just plain stupid, but I believe it’s possible to write a book like this one, even knowing that it violates one of the most sacred beliefs of Islam, in a thoughtful manner, and in a manner not intended to be a “hand grenade.” Not having read the book, I won’t say if this particular book does so. But I believe in the *possibility*.
Snarkhunter and Robin, I think you have both said it far more eloquently than I every could.
Thank you both.
And that should have been *ever* could, not every could.
Sheesh…
*headdesk*
I do know that Spellberg was the one that initially suggested threats to life and limb, though. And I’m all for the Husseni(sp) Youth campaigning against the book here in the States.
Neither of us know how to spell Husseini! Hehe! Yes, this is the sum total of what I know, too. Everything I’ve said in both JoM threads, I have based on the assumption that no threats of violence have actually been made towards RH in response to the publishing of this article. Please correct me if this is wrong.
it simply means that we all influence the character of our society, and the way we exercise our choice to be thoughtless or mindful makes a difference
Beautiful. I have tears in my eyes.
I try to educate myself—and others, and not just b/c it’s my profession—but I get very balky when mindfulness is aligned with silencing
I cannot tell you how passionately I agree with this.
ElronHubbard, thanks for revealing so well how true bigotry really works. You already show through those 2 scenarios that to you “guilt, ... remorse, ... ethical, moral or intellectual obligation to make any attempt to ‘see [things] from [another’s] perspective’ or ‘go half way’” are not things you negotiate with your own code of ethical thought and behavior, but depend solely on how you perceive this “other”: if they’ve gained your magnanimity and approval by behaving just so then you’re sorry to offend them and will condescend to “go half way,” if they haven’t then “screw them” ‘cause you don’t care. And somehow you don’t see that this is exactly the type of attitude that supposedly you have no patience for! Funny, that. It’s a neat trick to make your approach sound rational and fair, but the thing is: it would only be fair if you were infallible. I know, you happen to think you are (“the simple fact is that you/the west/“America”/whoever isn’t ‘other’ to you are right” - right?!) but… you’re not. Your method of judging whether someone deserves “consideration” - as you put it - is faulty. Based on this method, you’ve managed to assign to “case b”, with the hypothetical person assaulting you and “the fatwah givers, the rushdie threateners, the danish embassy attackers” precisely the most calm, rational and respectful people who’ve been commenting here—just so you can still dismiss them as “whiney, YELLING” and spew any amount of hateful stuff at them if you so wish, regardless of what they’ve actually said or not. Congratulations. Way to promote that western righteousness of yours! I call it good old dehumanization of the “other,” but that’s just me…
Once again Robin said it all so much more clearly than I could.
Neither of us know how to spell Husseini! Hehe! Yes, this is the sum total of what I know, too.
I did try, but I found three potential spellings. I went with what I thought ‘looked’ right, LOL. I’ve really looked into this, from the WSJ op-ed piece, to other blogs and publications, but some say there were actual threats and others only that Spellberg suggested there would be.
and i was referring to this kind of stuff (must say, i don’t understand how anyone would read it and think it’s in any way excusable or just find it… “spiteful”):
Writing fiction about A’isha is actually what’s causing the offence.
anyone offended by that is a moron and should receive no consideration. i do understand those people - they suck
the simple fact is that that culture, one of ignorance and misogyny, is wrong and the liberal west is right; the end
OK, so Shewhohashope, Popin and myself amount to a legion? And our legitimate objections to this book amount to PHYSICAL ASSAULTING YOU? Is that what you’re saying? You think freedom of speech doesn’t work both ways? If you don’t like what we’re saying, but you have nothing more constructive to say than compare us to ALIENS, then go away from this thread. You are not contributing to this discussion in a meaningful way.
i wasnt talking about you or anyone posting to this thread who-whatsoever, silly goose. Im talking about the people who are interested in having books not published and authors killed. including ‘offended people’ (not you, not here) who want to stir all of these people up because of some silly book. i think it was quite clear really.
the aliens and both ‘cases’ were simply ‘what ifs’, thats all - jeez
and i was referring to this kind of stuff (must say, i don’t understand how anyone would read it and think it’s in any way excusable or just find it… “spiteful”):
Wow. After reading that, I was wondering exactly what I misread in Mr. Hubbard’s initial comment. And I figured it out.
Well, obviously, we should preclude this publication and cut off the author’s head. It’s the only rational thing to do.
Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot would be in agreement.
Huge error on my part, this quote was what I was referring to in my post about ‘spitefulness’ and it should be attributed to John.
To Mr. Hubbard’s comments, they are absolutely spiteful. And bitter. But they are his opinions, his bitterness, and his problem to deal with. It isn’t, in my opinion, my job to use ugly words to paint him with any more than I should use ugly words to paint anyone.
As someone else said better, many of the commentators here have a hard time understanding all the brouhaha. We understand the insult factor, we don’t deny Muslims the right to be offended if they choose to be, but we simply cannot fathom silencing the book when so many offensive titles have hit the shelves before it, and probably will after it. After all, Mein Kampf is still available from bookstores here, and I personally cannot think of a more vile book. It’s filled with hate and propaganda and I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. But despite the controversy, in the late sixties it was rereleased - and not for the first time, either - by Houghton and Mifflin.
