mediawatchwatch.org.uk

We’re glad to hear that a Danish publisher (appropriate that it should be Danish, considering the Motoons affair) wants to publish Sherry Jones’s novel about Mohammed’s infant bride Aisha, which Random House gutlessly pulled in fear of Islamic whingeing or whining or marching or demanding or shouting or violence (select and permutate as you will).

The Jewel of Medina was reportedly bought by Random House for an advance of $100,000, but academics and security experts warned against publication. So self-censorship became evident once again.

About a week ago, the Serbian publisher BeoBook withdrew a thousand copies from shops across Serbia, after protests from an Islamic pressure group. BeoBook also (again gutlessly) apologised for publishing the novel.

A small Danish publisher, Trykkefrihedsselskabets Library (which means Free Speech Library), is now in negotiation with Sherry Jones’s agent over publication of the meticulously researched novel in Denmark.

“Co-owner Helle Merete Brix said that the fact that Random House was prepared to pay $100,000 for the book showed its quality, and that she was determined not to ‘bow to any censorship’,” the Guardian (linked to above) tells us.

Good for Trykkefrihedsselskabets Library. A blow against censorship and for free speech. May the book become a bestseller.

It’s a well-known fact that, if you want to draw attention to something, you ban it.  Then the world will beat a path to its door.

The good literary folk of Chicago are going one further: they’re holding a Banned Book Week next month.

High on the list of exhibits is And Tango Makes Three, which is about a gay penguin, we’re told in Windy City Times, which continues:

The Chicago-based American Library Association is kicking off Banned Book Week in Chicago and throughout the U.S. with a free “Read Out” event Saturday, Sept. 27, from noon to 4 p.m., in Chicago’s Pioneer Court, 401 N. Michigan. Banned Book Week runs through Oct. 4.

Few people here in Blighty will be able to make it, but, if you’re in the vicinity of the Windy City at that time, you might like to know that you can see a complete listing of events and information here.

Hitler, Hitler, Hitler! There! Said it! But some people get a bit worked up about mention of Herr H, so much so that they want to censor jokes about him.

It’s happening in Sweden, where The Local, the country’s English-language online news outlet, tells us that a radio presenter who said the verboten word on his programme has got a few people twitching, and reporting him to the Swedish Broadcasting Commission.

On Tuesday, presenter Rickard Olsson made a joke on live TV about Germans and Nazis when referring to the German women’s football team’s loss against the Brazilians in the Olympic semi-final.

“There is something about Hitler and Germany that somehow makes it difficult to feel sorry for them when they get slaughtered at football. You just think, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler”, said Olsson on his live chat show Olsson’s Studio.

But jokes about Hitler have been around ever since – well, ever since Hitler. And one has only to think back to the seventies and a rather elaborate Monty Python sketch, not to mention the mildly amusing “Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?”, the theme song to the sitcom Dad’s Army.

In fact we at Mediawatchwatch feel a competition coming on. Best Hitler jokes, anyone?

The Times reports that ITV’s latest comedy star, Katy Brand, is angry at the decision by ITV lawyers to veto a sketch called The Imam of Dibley, deeming it “culturally insensitive”.

Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show will not contain the theology graduate’s Vicar of Dibley spoof, premised on a new imam arriving in a sleepy parish and the misunderstandings that ensue.

Says Katy,

The vast majority of Muslims are able to have a laugh at themselves just like everyone else.

Why should they be excluded from comedy? It’s funny that ITV had no problem with a new sketch about a pregnant Jesus’s girlfriend who has to deal with dating the Son of God

A very good question - especially when you consider that Jesus is also a Muslim “prophet”, and that to suggest God had a son is highly blasphemous in Islam. Why didn’t they ban this too?

Random House, the pusillanimous publishers who were frightened into spiking The Jewel of Medina by imaginary terrorists, have caved to prude-pressure once again.

Three complaints, and the threat of a boycott from Walmart-owned Asda, sufficed for the publisher to bowdlerise the latest children’s book by Dame Jacqueline Wilson. All instances of the word “twat” will be replaced with the word “twit” in future editions of My Sister Jodie, a novel for children aged ten and over.

What ninnies!

The story below about how a Serbian mufti called Muamer Zukorlic managed to get The Jewel of Medina withdrawn from bookshops has taken another turn. A rival mufti, this time from The Islamic Community of Serbia (as opposed to just The Serbian Islamic Community, or something like that), has accused Zukorlic of trying to make a name for himself as the sole representative of all Muslims in the country.

Adem Ziklic, the dissenting mufti, says:

This way Zukorlic has imposed himself as the only protector of Islam and causing this much stir over the book will only result in a bigger demand for the novel.

