Saturday, August 09, 2008

Random House commits an "Honor Killing"

In a world where all to often people love to establish moral equivalence between western and third-world cultures, permit me to add one.

Random House's decision to kill Sherry Jones' new novel "The Jewel of Medina", about Muhammad's wife A'isha is the literary moral equivalent of an Honor Killing.

University of Texas' history professor Denise Spellberg, according to Random House's Jane Garrett, advised strongly against publishing. I cannot help but wonder what Dr. Spellberg teaches about Islam in her classes. Does she teach it is includes a significant element of unstable, easy to anger, medieval, barbaric, and terroristic sects, which are so influential, as to preclude the entirety of Islam from being subject to popular fiction, avant-garde art, political cartoons, or comic routine, unlike every other other major religion and culture, which often are the subject of critical or tasteless speech or expression.

I think Dr. Spellberg, based on her comments, strongly believes Islam, due to its extremist component, is not compatible with the secular, post-Enlightenment, western world. I just wonder if she teaches this in her classes.

More:

You Still Can't Write About Muhammad

Free Speech Jilted by Muhammad Romance Novel 'Warpath'

And some worthy background reading:

Victor Davis Hanson: Traitors to the Enlightenment

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