So you see, if a book of hate like Mein Kampf can be published and republished, which I would imagine might offend a Jew or ten million, why can’t this book about A’isha(paws) *showing due respect*?
Completely unrelated, but the code is ‘use69’. Is that a thoughtful suggestion? I just don’t think I can get into that position comfortably anymore, ROFL!
I should amend that. Mein Kampf offends way the hell more people than those of the Jewish faith. I hope it offends everyone, regardless of what faith they follow or where they are from. To classify human beings as having less worth simply because of the people they come from (a major theme in the book) is repugnant, or should be, to anyone. In my opinion, of course.
Wow. Just because i get a little worked up over an issue dosent mean im bitter, lol. make me sound like an old man. If i said hitler sucked, would that make me bitter.
If anyone can figure out anyplace i said something that was a direct insult to someone here (which you wont find any), then im sorry. Im not one of the people that used curse words (i dont count scr3w) either, so why dont you guys relax a little.
And I agree his initial comment could have been less spiteful
Fine; your right, a little over the top. and thanks for trying to see what i was saying. I just have 0, thats ZEROOOO, tolerance for thought police.
Its interesting that so many people have waxed poetic on how they hate censorship and would decry anyones attempt to control what books they read or have access to. Understand that loud and clear.
Like many commenters, I’m more outraged that a group of people whom I’ve never met, nor will I meet, would like to decide for me what I should be allowed to read.
Does this passion also carry over to other forms of media. Would you be upset if you couldn’t watch a television network because someone somewhere at the headquarters of a cable provider decided that the network was “anti American” or “propaganda” or a “weapon to incite terrorists”?
Would this http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91692466 or this
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/16/technology/jazeera19.php
bother people as much of this Jewel of Medina controversy?
Why or why not?
Silly trumystique. It’s perfectly okay to censor stuff that might offend Americans, didn’t you know that? Otherwise, it’s like walking up to them and kicking them in the face, or dropping a spaceship on their heads. I know every time someone says they believe in God, it’s like someone abducted me and impregnated me with alien sperm.
how can you be so damn confrontational and aggressive, hmmm?
It’s perfectly okay to censor stuff that might offend Americans, didn’t you know that?
You’ve really been on your “Americans suck” streak for a few days. Is it just our nasty foreign policy, or, to paraphrase Jenny Crusie, did an American recently run over your dog?
Also, last I checked, some of the people offended by JoM WERE American.
Redacted with apologies because I’m being a bitch for no good reason, and need to read for and appreciate sarcasm.
FWIW, Trumystique, I think al-Jazeera *should* be available in the US. It’s important to get different viewpoints. However, television is regulated in entirely different ways from print media. I have never managed to fully unpack how I feel about that, but I do know that I am much, much more passionate about print media, which encourages independent and critical thought—even in its most propagandistic forms—than television does. So while I think television should not be censored, I don’t get as up in arms about the gatekeeping of television content (except patently silly shit like the FCC’s panic over the ‘wardrobe malfunction’) as I do over any attempt to shut down alternate voices in print media.
Hm. I think I need to read more closely for sarcasm. Or just go to bed so that my reading comprehension skills are sharper.
Ann, I’m sorry. I think I’m being bitchy to you for no good reason, and I retract the first half of my comment. I’d edit it out, but that seems really dishonest.
The rest of my comment (re: al-Jazeera and tv) stands.
You’ve really been on your “Americans suck” streak for a few days.
I know it feels like forever, but I’ve only been in this conversation for two. Two points - (a) some Americans do suck, as witnessed by some of the outrageous crap posted here, and (b) boy, aren’t you touchy about insults to your national pride. Anyone would think you were Muslim or something.
The consistent refrain was that while they admired American democracy,freedom, and different aspects of our culture, they saw us as a nation as imposing in our perceived superiority to other countries and our aggressive insistence that we know what’s good for every other country.
Is pretty much my attitude.
I have dear and beloved American friends, there are many Americans I admire, and aspects of American culture and attitudes which I find quite attractive. But as a society, the inane mouthing of ‘I’m an Ameruhcan and y’all can go fuck yourselves’ type rhetoric, whether it’s from Dubya or Mr Illiterate above, makes well-meaning people want to punch you in the face. I honestly don’t think a lot of your countrymen and women have any idea just how fucking irritating you are when you do that.
ETA: Just saw your second post. Yes, I was being sarcastic. Jeez.
But as a society, the inane mouthing of ‘I’m an Ameruhcan and y’all can go fuck yourselves’ type rhetoric, whether it’s from Dubya or Mr Illiterate above, makes well-meaning people want to punch you in the face.
For what it’s worth, *I* want to punch people with that attitude in the face.
(a) some Americans do suck, as witnessed by some of the outrageous crap posted here, and (b) boy, aren’t you touchy about insults to your national pride
A) Yes. Yes, some of us do. Many of us do. Also true of the denizens of every other country out there. Except maybe Iceland. Iceland rocks. B) Sometimes. Especially when tired and frustrated and irritable and really not on my A-game.
I was going to get angry but then you excluded Iceland, so all is well :)
Interesting threads, if a little heated. Lots of information, surprisingly civil, given the subject matter.
Feeling a little tossed about. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to recognize the differences in cultures or ignore the differences in cultures and recognize that everyone is human. I have a feeling that either way, someone will be annoyed.
