http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022324.php#more

Random House paid $100,000 for Sherry Jones’ racy historical novel about Muhammad and his nine-year-old wife, Aisha, The Jewel of Medina, only to withdraw the book just days before its scheduled August 12 publication date. Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry explained that they decided to drop the book after receiving, “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.” They decided “to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel.”

Sherry Jones is an unlikely candidate to be the next Salman Rushdie, and her novel is hardly in the same league as Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ film Fitna, which vividly depicted Muslims acting upon the dictates of the Qur’an’s violent passages. The Jewel of Medina, by contrast, is a Harlequin Romance-level trivialization of Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha, luridly depicting the child as finding, at the moment of the consummation of her marriage to Muhammad, “the bliss I had longed for all my life” – yes, her entire nine years.
But Islamic jihadists seem to have little patience for semi-erotic children’s fiction.

...

All this makes it imperative that someone have the courage to publish the book – not because it has any merit, but as a signal that the West will not be intimidated into abandoning the freedom of speech.

Yeah, yeah, Robert Spencer, child porn stories are freedom of speech.

Some common sense here:

I've not yet heard anyone criticize the author and the publisher for the book's depiction of pedophilia. Writing about a 50 year old having sex with a child is perverted.

The book says she was 11, which is not accurate according to the authoratative hadith. Did the author make her older in order to attempt to deflect criticism that she is writing kiddy porn?

Consider this bizarre excerpt, "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."

Give me a break. An 11 year old girl does not think like this when being penetrated by a 50 year old man. Give me a break ... abuse is not bliss.

I think the lack of criticism of the author's pedophilia subject is telling since I believe that Islam is held to a different standard. If someone had written about a past Pope who had a secret 11 year old wife in such a manner, I believe that people would ask why a mainstream publisher would be involved in kiddy porn and why the author would write a supposed "love story" about a child and a 50 year old man.

Why are Islamic societies held up to a lower standard of human civility? I see this time and time again. If there was a Christian country where half the girls were "married" as children, there would international campaigns against it.

Posted by: James Martel at August 22, 2008 12:21 PM