Journalist Sherry Jones, 46, had worked for a decade at the Montana Missoulian when she went back to school to earn her 2006 bachelor\u2019s in English and creative writing from the University of Montana.<\/p>\n
She began reading about women in the Middle East while preparing her honors thesis.<\/p>\n
Jones decided the story of Aisha, child bride of the Prophet Muhammad in 7th century Arabia, would make a good novel.<\/p>\n
She spent five years and seven drafts perfecting her \u201cexciting tale of love, war, spiritual awakening and redemption.\u201d Although Jones has never been to the Middle East, she took two years of Arabic language classes, and gathered every book she could find to make her novel historically accurate.<\/p>\n
Her hard work seemed to have paid off. Random House, largest English-language publisher in the world, liked the book enough to give Jones a $100,000 contract not just for the one book, but also for a sequel. \u201cThe Jewel of Medina\u201d also was destined to be a Book of the Month selection, followed by distribution through the Quality Paperback Book Club. Lots of folks seemed to like it. Foreign rights sales were coming in from Europe.<\/p>\n
Then the publicity folks at Random House sent a galley of the book to Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of history and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin, also under contract with Random House\u2019s Knopf subsidiary — hoping for a positive blurb.<\/p>\n
Instead, Spellberg went ballistic.<\/p>\n
\u201cDenise says it is \u2018declaration of war … explosive stuff … a national security issue,\u2019\u201d an editor at Knopf wrote in an e-mail that made the rounds at Random House. \u201cShe thinks there is a very real possibility of major danger for the buildings and staff and widespread violence. Thinks it will be far more controversial than the satanic verses and the Danish cartoons … thinks the book should be withdrawn ASAP.\u201d<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s just what Random House did.<\/p>\n
Mind you, there have been no threats or protests from any actual Muslims, who seem singularly unconcerned, given that they certainly can\u2019t deny Muhammad had a child bride named Aisha, \u201ca remarkable figure in the history of the world, not just the Middle East,\u201d as Jones explains. \u201cShe was instrumental in the formation of Islam as an early religion. She was an adviser to Muhammad at a young age. She was a political adviser to the successors of Muhammad, and led troops in the first Islamic civil war.\u201d<\/p>\n
But because the editors at Random House are afraid some Muslim, somewhere, MIGHT be offended by the book, they\u2019ve told Jones to keep her $100,000 — and her manuscript.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy book doesn\u2019t have sex scenes,\u2019 Jones says. \u201cI deliberately wrote the book very sensitively. But now I get hate mail,\u201d because Spellberg branded the book \u201csoft-core pornography.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plenty of Christians were upset when \u201cThe Da Vinci Code\u201d speculated that Jesus fathered children on Mary Magdalene, who later emigrated to France and founded that nation\u2019s ruling line — a considerably more far-fetched theory that Jones\u2019 assertion that Aisha lived in a harem before becoming Muhammad\u2019s bride, as would have been typical for her time.<\/p>\n
Though admittedly Christians are less likely to bomb embassies, these days, no fear of offending Christian radicals disrupted Doubleday\u2019s plan to publish — and make millions from — Dan Brown\u2019s potboiler.<\/p>\n
But Random House says in a recent statement it first decided to postpone publication, and then reached a termination agreement with Jones, because of \u201c … 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last week Salman Rushdie, author of the controversial \u201cThe Satanic Verses,\u201d came to Jones\u2019 defense.<\/p>\n
Mr. Rushdie\u2019s book caused an uproar among Muslims around the world, who contended the novel insulted Islam. It led to a death decree in 1989 from Iran\u2019s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and forced the author for years to live under police protection.<\/p>\n
In an e-mail to The Associated Press, Rushdie said, \u201cI am very disappointed to hear that my publishers, Random House, have canceled another author\u2019s novel, apparently because of their concerns about possible Islamic reprisals. This is censorship by fear, and it sets a very bad precedent indeed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Random House is a private company. It has a right to publish or not publish whatever it pleases, of course.<\/p>\n
Is it significant, here, that Random House has been owned since 1998 by the large German media corporation Bertelsmann? Quite possibly. This cowardice, this reluctance to stand up for free-speech rights against even the remote possibility of offending some benighted and ululating Muslim with a rusty sword to wave, somewhere, certainly seems more European than American.<\/p>\n
One wonders if Random House will soon order all female employees to start wearing burqas, \u201cjust in case.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Neville Chamberlain proved at Munich, nothing more emboldens a would-be tyrant than to knuckle under to his whims and demands, rather then standing up and calling his bluff.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no sign Ms. Jones\u2019 book portrays her heroine as some homicidal slut. Though even if she wished to do so, it IS fiction … … the final test in a free market is whether anyone chooses to buy it … right?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Jewel of Medina\u201d will doubtless be published by someone, at which point the controversy generated by the current cowardly stance of the bed-wetters at Random House will probably generate a few tens of thousands of additional sales.<\/p>\n
Probably some mullah, somewhere, will condemn another work he hasn\u2019t even read. Big deal.<\/p>\n
But do remember this profile in courage the next time the spokesgeek for some Bertelsmann affiliate gets on his or her high horse, asserting their latest publication of some smarmy collection of Hollywood gossip proves they\u2019re \u201cfighting the good fight for everyone\u2019s free speech rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not for those of Sherry Jones, evidently. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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