I’m aiming at the second. Forget the whole Muslim angle. Substitute “Group of people for whom the work in question, based on the strictures of a tenet they hold dear, has an extremely high probability of causing offence.” Let’s call this…group A.
I’d like to question the idea that Catholic uproar over Dan Brown’s work cannot be compared to the potential offence caused to group A, because while tolerance for fictional betrayal exists in THIS group (Group B.) some individuals might naturally take greater offence than others.
In fact, piss on Group A and Group B. (No, I don’t mean urinate on Muslims and Catholics. I mean, ignore the presumed and actual value systems of groups of people, and focus on the presumed/actual value systems of individuals.) Let’s get down to Person A and Person B. In a world with a spectrum of value systems, EVERYTHING offends someone, most likely MANY someones. Defining “needless” offence is subjective, and everyone will have a different measure. Many people may have the same measure, but you will likely come up with many groups of many with many different measures.
Politeness is good. Respecting the values of as many people you can in an area is good. The fact that we are global, kiddies, makes a whole lot more of the world accessible, and suddenly makes it impossible not to offend everyone who might access your material, be it art or literature, without ceasing production of all. Even fluffy bunnies in waistcoats might offend someone, and whether or not their offence is the result of long tradition, or their own personal “quirk” should make no difference in whether or not you try to offend that person. (For the record, you shouldn’t TRY to offend someone. See “politeness is good”)
And although I know it doesn’t make my opinion more valid, I would like to eliminate some “can’t possibly understand…” while naturally, confirming others.
I do not identify as religious. I do not identify as an atheist. I AM uncomfortable with aping the motions of worship of othe religions, such as bowing my head in prayer, because it feels like lying to god? so maybe there’s something there.
I AM an “ethnic minority”. I HAVE been insulted through the usage of racial epithets. I HAVE been asked where I’m from, responded with an accurate answer, and been asked…“No, where are you REALLY from…?” I HAVE had assumptions made about my race, culture, ability to speak proper english.
I personally think that neither of these things give more or less value to how I feel on this or any issue, but I think some people do.
Hm. Blah blah blah roundabout censorship is bad…where was I…..
Oh yeah. The original issue about this book wasn’t censorship. It was…
1) Spellberg- Not wrong to dislike/be offended/acknowledge potential offence/reprisals for the book. Could have handled it in a more professional fashion. If reprisals were her real concern, a quiet warning to the publisher would have been appropriate. If she wasn’t into suppressing the publishing of the book and just wanted to organize a protest against it, alerting parties she thought of as interested was appropriate. Both together are icky.
2) Random House- not wrong to cancel the contract, for whatever reason they damned well pleased, provided they did so using clauses existing in the contract. Admirable of them if the original contract allowed them to indefinitely delay publication, and they cut the author loose to look for another publisher anyway. I don’t know a damned thing about writing contracts…any contracts… so…eh. Folding not to threats, but to the suggestion that threats might someday be made, suggests a hair-trigger bladder. That’s cool, but I bet all of Random House’s buddies laugh at him when they hang out and have a couple of drinks together. Folding to the suggestion that the market might be more difficult than originally thought, or that their planned marketing strategy was a bust because it was concieved without knowledge of the culture in question (Did they intend to market TO Muslims?) -smart financial sense.
And..LOL. fiscal19.
Holy crap. That fills my quota for posting anywhere on anything for the next six months.
There is a difference between “I’m an ‘Merican and ya’ll can go fuck yourselves,” and “I’m an American and I don’t believe (myself) in censoring offensive materials.” (Notice I said “I” and “myself” because, as I said before, the actuality of freedom of speech is far from perfect.)
Can we all agree that these are two radically different ideas?
Can we all agree that these are two radically different ideas?
Apparently not everyone here can. And they can’t seem to understand that refusing to give one identifiable group special consideration over everyone else is not the same as being a hate-spewing bigot who makes a habit of purposely offending people.
Oh, and apparently harsh and accusatory language is cool, as long as you’re on the “right” side. If not, you’re a bitter, spiteful troll. Sigh.
I bet all of Random House’s buddies laugh at him when they hang out and have a couple of drinks together.
Best. Damn. Comment. Ever.
[spam word - ‘color37’ - where’s my bloody ‘u’, hmmm?]
Sorry, I’m coming late to the game, but I had to comment on one aspect of this: the story itself.
I know many readers here can’t see why this is offensive, or even if they can, don’t care. I understand that. If I weren’t Muslim, I’d probably feel the same way. I get it.
I’d ask that you consider some other context, though. In the last twenty years (well, really the last hundred, but I’m talking very modern history) Muslim feminists have made extraordinary strides in part by using the Qur’an and the hadith to answer back to misogynist cultural (i.e. not religious) trends in Muslim countries, particularly the Middle East and Central Asia. When, for example, men argue that women have no right to work or participate in public space, Muslim women have been able to point to the example of Khadija, Muhammad’s first wife, a successful businesswoman who employed him as her assistant. There are many examples of this.