I doubt that the mufti has read the book and it seems he is acquainted only with the parts which directly refer to scenes from the Koran (the Muslim holy book).

The way Zukorlic is preening himself reveals quite clearly the urge for self-aggrandisement that so often lies behind these displays of religious outrage. Listen to this:

I expect that no one will ever again with any publication insult Muslim sanctity. The Jewel of Medina will not have its second edition.

Doesn’t he sound remarkably like Stephen Green?

(Hat tip, Islam in Europe)

The Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones’ historical Mo-ro about the prophet of Islam’s child bride, has been withdrawn from bookshops in Serbia after complaints from a Muslim “community leader”.

The book got its global debut three weeks ago in the Balkan state, where it was published by Beobuk. However, Muarem Zukorlic, leader of the Islamic Community in Serbia, deemed it offensive, and demanded all of the published copies to be handed in. He also demanded that the publisher Aleksandar Jasic repent for what he had done.

It is a book that absolutely does not refraining from desecrating something that is considered by all Muslims as untouchable.

So - Muslims shouldn’t touch it. That doesn’t mean everyone else has to keep schtum.

Obviously someone wishes to join the ranks of those who produced the cartoons in Denmark several years ago and it is an insult to all Muslims of the world, especially for us here in Serbia.

Note the standard veiled threat of violence. You want to end up in hiding like those Danish cartoonists?

Jasic needs to sincerely repent because of the incident he caused.

And sincerely repent is exactly what Jasic did.

“It was not our intention to offend anyone, so we withdrew the book from stores, apologised to the Muslim community and I hope that will be the end of it

Zukorlic initially thought this was not enough, but after consultation graciously accepted the gesture:

We decided to accept the apology from the publisher and give up stern reactions. In the following period our activity will be directed towards calming emotions and affirmation of the character and work of the Prophet Mohammed.

Isn’t that nice of him?

UPDATE (1pm) Interestingly, Le Monde blogger Pierre Assouline reveals that French publisher Editions Telemaque published an Aisha novel last year, without causing riots or death threats. In fact, Aïcha, la bien-aimée du prophète by Geneviève Chauvel, which contains “intimate scenes”, was prefaced by a theologian from the notoriously litigious Grande Mosque de Paris. The author also took part in a couple of conference debates on the subject.

Stéphane Watelet, the boss of Telemaque, seized the opportunity to take a pot-shot at US scarediness, suggesting that the “Old Continent” is less timid than the New World. Assouline takes similar delight, and suggests that the personnage of Aisha could become a “new barometer of political correctness”.

The best-loved of the prophet: Geneviève Chauvel's Bedouin bonk-buster was published in the winter of 2007.

(Hat tip Butterflies & Wheels)

Salman Rushdie, whose recent books are published by Random House, has criticised his publisher for shelving Sherry Jones’ 7th century burka-ripper The Jewel of Medina.

I am very disappointed to hear that my publishers, Random House, have canceled another author’s novel, apparently because of their concerns about possible Islamic reprisals. This is censorship by fear, and it sets a very bad precedent indeed.

Especially since RH abandoned the project without a single threat having been made. They caved because there was a threat of threats.

This book needs to be published. We need to have this fight.

John Beyer, head of the slowly-declining anti-smut lobby group Mediawatch-UK, has received a bit of a publicity boost this week because of comments he made to The Daily Mail about an upcoming shoot-em-up game for the Nintendo Wii.

Gamers across the net have been writing about the Massah’s remarks all week. They appear to be under the impression that Beyer is an influential voice, rather than the tabloid press’s go-to guy for ill-informed, inelegantly expressed prude-bites.

MadWorld is due for release in 2009, and is rather violent. Here’s what the Sage of Ashford has to say about it:

This game sounds very unsavoury.

I hope the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) will view this with concern and decide it should not be granted a classification

Because Beyer, never having understood the distinction between cause and correlation, thinks that playing violent video games or watching violent films makes people violent. Violent film and games exist; violence occurs in society; therefore violent films and games cause violence.

We need to ensure that modern and civilized values take priority rather than killing and maiming people.

Sic.

It seems a shame that the game’s manufacturer have decided to exclusively release this game on the Wii.

I believe it will spoil the family fun image of the Wii

Haven’t you missed the tortured syntax and ambiguous phrasing? We’ll miss Mediawatch-UK when they’re gone.

UPDATE: (Aug 15) The gaming news site Spong were so surprised that anyone should have such strong opinions about a game they have not seen that they wrote to Beyer to make sure he hadn’t been misquoted. He replied in his customary style:

Mad World (sic) has yet to be classified and so no one should have seen it.

