BBC NEWS: When Islam meets Bridget Jones
This is a review by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, the author of the Spirit21 blog (you can also find the review there). She concludes that the book is a tacky bit of historical romantic fiction - and not very historical at that, playing with the details to sex up the book, casually throwing in concepts from South Asia and Turkey which appeared later.
Also, brother Kashif posted his reaction to a posting by Adam Deen telling Muslims they should ignore these provocations and they’ll go away; on the contrary, says Kashif:
Despite accusing others of simplistic reasoning, unfortunately, it is these authors themselves who employ a very simplistic type of reasoning and forget something that every little boy learns in the playground: when you let someone bully you and insult you, it won’t stop until you stand up and do something about it.
Trivial as this objection may be, the author of one of the articles he cited never was a little boy (AnonyMouse at Muslim Matters). However, I do feel we are running out of options when it comes to responding to gratuitous insults to the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam); we had a big demonstration against the Danish cartoons in February 2006, and it was a very dignified affair with the crazies having shouted their piece outside the Danish embassy (twice) a couple of weeks before, and admittedly the cartoons have not been published in the media in the UK, but they were published in papers throughout Europe. Muslim protests did not stop The Satanic Verses from remaining available, nor, it seems, will they stop this book appearing.
It’s true that Sikhs and Hindus have managed to stop plays and art exhibitions, but that is a bit different - with a book, your audience does not have to be right there when the book is produced. These days, you can run a small publishing house out of one office, and keep every book you have ever published on one £50 hard drive, and back them up on a couple more. When some guys tried to burn down the offices of Gibson Square, the publishers of The Jewel of Medina in the UK, not only did they get arrested, but they did not even get close to destroying the business and stopping the publication. They will have had back-ups. They will have had insurance. Even if they had killed the entire staff, it will have been republished quickly out of sympathy, possibly by people who would not otherwise have done so, but chose to in defence of free speech.
Muslims have, in nearly twenty years since the Rushdie affair, not managed to convince many people outside the Muslim community that they have any obligation to refrain from insulting Islam, or any other religion, when the country’s established churches are fair game. I think that the reaction to The Jewel of Medina should be confined to answering it in the word, rather than with public demonstrations (can we fill Trafalgar Square every time some idiot insults the Prophet, sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam?), let alone anything violent. This is not to say we should ignore it, but that we should show some wisdom and dignity, because an over-reaction now could cost us dear in the future, when we need to fight dangerous hate-mongering against presently living Muslims.
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An American news magazine - Time - has also come out with a review of this book, and comes to much the same conclusion.
http://www.time.com/time/arts/.....65,00.html
She actually has another book written that might stir up more trouble. Its on the conflict between Aisha and Ali.
I remember reading an alternate timeline on soc.history.what-if called “The Affair of the Necklace” where Aisha and Ali became allies instead of enemies - this led to an early Fall of Constantinople.
In that world, Islamic civilization was much more Hellenized and Christianized than in our world* (Constantinople - renamed “Medina as-Salaam” was the Caliphate’s capital.) Also, the name “Cairo” was applied to our world’s Venice, with our world’s Cairo retaining its original name of “Fustat”.
*For example four versions of the Qur’an were accepted (comparable to the four gospels in Christianity).
I strongly agree with you that we have a moral obligation to refrain from insulting Islam, and other religions, although I certainly don’t think that this obligation should be enforced by law.
Something in the tone of your post troubles me though. You seem to be saying, we Muslims have tried everything to stop such insults against our religion, but to no effect. Even arson and murder wouldn’t stop them. It’s in our interests therefore to show ‘wisdom and dignity’, because ‘over-reacting’ might damage those interests in the longer term.
Am I right in seeing this as a pragmatic argument against silencing verbal (and pictorial) abuse of Islam with violence, rather than a principled one?
Or to put it another way, are you saying, “Answering insults with physical violence doesn’t work”, or, “Answering insults with physical violence may be effective but isn’t a good tactic at present”, rather than “Answering insults with physical violence is wrong.”?
If the use of violence were shown to be effective in this case, what would you advocate doing?
How about being proper muslims? The main reason religion is mocked to the extent it is in the west, is because of the hypocrisy of a lot of religious people.
Thanks for this post, and correctly observing that I’ve never been a little boy :D