This line of thought, or ‘tactic’ if you will, of using religion to make a *progressive* argument might seem counterintuitive to those raised in countries where religion (Christianity) is generally regarded as more conservative than (secular) culture, but in Middle Eastern countries it is culture, not Islam, that is more conservative and misogynist. Not all feminists who are Muslim would consider themselves “Muslim feminists” and there are certainly secular activists here, too, but really, the women who have been able to convince the clerics to re-read their own holy books have been the ones to make the most strides in fighting FGM and other institutional abuses of women that have no basis in Islam.
With that in mind…
The central point to the story of Aisha’s necklace is the ban on slander, and it’s often raised in context of the discussion around honor killings. No, Mr. Suspicious Husband/Father/Brother, you may not lash out at women based on gossip and hearsay. The Prophet himself, the best of men, was tested in this same manner, and look what choice he made: he defended Aisha against those who gossiped about her, even if it meant the risk of losing face among the powerful members of the community. This is a very important story to those of us committed to fighting abuses of women emanating from suspicion and slander and then ignorantly and retroactively justified as “Islamic.” All you have to do is say “Aisha’s necklace…” and people will know right where you’re going with this.
Yes, Ms. Jones portrays Muhammad as defending his wife (at least from what I’ve read in the prologue), but to cast doubt on Aisha’s actions and/or intentions—and this seems to be central to the plot of her entire book—essentially ruins the story. The point here is that it was Aisha’s (truthful) story against those of men who weren’t there. Not knowing who to believe, Muhammad went to God, and God told him to believe Aisha. The deciding factor was not, as Ms. Jones seems to be saying, his romantic love for Aisha, but rather her right, even as a young girl, to be believed. This wasn’t something she had to earn; it was inherent, literally God-given. Her word trumped their suspicions, even though she had less power than they did. From my own feminist perspective, this is an important distinction.
Do I think Muslim clerics are going to pick up this English romance novel and completely change their minds about Aisha? Obviously, no.
Do I think the book should be banned? No, of course not, and I have a whole separate rant about how Muslims, who were barely even aware of this book’s existence, are being blamed for that. :)
But I bring this up because I keep reading versions of “don’t like it? don’t read it!” and I want to say that this isn’t just a matter of being _personally_ offended, a la The DaVinci Code or Temptation. This story isn’t just some random tale out of the Qur’an, on par with something out of 1,001 Nights. Its interpretation has had real world consequences for women.
I would also, for reasons I hope should be obvious if you’ve read this far, take issue with the idea that this author’s interpretation is more feminist than the original. And that’s fine, I defend people’s right to write whatever regardless of where it lands on my feminist meter. But I also feel like there’s a lot of you-go-grrrl, publish away, screw the fundies! in this discussion, positing sex against religion as if that’s the issue, that’s based on an inaccurate understanding of the original story and its place in Islamic tradition. Aisha is not a “forgotten” woman of Islam; she is tremendously important. Every Muslim knows who she is, and knows that she was a strong female. Muhammad joked with his followers that they “should get half of their religion” from her. Jone’s book doesn’t increase Aisha’s feminist appeal—that needs no assistance—and she most certainly didn’t _discover_ it. If anything, she undermines it.
Again, not a reason for censoring the book. But not really a reason for celebrating it, either.
Jone’s book doesn’t increase Aisha’s feminist appeal—that needs no assistance—and she most certainly didn’t _discover_ it. If anything, she undermines it.
Awesome.
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to recognize the differences in cultures or ignore the differences in cultures and recognize that everyone is human. I have a feeling that either way, someone will be annoyed.
False dichotomy.
It is possible to be respectful of cultural differences/differences in circumstance and not go down the path of thinking of these things making people impossible to understand.
[I’m backing out now. Really.]
Do I think the book should be banned? No, of course not, and I have a whole separate rant about how Muslims, who were barely even aware of this book’s existence, are being blamed for that. :)
But I bring this up because I keep reading versions of “don’t like it? don’t read it!” and I want to say that this isn’t just a matter of being _personally_ offended, a la The DaVinci Code or Temptation. This story isn’t just some random tale out of the Qur’an, on par with something out of 1,001 Nights. Its interpretation has had real world consequences for women.
THANK YOU. :)
Poppin - WAKE-UP - Mohammed was a pedofile who MUST have raped Aisha who COULD NOT consent to that so-called ‘marriage’ - as she was only NINE YEARS OLD!
I get so furious with you lot ‘muslims’ wanting to hide the TRUTH my dear ‘Poppin! WAKE-UP - and stop wrapping-up in ‘Holy and Saw’- which cannot - by decent standards - be called holy - AT ALL!
CHILD-MARRIAGES STILL TAKE PLACE - BECAUSE OF THAT MOHAMMED!
MOHAMMED HAD PEOPLE STONED TO DEATH!
These child-marriages STINK with children being raped also by old men - as old as Mohammed at the time - and it was MOHAMMED ‘who set that good example’.
“It make me shake my head, because in the hadith Aisha mentioned this never happened”
You are naief - as FOR SURE - Aisha wouldn’t DARE to acknowledge her love-affair as she would have been STONED TO DEATH.
It is also written that Aisha had her GOAT (!) eat the - STONING-sura - as she was afraid of Ali who also wanted to be the heir to that so-called ‘holy caliphate’ - and who would gladly have seen Aisha stoned to death.
“In our religion, to even say that is a huge sin, to the point that if you even say they had relations and that Aisha was unfaithful takes you out of the folds of Islam.”
