Cue Radical Backlash to Religious-Themed Fiction in 5, 4, 3, 2...
Mike Riggs | September 28, 2008, 7:04pm
One:
Late Friday night, the north London home/office of Martin Rynja, publisher of the independent UK press Gibson Square, was firebombed in what is being treated as a terrorist attack, of which police had advance warning, which is how they were able to warn Rynja to leave the premises for his own safety, stake out the building, and arrest three men shortly after the house was bombed; the small fire it created was quickly put out. (A fourth arrest was made later in the day.) Gibson Square is the UK publisher of The Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones's controversial novel about A'isha, one of the wives of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, which was dropped by Random House after Islamic studies professor Denise Spellberg warned the publisher the book would incite violence by Muslim extremists (after which she did everything she could to make sure those potential terrorists knew the book was coming).
Read the whole thing at GalleyCat, which has done a phenomenal job tracking the myriad trials and tribulations of historical pop lit. author Sherry Jones. Since losing her contract with Random House, Jones has pinned much of the blame for her book's ups and downs on Denise Spellberg, a professor at UT-Austin. In her efforts to dissuade anyone from publising Jewel, Spellberg has argued that it "use[s] sex and violence to attack the Prophet and his faith," and called it "soft core pornography." But Jones is either naive or scrambling to deflect attention by arguing that pejorative labels are the culprit here, or that all would be well if only radicals could read her book:
"The planting of that bomb is Martin Rynja's letterbox was not about my book," Jones said, noting that the novel was not yet available in Britain. "It's not about the content of my book. It's not about the ideas in my book. It must be about the rumors and innuendos....I feel that the people who resorted to violence are responsible," Jones emphasized. "But her use of the word 'pornography' has done nothing to help the situation."
Despite her incendiary criticisms, Spellberg is a periphery figure in this case. Neither she, nor any other prominent pro-Islam critic of The Jewel of Medina (or any similar media), is responsible (or ethically liable) for an act of terrorism simply for having predicted it. And as disheartening as it may be to hear a Western academic rationalize—or even defend—terrorism in response to art, especially when radical leaders are responding with an "I-told-you-so" smugness, we shouldn't be surprised. The reactions that followed the Jyllands-Posten cartoons established that violence, not intellectual outrage or artistic rebuttals, is the means with which extremists are most likely to react to objectionable representations of Mohammed. And we've known for a while, at least since 9/11, that it's only a matter of time before some finger-wagging academic announces that the only way to deal with said extremists is to appease them.
While Random House may have acted differently if Spellberg had supported the book's publication, it's unlikely that Islamic radicals would have looked the other way simply because an American female academic gave Jewel two historically-correct thumbs up. Not that Spellberg's retraction matters. The Telegraph reports that clerics in London predict more attacks:
But the radical cleric Anjem Choudhary, who lives in Ilford, east London, said he was "not surprised at all" by the attack and warned of possible further reprisals over the book
"It is clearly stipulated in Muslim law that any kind of attack on his honour carries the death penalty," he said.
"People should be aware of the consequences they might face when producing material like this. They should know the depth of feeling it might provoke."
I'm interested to see how England's moderate Muslims will react to this news, and whether or not this will spark a more comprehensive (and hopefully, intelligent) conversation about cultural assimilation in Western Europe. And while I'm still opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems about time to abandon the assertion that withdrawing American troops from the Middle East is a long-term solution to Islamic extremism.
Lastly, I bet someone at Random House breathed a great big sigh of relief after hearing this news.
BG | September 29, 2008, 4:55am | #
We are all British Publishers now......or something.
Fuck the barbarians who think they have a right to murder someone because of the way that person exercised his or her freedom of speech or artistic freedom. And props to Scotland Yard on preventing the murder and arresting the (apparent) perpetrators.
SO if the offer is money, it's first degree murder, but if the offer is eternal salvation to somebody who believes it, it's first amendment protected?
As much as I loathe religious extremism, I have to say yes. The distinction is:
If I say "I'll give you $10,000 to murder ______",
I'm instructing you to commit that crime. I really exist, and in such a relation to you as to be able to induce you to do something I want (I'm paying you to do it). The same goes for a higher-ranking member of an organization ordering a lower ranking member to murder someone.
If I say "There is an invisible Deity who will reward you for all eternity for murdering someone under the following circumstances.....", I'm making a (preposterous) metaphysical claim about what
some other entity will do. I'm not the originator of the instruction, nor am I passing along an instruction from a known-to-exist originator.
Also the "arguments" for such metaphysical claims (certain passages of religious books) are already "out there" and known to the public. This is in contrast to, for example, a mafia middleman passing along a kill order from a boss to a hitman, where such conveyance is necessary for the hitman to have the information on which he acts in committing his crime.
However, I do think that society should try to counter the types of indoctrinations that make such absurd claims convincing to people who would otherwise be psychologically normal. This would have to take the form of education and reasoned argument – especially directed at young people who are not yet indoctrinated into a narrow theological worldview.
I’m not sure whether this should be done solely by public intellectuals, or whether the government has a role to play here. For example, I’ve heard some propose mandating that all children be taught about the history, beliefs, and practices of world religions. Also, the teaching of science could include details on how science has come to explain away past superstitions. With such information, people would have an easier time viewing their religious upbringings in their real context.
Famous Mortimer | September 29, 2008, 8:34pm | #
"The measure of salvation is based on who keeps the commandments of God. The Islamic understanding of this jives perfectly with the Golden Rule. Sorry to upset your apple cart of ignorance, but that's the teaching."
First off, there is no such thing as an entirely peaceful Islamic religion, or an entirely violent Islamic religion. It's a philosophy based on a loosely interpreted text that has undergone various interpretations throughout its history. This is evident by the number of different tribes that have sought to assert their own version of Islam.
There isn't a definitive understanding of the Quran, just like there isn't a definitive understanding of the Bible, and its books. No one can claim absolute authority.
One could read the Quran and come away being able to justify violence, and peace. They're merely ideas that human beings put into action. When it comes to the Quran, the violent nature of Islam is just as easily justifiable as the peaceful version.
Only the society surrounding those interpretations can place a meaningful restriction on how human beings act on those ideas, through laws, and other means of marginalizing acts of religious violence.
The problem is, many of the moderates are still extreme by democratic/secular standards, which poses a huge problem when it comes to suppressing violence.
You bring up Saddam's regime, which is hardly an example of how most governments in the M.E. covet their religion, and the strict adherence that they profess to their version of its philosophy.
Saddam, for the most part, was a secular despot, unique to the region, and he wasn't even providing aid to Al Qaeda, or Bin Laden.
Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, all have funneled aid to Al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia even tried to liberalize its country a bit more, and it was met with sweeping public condemnation.
The Islamic world has an atrocious public image problem that they have allowed to cement under their nose, with no real effort to combat it.
If it's merely a problem of minor wacko religious militias that bring just as much, if not more suffering to their own people, as they do to their avowed enemies, then it would stand to reason that there would be a much greater effort to stamp them out.
The idea that the "peaceful" Muslim world has no way of doing so, means that they have lost control of their religion to a different interpretation, or that they can't be bothered with the cultural shift that might occur through combating it.
They could have a million examples of God forsaking them, but it only takes one concession to convince them that he was watching over them all along.
In other words, nothing will stop them from believing that what they are doing is meaningful, and just. They don't play by the rules that most other people play by.
Rules are only meaningful if there's an agreement to adhere to them.
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