Et nytt knefall

Ran­dom House har truk­ket til­bake en roman om Muham­meds ynd­lings­kone Aisha, som han gif­tet seg med som jent­unge, mel­der Reu­ters (Ran­dom House pulls novel on Islam, fears vio­lence). Boken - The Jewel of Med­ina av Sherry Jones, skulle etter pla­nen vært pub­li­sert 12. august og en rund­tur til åtte byer var avtalt. Alt er nå kan­sel­lert. At det skjer så tett opp­til pub­li­se­ring sier noe om hvil­ken panikk som har gre­pet forlaget.

Asra Q. Nomani hadde en grun­dig artik­kel i Wall Street Jour­nal med den meget­si­gende titte: You Still Can’t write about Mohammad. Ran­dom House har hatt god tid til å tenke seg om. De inn­gikk kon­trakt i fjor og var så begeist­ret at de betalte 100.000 dollar.

Star­ting in 2002, Spo­kane, Wash., jour­na­list Sherry Jones toi­led week­ends on a racy his­to­ri­cal novel about Aisha, the young wife of the prop­het Muhammad. Ms. Jones learned Ara­bic, stu­died scholarly works about Aisha’s life, and came to admire her pro­ta­go­nist as a woman of courage. When Ran­dom House bought her novel last year in a $100,000, two-book deal, she was ecsta­tic. This past spring, she began plans for an eight-city book tour after the Aug. 12 pub­li­ca­tion date of “The Jewel of Med­ina” -- a tale of lust, love and intri­gue in the prophet’s harem.
[You Still Can’t Write About Muhammad]
Corbis

It’s not going to hap­pen: In May, Ran­dom House abruptly cal­led off pub­li­ca­tion of the book. The series of events that tor­pe­doed this novel are a win­dow into how quickly fear stunts intel­li­gent dis­course about the Mus­lim world.

En av lederne for Ran­dom House, Tho­mas Perry, sier de sendte ut for­hånds­ko­pier av boken. Til­bake­mel­din­gene de fikk var av en slik karak­ter at de fryk­tet en ny Sata­niske Vers.

Tho­mas Perry, deputy pub­lis­her at Ran­dom House Pub­lish­ing Group, said that it “dis­turbs us that we feel we can­not pub­lish it right now.” He said that after sen­ding out advance copies of the novel, the com­pany rece­i­ved “from cre­dible and unre­lated sources, cau­tio­nary advice not only that the pub­li­ca­tion of this book might be offen­sive to some in the Mus­lim com­mu­nity, but also that it could incite acts of vio­lence by a small, radi­cal segment.”

Men hvem var disse alar­mis­tene? Eller var de seriøse og sak­lige? Er boken “farlig”?

Den første som slo alarm var en pro­fes­sor ved Texas Uni­ver­sity, Denise Spell­berg, som ikke bare slo alarm, men brukte alle kon­tak­ter til å få boken stanset.

In April, look­ing for endor­se­ments, Ran­dom House sent gal­leys to wri­ters and scholars, inclu­ding Denise Spell­berg, an associate pro­fes­sor of Isla­mic his­tory at the Uni­ver­sity of Texas in Aus­tin. Ms. Jones put her on the list because she read Ms. Spellberg’s book, “Poli­tics, Gen­der, and the Isla­mic Past: The Legacy of ‘A’isha Bint Abi Bakr.”

But Ms. Spell­berg wasn’t a fan of Ms. Jones’s book. On April 30, Sha­hed Ama­nul­lah, a guest lectu­rer in Ms. Spellberg’s clas­ses and the edi­tor of a popu­lar Mus­lim Web site, got a fran­tic call from her. “She was upset,” Mr. Ama­nul­lah recalls. He says Ms. Spell­berg told him the novel “made fun of Mus­lims and their his­tory,” and asked him to warn Muslims.

In an inter­view, Ms. Spell­berg told me the novel is a “very ugly, stu­pid piece of work.” The novel, for example, inclu­des a scene on the night when Muhammad con­sum­mated his mar­riage with Aisha: “the pain of con­sum­ma­tion soon melted away. Muhammad was so gentle. I hardly felt the scorpion’s sting. To be in his arms, skin to skin, was the bliss I had longed for all my life.” Says Ms. Spell­berg: “I walked through a metal detec­tor to see ‘Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ,’” the con­tro­ver­sial 1980s film adap­ta­tion of a novel that depicted a rela­tion­ship between Jesus and Mary Mag­da­lene. “I don’t have a pro­blem with his­to­ri­cal fic­tion. I do have a pro­blem with the deli­be­rate mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of his­tory. You can’t play with a sacred his­tory and turn it into soft core pornography.”