You better get OUT of thos ‘folds’ wherein a ‘prophet’ rapes a child, has too many women in his bed - amongst whom many slaves - and goes on the rampage murdering people!
YOU - ‘doomed to silence’ sure you are but you should know better than to condone Mohammed’s behaviour! OF COURSE - Islam wants to shut you up - it has done so since the beginning of Islam - and still does - massively!
Why do you think EX-MUSLIMS exist - more and more - running screaming away from that ‘Book’ and ‘holy leader’ of yours?
Ex-muslims opened their eyes to the TRUTH - and nothing but the TRUTH!
Sorry - but I have no time - at all - for hypocrisy - nor for naivity in adults.
I see the anti-Muslim Troll Legion has arrived. Lovely. And things were, generally speaking, so civilized up till now.
@ Kufigirl
1) Khadija - was not a muslim = when she had her own business as that was BEFORE Islam - and before she married Mohammed.
= Muslim women cannot claim Khadija as ‘an example of feminisme/independant women in Islam’.
2) ALL of the Qur’an is mysogenist = male-centric Qurán = muslim women hardly count and are - always - SUBORDINATE TO MUSLIM MEN in the Qurán/haditiths/sunna of ‘the prophet’ - and also in the discriminated against in the SHARIA
3) “FGM and other institutional abuses of women that have no basis in Islam.”
There is one hadiths in which ‘the prophet meets a woman on her way to FEMALE CIRCUMCISION and he says to her ‘don’t cut to deep’
why muslims who ‘go back to the fundamentals of Islam ’ do believe in female circumcision to be ‘clean’ for a muslim woman.
4) “The Prophet himself, the best of men”
Oh yeah? Why? Because he raped Aisha, had too many women in his bed - amongst whom slaves - had people stoned to death according to Bukhari, instituted (!) child-marriages?
= please explain to me - thank you.
Aisha was no sweety at all as she tried - to murder-Ali in ‘The Battle of the Camel’ - but she lost.
And why should Aisha not have a love-affair - as after all Mohammed himself had plenty!
Let’s calm down. We have to remember that all religions have at some point been cruel toward women. The Islamic faith is one of the biggest offenders because of the cultures that practice the faith. Every Holy book is open to interpretation.
It is true that by our standards The Prophet looks like a pedophile. It is true that he loved “sporting with virgins” and he married a 6 year old and had sex with her at 9. I could never like the Islamic faith because of that one fact. Still those were different times. I cannot judge it. I also think he had a weird hang up about covering women. Again, those were different times. I see a nijab or whatever they are and I think oppression. That’s not something I can look down at another about. I don’t like teenagers wearing all black either. I don’t fuss at them.
I am a Christian but I am aware of the Salem Witch trials. Let’s not forget in Hebrews where a man was stoned to death for picking up wood on the Sabath. Jesus saved a woman from being stoned to death for fornication.
Religion is too personal. I think this should get back to a topic closer to everyone trying to be PC (politically correct) that nothing gets accomplished. Everyone hates someone for something. We shouldn’t be so PC that things aren’t printed. JMHO.
KufiGirl: Thank you for an extremely thought provoking and IMO important comment. I actually wish that Jones would answer some of these comments beyond simply re-asserting that “it’s fiction”—because, as we all know, fiction has power, too, or NONE of us would be arguing about all of this. I share the questions that some have asked about why certain narrative decisions were made and why certain historical connections changed. I also wish that we could all actually read the book and then have this discussion, because I think it’s a discussion that could actually bring women of all faiths and cultures together around questions of representation, beliefs, values, and sexual politics (within and outside a religious context).
refusing to give one identifiable group special consideration over everyone else is not the same as being a hate-spewing bigot who makes a habit of purposely offending people.
Although we’re discussing informal speech rights in regard to the publication of this book, I just want to point out that if this were a legal analysis of a First Amendment question, one of the most important elements would be that the analysis be *content neutral*—that is, you cannot decide if material is outside or inside the boundaries of legal protection on the basis of content alone. This provision exists, obviously, because we would otherwise get into precisely these kinds of battles, with legitimate accusations that government was legislating ideas via speech protections.
And in this discussion (and I’m not directing my comments at you, Kirsten, just in response to the conversation generally) there is a catch in precisely that place—what kind of consideration do we give to the specific cultural and religious context. Is it worse for Islamic values to be insulted than for Catholic or Jewish values, etc. Within a formal “censorship” analysis, the *content* of the book could not provide the basis for its suppression or publication.
But in these informal discussions we aren’t bound by that stricture. At the same time, though, we’re not going to get anywhere if the discussion degrades to the point of mutual assertions that one ideology is superior to another or more deserving of formal deference.
Ultimately I think it comes down to being cognizant of these different cultural and religious contexts, perhaps even taking special pains to see things from another vantage point, *in order to move beyond them* to that place beyond judgment. What I think sometimes happens in these discussions is that certain folks or certain perspectives feel inherently disrespected or ignored, and any hint of dismissal, even if it’s not intended that way, can generate more anger and opposition where none might otherwise exist. So for me it’s possible that we can all say, yes, I understand where you’re coming from but this is my belief, that we can all acknowledge those points in opposition to our own without ceding our own position, keeping both mutual respect and personal integrity intact.