Fortunately, there is enough information about it in the public domain to enable judgements to be formed. This is sufficient for anyone to express concern about the self proclaimed and stylised brutality the game contains.

Self proclaimed and stylised? Wow, that is bad.

It will be up to the BBFC to grant or refuse a classification and whether or not they listen to our concerns or give in to the demands of the industry.

Sweet Jesus, won’t someone put that sentence out of its misery?

(His arguments have been shot down enough times. So let’s just concentrate on making fun of his grammar.)

According to The Bookseller, Random House do not feel they have acted unreasonably in shelving Sherry Jones’ burka-ripping Mo-ro The Jewel of Medina in the face of imagined threats from radical Islamists.

The Guardian reports that Geoffrey Robinson QC, who defended Rushdie during the Satanic Verses affair, has called on Random House to pay “substantial compensation” to the author.

We can’t be overcritical of American publishers for cowering under terrorist threats. After all, the Guardian, like every other British newspaper, lacked the gumption to publish the Danish cartoons. But all who care about free speech have a duty to make this sort of censorship counterproductive.

The Guardian report comes tantalisingly close to stating that Mohammed married Aisha when she was six years old - but a strategically placed comma keeps them from the brink:

The first person narrative details the life of Aisha, one of Muhammad’s wives, from the age of six until 18 when Muhammad dies.

Sherry Jones herself remains remarkably chirpy about the whole thing:

Frankly I’m more afraid of global warming than of terrorist attacks [...] I did expect my book would be controversial, just because I’m a pink woman writing about a culture that was not my own and a religion that is not my own … [but] my aim was not to provoke, it was to portray the difficulty of being a woman in that era, and to portray this wonderful heroine who overcame obstacles to become a prominent figure in Islam.

And in the comments of this blog she reveals that she is already working on a follow-up:

OK, I have to go and work on my sequel now—which is, by the way, even better than the first book. It alternates points of view between A’isha and her (historically documented) nemesis, Ali, and provides a lot of insight into both of these characters as well as the origins of the Sunni-Shi’ite split.

Maybe she’ll have more luck with Profile Books, whose director Andrew Franklin brands Random House “absolute cowards” in the Guardian article.

Bad Boy Bishop: Michael Reid preached traditional values while doinking the choir mistress

The final nail in the coffin of the Christian Campaign for Traditional Values was hammered in last week with the official resignation of its PR man Garry Selfridge. It came four months after the resignation of the organisations leader, “Bishop” Michael Reid, who was exposed as a traditional adulterer.

Selfridge’s letter contains a mixture of shame and bitterness. Shame at having “lacked the intuition to see [Reid's] true nature over many years of working with him” and playing such a major role in the group’s promotion. Bitterness at having been duped by such a “fake” whose “peerless hypocrisy” and “personal disgrace” caused the “irretrievable loss of reputation of the CCTV” and exposed Selfridge to “loud scornful laughter in the BBC White City newsroom”.

The letter also claims that Reid is “entirely impenitent” and makes several allegations in evidence which MWW will not publish here because of their potentially libellous nature. Suffice to say that they reveal Reid to be a deeply unpleasant character, and as such come as no surprise to those of us who regarded the “Bishop” with the contempt he deserved right from the start.

Not that Essex PR man Garry Selfridge deserves any sympathy in this matter. He is, after all, behind such dishonest and hateful CCTV campaigns as “Gay aim - abolish the family”. And he still hasn’t removed Reid’s image from the slideshow on Selfridge Communications website.

It is with some pleasure that we remove the link to CCTV in our “watching these” sidebar. Good riddance.

Back in May MWW reported on the alleged censoring of a Christian mayoral candidate’s election broadcast by the BBC and ITV.

As it turned out, Alan Craig, the candidate in question, subsequently lost his case against the BBC because he had raised no objection to the cuts at the time, preferring instead to squeal about it after the broadcast. At this point, it dawned on everyone that the whole thing was just an election stunt.

This suspicion has been confirmed by the news that Ofcom has judged (PDF) Premier Christian Radio (the main instigators of the anti Jerry Springer: the Opera campaign) to be “in breach” for a trailer for The Politics Show about the Alan Craig case.

Introduced by “Macho” George Hargreaves (who, among other things believes the Welsh flag is satanic), the trailer went like this:

Alan Craig, the Christian People Alliance and Christian Party’s candidate for
London Mayor has seen ITV force him to re-write comments in his party
election broadcast about a radical Muslim group. Join me George Hargreaves
on The Politics Programme on Genesis TV and Revelation TV on Wednesday
30 April at 9pm when we ask the question: ‘Has the Christian People Alliance
and Christian Party’s mayoral candidate, Alan Craig, been a victim of political
censorship gone bad and political correctness gone mad?’

