Forskjell på folk

Det er vel ikke mange av oss som er helt fri fra god gammeldags dobbeltmoral, men den blir ekstra synlig når vi snakker om forlag.

Det er vel ikke helt uventet, men dessto mer skuffende at Random House, altså samme forlag som ga ut Da Vinci koden i USA (for ikke å si Hellig Blod, Hellig Gral og Philip Pullman), nå nekter å gi ut en bok som berører Islams tidlige historie.

Guardian har mer om saken:

A romantic novel about Aisha, the child bride of the prophet Muhammad, has been withdrawn because its publisher feared possible terrorist acts by Muslim extremists.

The Jewel of the Medina, a first book by Sherry Jones, 46, was to have been released on August 12 by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House. But the publishers apparently panicked after Islamic scholars objected to the work.

One of them, Denise Spellberg, who teaches Islamic history at the University of Texas at Austin, describes the novel as "soft core pornography".

Jones told the Guardian: "It's ridiculous. I must be a heck of a writer to produce a pornographic book without sex scenes. My book is as realistic a portrayal as I could muster of the prophet Muhammad's harem and his domestic life. Of course it has sexuality, but there is no sex."

Denne type utpressingstaktikk blir stadig mer vanlig. Metoden er enkel. Det er bare å skylde på ekstremistene, så er man sikre på at slike bøker ikke gis ut.

The novel became a topic of discussion on a number of Muslim websites.

Spellberg also aired her concerns with Random House. "Denise says it is 'a declaration of war ... a national security issue'," said an email from Jane Garrett, an editor at another Random House imprint that was quoted in the journal. "Think it will be far more controversial than the satanic verses [sic] and the Danish cartoons."

Random House would not comment on how the email came to be leaked.

On May 2, the publishers told Jones's agent they were considering postponing publication. Three weeks later, Jones was told that publication was indefinitely postponed.

Random House said yesterday that it had been advised by a number of Islamic scholars and security experts that the novel was offensive to Muslims and that "it could incide acts of violence by a small radical segment".

Og dermed er dette radikale segmentet sikret nok en seier. Gratulerer.