@ Stephi
You are pointing out some important things - but the - only - way is to keep protesting against the Quran/Muhammed/sharia - because - WE in the West - are the only people who can - not EX-muslims in Islamic countries who are perpetually shut-up in silence - ‘or else….’.
I get so furious as MILLIONS AND MILLIONS ++++ of muslim women - have no rights at all because of that Koran/Muhammed/sharia ....
The problem is exactly that Muhammed (probably not he himself) but Islam Arabs - took it upon themselves to plagiarise = steal - the Holy Books of Christianity and Judaisme - gave these a twist to suit Islam - and then presented the Koran as ‘the only allowed religion’.
For Christians and Jews the Koran = Mein Kampf - and enormously insulting.
That ‘Allah’ and his hatred against Christians and Jews = a jealous power-mongering - out to kill! And the reason why muslims still murder christians and hate Jews.
‘De Koran/Islam is in fact a HERESY of Christendom and Judaisme. ‘Jesus’ in the Koran is the insulted, degraded, made ridiculous Jesus-CHRISTGOD/MESSIAS of Christendom.
(and Mohammed apes a lot of what Jesus-Christ did e.g. ‘entering Jerusalem, being tempted by the devil in the dessert (except that Mohammed gave-in to Satan) ‘Mohammed ascends to heaven on a HORSE’ - but quickly (hah!) came back’ - and this fable one reason why muslims incorporated Jerusalem - by force - for Islam.
The Koran is the GREATEST INSULT possible for Christians.
Not only is the Koran (except from those sura’s) plagerised from the Holy Books from two - existing (!) religions - but guilty of BLASPHEMY of Jesus-Christ.
‘Muslims’who can’t restraint their violence ‘because Mohammed is insulted’- have no problem at all with BLASPHEMY against Jesus-CHRIST - and appear to find it quite normal that ‘Christians and Jews must BURN IN MY OVENS’
Oh dear - I know I LOATH ‘Islam’! - and that not only for personal reasons.
Not only is the Koran a deliberate attempt to do away with Christianity and Judaisme - but despicably - uses ‘Jesus’ (and the Holy Mary) - to convert christians to Islam - that still happens ‘your ‘JESUS’ is also in the Koran - but that is not Jesus-CHRIST of christians.
Compare the Love and Peace of Jesus-Christ - to Muhammed the pedophile, a mass-murderer, and with his ‘sharia’ and then you will understand that ‘Jesus’ CANNOT be ‘part of the Koran’.
‘Jesus’ in the Koran is a grotesque joke FOR Islam:
‘Jesus’ drank wine = ‘haram in Islam’
‘Jesus’ abhorred stoning, violence, war - Mohammed did all three.
‘Jesus said ‘my kingdom is not of this world’- Mohammed LOVED wordly power in his Caliphate - and had too many women in his bed - amongst whom women-slaves - and was a pedofile.
‘The witsches of Salem’- and all the other terrible things done by ‘christians’ is because ‘they don’t know what they do ‘- the famous words by Jesus-Christ for his torturers and executioners.
Bible-bashers make the big mistake as it is not the Old Testament but exactly the New Testament = Christ’ianity.
Unfortunately the Koran is a huge step-backs for mankind to the cruel times of the Old Testament (and not at all ‘an improvement’as muslims claim) wherein stoning also is allowed -but NOT by Jesus-Christ saying: ‘he who is without sin may throw the first stone’ and to the woman ‘go home and sin no more’
Mohammed would have had that same woman stoned to death - and why it still happens.
as said I LOATHE Koran/Muhammed/sharia ...
and if ‘muslims’want to stand behind that what cannot be ‘holy’ - they either have been indoctrinated by Islam - or they are bad people believing in Satan - like the Talibans and Islamists, Jihadi’s poisoned by hatred and violence taught in the Koran.
Not true! Prove it to me.
Anne-
I’m not arguing any benefits to Islam. I am very happy to be living in the US and I chose to be a Christian. It wasn’t forced on me by family or country as certain religions are in certain places. I do think it’s hard for people to turn away from something they were taught since they were babies. JMHO.
I just thought the debate should be more about the book in question. No offense intended.
“The Prologue” shows that the author has perfectly done her homework - that is reading all the Islamic sources on this subject available to her- before writing this novel.
Those who think that the author has slandered the Prophet or Aisha, should read “Sura” (chapter) 24 of the Koran to see Allah’s point of view on the conflict.
The Prologue gave me the impression that the book treats the subject matter much better than Salman Rushdie did in his “Satanic Verses” and it will be a pity if it’s never published.
But then, what is religion for?
No offense intended.
You shouldn’t be apologizing. Anne comes on here spewing poorly-written, hate-mongering bile, and *you* apologize?