Ofcom judged this to show “undue partiality” to Craig, and to present him as a victim of unjust treatment.

Strange that these Christians should seek to dishonestly create and exploit a victimhood scenario in order to try to gain political advantage. Presumably they think that’s what Jesus would have done.

The Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission in Canada has rejected the complaint about Ezra Levant, who published the Motoons in The Western Standard. We reported on Levant tearing a strip off the council back in January. It is nice to see him vindicated.

Yasmeen Nizam, the lawyer representing the Muslim complainants in the case, was remarkably frank about their motives.

Our whole idea was to educate people,. We thought the cartoons did (expose Muslims to hatred), regardless of the context, because if you look at the broader context in a post-9-11 world, Muslims are at a higher risk of being discriminated against

We weren’t shopping around for any laws. We thought this was a good way to bring our concerns to the attention of the public. Obviously, we didn’t want this to continue, so (another goal was) perhaps to discourage people from further maligning our prophet and our religion. . . . We wanted this to have a deterrent effect.

It did not work. It will not work in the future. It has never stood any chance of working.

Mo-ro: The Jewel of Medina won't be published by Random House

The Wall Street Journal reports that Random House spiked a racy historical novel about Aisha, Mohammed’s child bride, after an American academic branded it ‘offensive’.

Sherry Jones’ The Jewel of Medina was bought from her last year for $100,000 as part of a two-book deal. However, an advance copy was sent to Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas in Austin, who apparently decided to take offence on behalf of hyper-sensitive Muslims.

I walked through a metal detector to see ‘Last Temptation of Christ,’ [...] 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.

You can’t? Who says?

Spellberg contacted the publisher, urging them to shelve the “very ugly, stupid piece of work” and telling them it was “a declaration of war . . . explosive stuff . . . a national security issue.”

Here is an excerpt from the book, in which the 50-year-old prophet consummates his marriage with his young bride:

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.

All nine years of it. But it’s okay - she was very mature for her age, you know.

Spellberg also informed a visiting lecturer, Shahed Amanullah, that the novel “made fun of Muslims and their history” and asked him to warn Muslims. Which he duly did. Soon it was all over the Muslim net, and activists started planning ways to ensure the book was withdrawn and the writer apologises etc etc.

Sherry Jones and her agent are now looking for a new publisher for the controversial Mo-ro. Fingers crossed!

Only Women Bleed: The triptych by Adam Cullen which upset a judge

The latest case of Christian-symbol-inspired outrage comes from Australia where the ever-controversial Blake Prize for Religious Art is causing a stir again.

One of the judges, Christopher Allen, has resigned from the panel over the above painting by Adam Cullen. It is not clear whether his objections to the painting are religious or aesthetic.

Last year the prize angered prime minister John Howard and the Catholic Archbishop of Syndey George Pell. The Virgin Mary in a burka, and a Christ / bin Laden hologram were the contentious entries that time.

The Freethinker carries two amusing stories of Christian offence-taking on two contents.

First, the crucified frog in Italy which has Catholics “hopping mad”.

Ecce frog: Give him a kiss and he'll turn into a prince of peace

Pope Benedict the Whatever is taking a summer break somewhere near the museum where this particular artwork is exhibited, prompting a local group to collect nearly 10,000 signatures calling for its removal.

Will somebody please disabuse these Catholics of the notion that they have some kind of copyright on the depiction of this form of execution?

Next, we travel to Canada for the Jesus Sucks flyby

The plane truth: Kenny and Spenny and their human-rights-violating banner

The above stunt was part of a competition between TV show hosts Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice who were seeing who could offend the most people in one go. Hotz explains:

I wanted the banner to say ‘Heil Hitler’ or ‘Guys are stupid’ or something, but the airplane company wouldn’t agree to those. So, I said, ‘My friend Jesus [pronounced the Spanish way, Hay-sus] is getting married and I want to play a joke on him.’

Now Dean Skoreyko, of Coldstream, BC, is claiming the banner violated his human rights and has filed a claim with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. This appears to be, at least partly, a protest against the BCHRT itself, which is currently considering a complaint by Muslim students about an article by Mark Steyn in Maclean’s magazine, and is developing a reputation for being anti-free speech.

We have lost count of the number of times Danish Muslim groups have tried and failed to bring a prosecution against the Jyllands-Posten for publishing the Motoons. But each time the judge has explained quite clearly to them how and why such satirical work is not against the law.

They still have not learned.

