Our Danish correspondent TB sent us a translation of a Danish newspaper editorial this morning . Here’s what he had to say about it:
When one of the biggest publishers in the world retreats out of fear of threats that have not even been made yet, one has to say that the forces of darkness have won a great victory.
It is embarrassing beyond imagination, but it is a fact..
The publisher Random House had made a contract with Sherry Jones, a first-time novelist. She was set to publish a novel in two separate parts with the title The Jewel of Medina. The novel has already been written. It is about the wife of the prophet Mohammed, Aisha, who was betrothed to the warlord and prophet as a six-year-old.
When the girl was nine, the marriage was consummated — as is described with a ferocious euphemism. It is the kind of thing that we today — at least in our civilized societies — call paedophilia, molestation, rape, abuse or whatever else comes to mind. In any circumstances it is despicable, and it is punished with long-term prison sentences.
Since all Muslims, relying on revelation, consider the prophet as their ideal role model and strive to do as he did, it is clear that they become somewhat annoyed with overly-detailed descriptions of this grown man’s relationship with a nine-year-old girl.
The British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie has experienced the personal costs which may result when one writes a satirical book about some problematic verses in the Koran, the Muslims’ holy book.
A novel and some drawings in a Danish newspaper have caused such a stir in the Muslim world that one of the biggest publishers in the world has pathetically chosen to cancel a contract solely because of anticipated new Muslim ‘offendedness’ and violent reactions.
“The writer has been released from her contract,” it is said in a mendacious rewriting of the fact that it is the publisher who has failed to fulfill its obligations by refusing to publish the book.
It is not imams who have threatened the publisher and caused the breach of contract. It is a group of American academics with Islam as their specialty who have read an advance copy of the novel and subsequently warned against its publication.
One of these academics, Professor Denise Spellberg, supposedly said after having read the novel that it is “hideous, stupid, and pornographic”.
Well, it is quite possible that she is right in that description, but that can hardly be the reason why the publisher has had second thoughts. As we all know, thousands of hideous, stupid, and pornographic books are published every year.
Professor Spellberg has underlined her dissociation from the novel by threatening the publisher with legal proceedings if her name is subsequently connected with “The Jewel of Medina”.
The first part of the novel would have seen the light on August 12, but the publisher chose to postpone the publication “indefinitely”.
Representatives of the publisher are wringing their hands, regretting, and describing the situation as worrisome but necessary.
So far extreme Islamism has prevailed, in that it does not even require sending a bunch of lying imams to the Middle East to incite the minds of the mob with lies and slander. Pathetic, scared American academics first try to compromise a novel that has gained an up-front fee of $100,000, and then subsequently warn against Muslim resentment.
So much for freedom of speech. So much for the free and healthy debate at one of the worlds biggest publishers, who were supposed to live for and by the diffusion of the free word.