What is tragic is not the publishers refusal to produce the book, but Mrs. Jones lack of awareness, understanding, and sensitivity to the issues and historical figures which she claims to have studied. Apparently “studying” Arabic for some short period of time has now become equivalent to raising Mrs. Jones to an expert in her field. Her scholarship is minimal to none, and frankly and embarrassment. It seems now a days anyone who has read large volumes of books is entitled to produce a “professional work”. If you read the bibliography the cited sources would be comparable to attempting to write a biology textbook with references such as sesame street, and wikipedia (apart from Ibn Kathir, a poor translation in English, there isnt a single text from traditional of Islam, furthermore this is not surprising given the content and pursuit of this book). Whats even more upsetting, is that the general public, even more unaware and less educated on these topics than she is, will actually listen and be convinced they have read something credible or legitimate. The problem today of differences among Muslims and the West, is not tackling “taboo” issues, but number 1, the lack of understanding on the side of the west, which is normally attributed to number 2 the lack of reliable and trustworthy sources which they are exposed to.
Unfortunately, the public will misunderstand this controversy to be an issue of freedom of speech when in reality, it is an issue of credibility and sensitivity, of which the author apparently has none.
Poppin - WAKE-UP - Mohammed was a pedofile who MUST have raped Aisha who COULD NOT consent to that so-called ‘marriage’ - as she was only NINE YEARS OLD!
First. It’s Popin. One p. Also, Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) wasn’t a pedophile. I understand that it may be hard to understand, but as a Muslim we believe the Prophet (SAW) was chosen by God and if God commands something therefore it must be done. The Prophet (SAW) didn’t have a choice in the matter when it came to the marriage of Aisha (and Zeinab bint Jahsh) it was a command from Allah. And because of this, she taught us so much of the deen (religion). If you don’t believe in Allah, you wouldn’t believe this, but at least have the common courtesy to not slander my Prophet. It only makes you look bad when you do that.
MOHAMMED HAD PEOPLE STONED TO DEATH!
Can you name me the number of times this happened? Do you know why there is the punishment of stoning to death? Do you know how he would turn away from people who asked for the punishment because he didn’t want to deal with them. No, so please don’t come here with this kind of nonsense acting like you know the religion and how Muslims are all stupid since they believe in it, when from your commends you do not.
You are naief - as FOR SURE - Aisha wouldn’t DARE to acknowledge her love-affair as she would have been STONED TO DEATH. It is also written that Aisha had her GOAT (!) eat the - STONING-sura - as she was afraid of Ali who also wanted to be the heir to that so-called ‘holy caliphate’ - and who would gladly have seen Aisha stoned to death.
Lack of knowledge once again again. Stoning happens when the person admits to their crime and wants punishment. Or when 4 righteous people, who don’t lie and have good reps, watch the two people have sex from start to finish with no covers. Unless you are an exhibitionist, it’s very hard to condemn someone to adultery.
Also, like I mentioned before. Aisha was cleared by Allah. Aisha, didn’t even know this was happening for a month. She was sick and at home. When she found out she stayed with her parents and made du’a (prayer/supplication) to Allah to help her.
And this nonsense with Ali is wrong. Ali is her son in law and they loved each other. If you knew their history, you wouldn’t be saying this.
Sorry - but I have no time - at all - for hypocrisy - nor for naivity in adults.
Thank you for showing me the truth. You’re so wise with your lack of knowledge of Islam.
Sorry to the Smart Bitches for this.
@ tenzing
Please stop your accusations - and give PROOF that I am wrong.
It is ‘muslims’who refuse to use their Islam-indoctrinated brains - not me!
@ Danny
What nonsense to say ‘the West is ill informed as is Mrs Jones’- sure that is what muslim like to think - to keep their backs and that of Mohammed covered.
It is BUKHARI ‘generally expected in Islam” who reports elaborately (!) on Aisha’ engagement to ‘the prophet’ and their subsequent ‘marriage’.
and this makes me wonder why muslims think they CAN keep being hypocrites who do not want to face TRUTH - at any time at all concerning their ‘beautiful Koran/prophet/Aisha .....
11:- Ibn-e-Maja Translation Waheedi Pt-2 Page-57, Haya-tul-Haywan Pt-1 Page-272. Narrated by Hazrat Ayesha that ayat-e-Rjam and ayat Raza’at were revealed , they were written on some thing I kept them under cart meanwhile the Holy Prophet died and we became busy and one goat came ate those ayyat.
Originally, the surah in question above is said to had 200 verses(Ayesha reported it). Now, in the present Quran it has only 37.
Considering the fact that Aisha committed adultery with a young man by the name Safwan when Muhammad was alive, and Ali and other wives of Muhammad especially Zainab wanted her to be punished according to Quranic law, it is highly probable that Aisha was the one responsible for this missing ayyat in the Quran by feeding it to the goat. In fact, by her own admission, Aisha was responsible for this missing ayyat as it was under her care. There is a motive behind it. Do you know what was her motive?
When Muhammad was alive, some Muslims (including son-in-law Ali) wanted her to be punished for adultery. Then, Muhammad died. Aisha panicked as she was afraid Muslims would use the Sura to stone her. While others were busy quarreling on who would be successor of Muhammad, she must have taken the opportunity to get rid of that ayyat by feeding it to the holy goat.
Because of that incident, Aisha hated Ali deeply and that was one of the main reasons she waged war against Ali in Battle of Camel. When Aisha lost, she was locked in a room. Muhammad also did not allow his wives to remarry after his death because he was so afraid that his beloved Aisha would be fcuked by Safwan after his death.
Did you ever wonder why four witnesses were required to punish Aisha?
Who were punished for spreading “rumours” about Aisha and Safwan?