We believe that Muslims have been treated unjustly and that is why we want to take this case before the Supreme Court

says Assaad Bilal, a spokesman for one of the organisations.

They are seeking the “harshest possible penalty” against editor Carsten Juste and art editer Flemming Rose.

And if the imams still haven’t learned their lesson after the Supreme Court rejects their claim, they have vowed to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

They also had “other plans” which Bilal did not elaborate on.

Is there a special court for plaintiffs with learning difficulties?

The Cynical Dragon reports from Cardiff that the South Wales Echo has printed an apology for the Dan O’Neil article which suggested that Jesus might be gay:

It has come to our attention that in an article on Wednesday, July 16, headlined ‘If God considers gays and abomination why did he create them?’, our columnist Dan O’Neill offended a number of Christians [Cynical Dragon counted six - Ed]. We would like to apologise for any offence caused to those people who believe the article insulted the Christian faith, Jesus Christ and the Holy Bible.

The offending part of the article was also removed from the WalesOnline website, and the title was changed - possibly by a sub-editor with a sense of irony - to “Hypocrisy and hysteria”.

A reminder of the blasphemous passage:

This Jesus feller swans around all day with a dozen other blokes. No women. Mark that, no women. And he wanders off into the mountains now and again to spend quality time with his, uh, favourites (Mark.9:2). He picks up small boys and girls and puts his hands upon them (Mark 10:16) And he was seen in a garden when one of his mates came up and kissed him (Matthew,26:48). Suspicious, eh?

UPDATE: (31 July) Just to clarify - in the passage above, O’Neil was not suggesting Jesus was gay, or had paedophile tendencies. He was speculating on what Stephen Green would have thought of Jesus. The paragraph is introduced with the sentence “How would this fanatical Hammerer of Homosexuals, leader of a bunch of annoying bigots have interpreted events in Palestine a couple of thousand years ago?”.

Green took what was a personal attack on him, and turned it into a “blasphemy” issue. Once again, we see that Stephen Green is always foremost in the mind of Stephen Green.

UPDATE: (13:15) Barry at The Freethinker has started a petition calling on the South Wales Echo to retract its apology.

In a shameful betrayal of its commitment to freedom of speech, the South Wales Echo has apologised to a handful for Christian bigots for running a piece by Dan O’Neil entitled ‘If God considers gays and abomination why did he create them? The paper has also pulled the piece from its website.

We, the undersigned, call on the Echo to show some backbone and publicly retract the apology. We also call on the paper to reinstate O’Neil’s column on its website.

Birmingham Council blocks its staff from accessing atheist and Wiccan websites - although it allows them to visit sites by established religions.

In what is hopefully just a case of an over-zealous, religiously-inclined sysadmin - and not a muliti-theocratic discrimination policy by the council itself - the Bluecoat Software allows staff to look at Christian, Hindu, Muslim and other religion sites, but blocks access to ” “witchcraft or Satanism [...] occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism”.

This outrageous state of affairs is being challenged by the National Secular Society. Terry Sanderson, the president, told the BBC that they would first request that the policy be changed, and if that failed legal action would be taken:

It is discriminatory not only against atheists but they also are banning access to sites to do with witchcraft.
Witchcraft these days is called Wicca, which is an actual legitimate and recognised religion.
We feel very strongly that people who don’t believe should not be denied the access that people who do believe have got.

UPDATE: (4 Aug) This appears to be a false alarm. No deliberate discrimination was involved. Heresy Corner explains that it is simply a case of culturally confused American software, lumping atheism and voodoo in the same category.

Pixel dick: The Sunday Mail thoughtfully obscured the Messiah's lob-on

Terence Koh’s statue of the Saviour-with-a-semi which scandalised Christians earlier this year is back in the news.

A Christian called Emily Mapfuwa from Brentwood, is bringing a private prosecution against the Baltic Gallery in Gateshead, which exhibited the statue. Her logic, predictably, goes like this:

‘I don’t think this gallery would insult Muslims in this way, so why Christians?

Legal documents reveal that the charges are that the gallery offended public decency and breached Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. The first hearing is due in September.

The Mail on Sunday story carries a large picture of the statue, with the “penis” slightly pixelated to protect sensitive readers.

Stephen Green of failed fundamentalist lobby group fame wll be green with envy. He dropped his hilarious “countdown of defiance” earlier this year (it measured, to the second, how much time had passed since he issued a command to the gallery owner to destroy the statue). Presumably because nobody was paying it any attention. Much the same response that greeted his demands that the South Wales Echo ” should immediately take down” the Dan O’Neil column which suggested Christ was gay (it’s still there).

Mapfuwa has brought an interesting test case, but it must surely be dismissed.