German journalist wants to read Satanic Verses in mosque
A German author has announced that he wants to read aloud from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses inside a Cologne mosque.
The author and investigative journalist Günter Wallraff, 64, famous for his undercover investigations uncovering social injustice, has denied that he wants to provoke the city’s Muslims. He considers his friend Rushdie’s book to be a masterpiece. The Muslim public should be talking about it, but instead it “currently is condemning something it does not know about.”
The secretary of the local Ditib religious foundation, Bekir Alboga, said the board was considering the proposal.
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The recently departed George Melly was one of several people who read aloud the James Kirkup poem, ‘The Love That Dares to Speak its Name’, in London two or three years ago, in defiance of the blasphemy laws (that poem was the subject of the Gay News trial in 1977). It would be interesting to have public readings of The Satanic Verses in Trafalgar Square or somewhere. It wouldn’t be testing the law, of course, but would be a way of showing these bloody people that our free speech is far more important than some barmy doctrine.
Yeah. What he said!
No really, Andy’s dead on the money here.
I am def on this one with Andi and Marc. In fact, I was thinking that it could be an idea to read the verses at the same time in various religious temples (e.g. mosques/churches etc.) around the world.. Then it makes the reading into a symbol of the right to be free from religion. A right which the text practices by default..
Anyway… Should really contact Gunter now..