folio

Award-winning columnist Johann Hari has a piece in today’s Independent entitled We need to stop being such cowards about Islam. By 10.00am this morning it was the most emailed, read and commented article on their website. It is, he says, a column condemning cowardice: “It begins with the story of a novel you cannot read.”

The historical novel, The Jewel of Medina, by Sherry Jones was due to be published earlier this week by an imprint of Random House, but the publisher decided to withdraw it at the last moment. Hari tells us that “Random House had visions of a re-run of the Rushdie or the Danish cartoons affairs” and had it pulped. The novel centres on the life of the Mother of the Believers, Aisha bint Abu Bakr. His article laments this decision and the cowardice of society in confronting the Muslim faith. According to Hari, a University of Texas teacher saw proofs and declared its publication a national security issue.

The teacher in question was Dr. Denise Spellberg, professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas in Austin and author of Politics, Gender, & the Islamic Past: The Legacy of ‘A’isha Bint Abi Bakr. The fact that Spellberg’s own book on the subject is in print rather deflates Hari’s argument about censorship, but that is an aside. The point here is that she advised against publishing the book not for fear of offending Muslims (she teaches the Satanic Verses controversy after all), but because she felt it lacked historical credibility and showed no evidence of being extensively researched. Still, Hari argues:

There is now a pincer movement trying to silence critical discussion of Islam. To one side, fanatics threaten to kill you; to the other, critics call you “Islamophobic”. But consistent atheism is not racism. On the contrary: it treats all people as mature adults who can cope with rational questions. When we pulp books out of fear of fundamentalism, we are decapitating the most precious freedom we have.

A fair point? Not really. The thousands of websites on the internet, books on Amazon and articles in the press—many very critical of Islam indeed—clearly show that critique is alive and well. Were Naipaul’s books pulped when he wrote critically of Islam? Has Pipes been banned from writing newspaper columns? Has Sookhdeo been banned? Hari’s argument may sound nice to those who agree with him when he fails to tell us why the book was not published, but it falls rather flat when we confront reality.

For Muslims, Aisha bint Abu Bakr was one of our greatest scholars and an outstanding scholar among the companions of the Prophet: she narrated many of the hadith, was a doctor, an expert in the division of inheritance, had extensive knowledge of the Arabic language and of course is known as the Mother of the Believers. For others she is never any of these things, as in this article: she becomes a mere device used to forward the argument that there is no critique of Islam, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Typing the word “Islam” into search at Amazon.com reveals that he is completely wrong—I encountered the following books in the first page of my results alone:

Islam: What the West Needs to Know, by Robert Spencer
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), by Robert Spencer
The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, by Bernard Lewis
Antichrist: Islam’s Awaited Messiah, by Joel Richardson
Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out, by Susan Crimp and Joel Richardson
The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith, by Irshad Manji

Hari writes:

Muslims are secure enough to deal with some tough questions. It is condescending to treat Muslims like excitable children who cannot cope with the probing, mocking treatment we hand out to Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism.

This is true. The point is, we are not cut off from this. Hari has simply been selective in his presentation of the facts.

Reference