We need to stop being such cowards about Islam:

So writes Johann Hari in Britain's Independent Newspaper

See:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-we-need-to-stop-being-such-cowards-about-islam-894361.html

"This is a column condemning cowardice – including my own. It begins with the story of a novel you cannot read. The Jewel of Medina was written by a journalist called Sherry Jones. It recounts the life of Aisha, a girl who was married off at the age of six to a 50-year-old man called Mohamed ibn Abdallah. On her wedding day, Aisha was playing on a see-saw outside her home. Inside, she was being betrothed. The first she knew of it was when she was banned from playing out in the street with the other children. When she was nine, she was taken to live with her husband, now 53. He had sex with her. When she was 14, she was accused of adultery with a man closer to her own age. Not long after, Mohamed decreed that his wives must cover their faces and bodies, even though no other women in Arabia did.

"You cannot read this story today – except in the Koran and the Hadith. The man Mohamed ibn Abdallah became known to Muslims as "the Prophet Mohamed", so our ability to explore this story is stunted. The Jewel of Medina was bought by Random House and primed to be a best-seller – before a University of Texas teacher saw proofs and declared it "a national security issue". Random House had visions of a re-run of the Rushdie or the Danish cartoons affairs. Sherry Jones's publisher has pulped the book. It's gone."

In case you think Hari is some sort of "Zionist shill" note that The Independent is one of the most rabidly anti-Israel newspapers in the UK. It numbers among its columnists Robert "I'll sue anyone who calls me an anti-Semite" Fisk.

So a respectable publisher is intimidated into pulping a book.

Is this what we've come to?

Here is the BBC quoting Random House:

'Random House said it had been advised the book "might be offensive" to some Muslims, and "could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

'"We decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication," it added.

'The decision was taken "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," said the company's deputy publisher Thomas Perry in a statement.'

(Capitalisation added)

Intimidation works!

Australia censors books all the time. Many books have been censored for political reasons in the USA. In Australia we are about to implement an internet filtering scheme that is modelled on Communist China by the Australian Labor Party. Do you even care about that, which is far more important than some stupid book profiting off the anti-Islam hate in the USA?

It's easy to see why they might be inclined to fury. One incident is not representative of anything, but that book will be taken as a blueprint of all Islamic countries by readers. It's essentially propaganda. Especially as different countries have different ages of consent whcih probably isn't even mentioned in the book.

Many middle European countries for example have ages of consent around the 14 and 15 marks. Your sensationalism about Islam is unwarranted.

Steel

I am aware that Australia is not a bastion of free speech. Censorship in Australia is not news.

Nor, unfortunately, is it news in Europe or Canada.

But, on the whole, the US has less inclined to suppress media than other countries. The US does not have a perfect record; but it is a record that is better than most.

The New York Times, for example, published the Pentagon Papers in the teeth of opposition from the Federal Government. The Washington Post was merciless in its pursuit of Richard Nixon.

More recently it is hard to imagine a press more openly disdainful of it leadership than much of the US media towards Bush.

Nor has the media in the US been afraid to take on the Catholic Church or Christian Fundamentalists.

But Islam seems to have become a no-go area.

Note that Random House specifically cited safety concerns as the reason for pulping the book.

BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION they have caved in to intimidation.

What is more they appear to have caved in before any explicit threats were made! Merely the possibility of a repeat of the Satanic Verses or Danish Cartoons episode was enough to make Random House pulp the book.

The ineluctable lesson: INTIMIDATION WORKS!

That is what makes this so sad.

Here is how the Wall Street Journal reported Random House's capitulation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121797979078815073.html

Asra Nomani, the author of the WSJ article, is herself Muslim.

This is not about Islam per se.

It is about (self) censorship, about appeasement and, perhaps above all, about the manner in which the media have been INTIMIDATED by Islam.

stevenimeyer, the US media are propagandists. The entire lot. Unfortunately you seem to have a different opinion so I will post a couple of links to hopefully change your mind. What Nixon was indicted for was trivial to what the Bush administration and officials have gotten away with. I have many examples but I will post a couple only about recent news, plus a couple of general articles that show how serious and widespread this agenda is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtdVS8646GI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONICYAHcTcc

http://www.ccmep.org/ccmep/american031902.html

http://www.serendipity.li/cda/free_internet.htm

Steel,

I watched your second youtube link. I am at a loss to know what point you are trying to make.

What I saw was an alleged attempt by just ONE of America's MANY news outlets to manipulate the news.

Perhaps they were. I do not consider Fox a reliable source.

But what point are you trying to make?

If you have an open media you are going to have multiple points of view. Some outlets will emphasise one aspect of the news over another.

If the US media were all reporting from the same perspective, call it the "Steel Perspective," I would smell a rat. But the fact that there are multiple sources of news, many of which you or I find disagreeable, leads me to believe there is little if any censorship in the US.

The youtube feature you linked is itself freely available in the US. That hardly smacks of censorship.

In addition to the MULTIPLE US media outlets such as Fox (yeccch!), CNN, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, NY Times, LA Times, TIME magazine, all expressing radically different points of view, Americans have ready access to virtually ALL foreign media. The BBC and Aljazeera both have a wide following in the US.

Many Americans also get their news from websites such as the Guardian, Spiegel, Xinhua, Haaretz, IQRAA, etc.

Robert "I'll sue you if you call me an antisemite" Fisk, as rabidly anti-Israel as they come, is widely read in the US and collects big bucks by going on the lecture circuit telling Americans how evil their government is.

I am not debating the QUALITY of US media Steel. I am simply pointing out that the US has a wide-open media market with little sign of censorship.

You may not like the way the US media report. Neither do many Americans. However, since there is NO CENSORSHIP they solve the problem by going to foreign-sourced media. Some even tune in to our ABC over the internet.

You’re going to have to do better than that to demonstrate censorship in US media.