What is their relation to Zainab?
muhammad’s poet was punished for it.. cos muhammad received revelations aisha is pure.. lol
To save his beloved little girl wife Aisha, Muhammad had to claim that he had received a revelation from “allah” confirming Aisha’s innocence and directing that charges of adultery be supported by four eyewitnesses.
Quote: Quran Al Nur 24:4 :
“And those who launch a charge against chaste women, and produce not FOUR WITNESSES (to support their allegations),- flog them with eighty stripes; and reject their evidence ever after: for such men are wicked transgressors
Why four witnesses? HAHAHAHAHA - to save little Aisha (not so little then anuy more)! Three witnesses are not enough. In the end:
(1) Hassan bin Thabit - the poet,
(2) Mistah bin Uthatha and
(3) Hammanah bint Jahsh
were punished instead of adulteress Aisha.
According to one Hadith, the stoning verse was originally recorded in the Quran during the time of Muhammad; but just after his death, a goat entered Aisha’s house and ate the page on which that verse was inscribed. Thus, the stoning verse has been abrogated physically. This story can be found in Ibn Magah, Nikah, 36/1944 and Ibn Hanbal, 5/131,132,183; 6/269.
a verse of a “perfect” Quran, which was completed during Muhammad’s lifetime, was abrogated - by a goat.
What now “the public doesn’t understand”?
Your lack of knowledge is incredibly surprising. If the missing ayahs were eaten, it wouldn’t matter because everyone memorized the Quran. If they weren’t written, someone would have noticed. I understand you don’t like Islam, but please for the sake of whatever you are trying to do learn more about it before you start typing false things.
I’m going to stop now, because everything you are saying is wrong, wrong, wrong. Nice job spewing hate, you are doing a lovely job.
Note: This thread will be closed soon. The discussion is so long that it’s difficult to read the whole thing and contribute anew, and it’s attracting comments of the caliber which I prefer not to have to monitor. Moreover, this isn’t a discussion about the value or moral worth of Islam. It’s a discussion of what offends and why.
I have been humbly and deeply impressed with the manner in which most of y’all participated in this discussion, and I’ve personally come away with an appreciation for what is offensive on a truly intrinsic level for some, and an understanding of why some content promotes a very emotional response. “It’s just fiction” is not an adequate reason to squelch the opinions of those who have come here to explain why this book is bothersome to them, but neither is Random House’s “OMG Teh Terrorists are Coming!” adequate reasoning for squelching this book.
Thank you very, very much to the people who have come here for the first time to explain your positions.
Three points:
1) In a historical novel, one should accurately convey the most significant elements the history—Aisha arrived back to Madinah riding the camel alone. Check the historical accounts—all of them in English and Arabic. She was left behind in the desert, because after tending to the call of nature, she realized that a borrowed necklace had fallen. She rode the camel, and the tether was held by Sawfan.
2) RE: Koran/Islam/Sharia oppressing women—Remember that Islam was the first religion to (a) give rights of ownership; (b) demand by law that women keep their own names after marriage; (c) right to vote (of sorts) in being recognized as part fo the community and having a voice in questioning the leadership.
3) I’ve been in publicity and PR for 26 years—in Hollywood, Las Vegas, & NYC, so I know a promo campaign when I see it. Good job on creating a stir/ink before distribution. You’ve sold tens of thousands of copies already in the minds of people, even before the books are available. Was the campaign developed in-house or did the agency come up with the idea?
What is tragic is not the publishers refusal to produce the book, but Mrs. Jones lack of awareness, understanding, and sensitivity to the issues and historical figures which she claims to have studied. Apparently “studying” Arabic for some short period of time has now become equivalent to raising Mrs. Jones to an expert in her field. Her scholarship is minimal to none, and frankly and embarrassment.
Danny,
What you say is untrue.
Ms. Jones has awareness, understanding and sensitivity.
You don’t have to study Arabic at all to reach the sources Ms. Jones used.
This story about Aisha and the Prophet has been known and written down in histories and even interpretations of Koran since ages.
The orthodox Muslim “scholars” regard is as heresy.
But in all Muslim countries, everybody at some time has heard some versiona of the story concerning Aisha, the lost necklace and the knight called Safwan.
All three monotheistic religions which have emanated from the Middle East have some common characteristics, like hypocrisy and
deceiving the common, uneducated people.
This is a case of “freedom of speech” and the author has both credibility and sensitivity.
I would not have been as tolerant to the Prophet as she has been had I written such a novel.
“Belief” is the mother of all evil.
And people like you spread this evil.
A website that reviews romance novels from a couple of smart bitches who will always give it to you straight.
We'll text you when we have the location info, along with the password to enter The Digital Speakeasy.
I have to weigh in and vote with the “liked it even more than Talk Me Down” group. And I liked Talk Me Down a lot! I see the points Sarah made, but I guess they just didn’t bother me. …
What Andieg said. Only switch “grinning” for “giggling”—I am at work, so giggling is definitely out :)
Ooh la la! Probably just because I go to a women’s college, but that was WAY too much fun towatch…
A coworker sent me that video last week. I love it, and will adore Buffy and the whole Joss Whedon oeuvre until the end of time…
but especially Buffy.
And Angel is SO much better
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08.07.08 at 11:25 AM