After he got the call from Ms. Spell­berg, Mr. Ama­nul­lah dashed off an email to a list­serv of Middle East and Isla­mic stu­dies gra­duate stu­dents, ack­now­led­ging he didn’t “know any­thing about it [the book],” but tel­ling them, “Just got a fran­tic call from a pro­fes­sor who got an advance copy of the forthcoming novel, ‘Jewel of Med­ina’ -- she said she found it incre­di­bly offen­sive.” He added a write-up about the book from the Pub­lis­hers Mar­ket­place, an industry publication.

Det kan synes som om en bestemt gruppe men­nes­ker i Ves­ten kan utnytte auraen av tabu som mus­li­mer har lyk­kes å omgi bestemte sym­bo­ler med, slik at de selv kan sole seg i dem. Det gir makt, opp­merk­som­het. Man gjør and­res tabuer til sine egne, og siden man kom­mer fra en annen kul­tur, kan man gjøre spe­si­elt mye for å under­streke hvor kren­kende et kunst­verk er. Spel­berg vir­ker å høre hjemme i en film av Stan­ley Kubrick.

Når man først har lyk­kes å bruke sin posi­sjon til å lage opp­styr, over­tar andre sta­fett­pin­nen. Mus­limske akti­vis­ter kan love at byde­ler og ambass­der vil brenne. Da er det ikke rart for­lags­folk blir litt ner­vøse. De får det fra to kanter.

The next day, a blog­ger known as Sha­hid Prad­han pos­ted Mr. Amanullah’s email on a Web site for Shi­ite Mus­lims -- “Hus­saini Youth” -- under a head­line, “upcoming book, ‘Jewel of Med­ina’: A new attempt to slan­der the Prop­het of Islam.” Two hours and 28 min­utes after that, anot­her per­son by the name of Ali Hemani pro­po­sed a seven-point stra­tegy to ensure “the wri­ter wit­hdraws this book from the sto­res and apo­lo­gise all the mus­lims across the world.”

I tråd med krig­fø­rin­gens prin­sip­per, satte Spell­berg inn sitt støt mot Ran­dom ved å ringe kon­tak­ter i for­la­get. Også Spell­berg manet frem bilde av vold og trus­ler. Det var nok til at Ran­dom kapitulerte.

Mean­while back in New York City, Jane Gar­rett, an edi­tor at Ran­dom House’s Knopf imprint, dis­patched an email on May 1 to Knopf exe­cuti­ves, tel­ling them she got a phone call the evening before from Ms. Spell­berg (who hap­pens to be under con­tract with Knopf to write “Tho­mas Jefferson’s Qur’an.”)

“She thinks there is a very real pos­si­bi­lity of major dan­ger for the buil­ding and staff and wide­spread vio­lence,” Ms. Gar­rett wrote. “Denise says it is ‘a decla­ra­tion of war … explo­sive stuff … a natio­nal security issue.’ Thinks it will be far more con­tro­ver­sial than the sata­nic ver­ses and the Danish carto­ons. Does not know if the aut­hor and Ballan­tine folks are clu­e­less or cal­cu­la­ting, but thinks the book should be wit­hdrawn ASAP.” (“The Jewel of Med­ina” was to be pub­lis­hed by Ran­dom House’s Ballan­tine Books.) That day, the email spread like wild­fire through Ran­dom House, which also rece­i­ved a let­ter from Ms. Spell­berg and her att­or­ney, say­ing she would sue the pub­lis­her if her name was associa­ted with the novel. On May 2, a Ballan­tine edi­tor told Ms. Jones’s agent the com­pany deci­ded to pos­sibly post­pone pub­li­ca­tion of the book.

Slik for­går Ves­tens fri­het. Det er mulig å se stra­te­gien bak - hvor folk har for­skjel­lige rol­ler. Det trues all­tid med vold. Det er nå nok å true før et stort vest­lig for­lag trek­ker en bok. Vi er på full fart bakover.

You Still Can’t Write
About Muhammad