Book on Muhammad’s wives cancelled

Random House has spiked a book it had planned to publish, The Jewel of Medina, a lusty historical novel about Muhammad’s wife Aisha and life in the prophet’s harem, out of fear of Muslim attacks. What set off Muslim protests prior to publication and scared Random House was that a professor of Islamic history whom the publisher had approached for an endorsement was offended by the book and leaked passages of it to Muslims. For example, here is Aisha recounting the night of the consummation of her marriage to Muhammad:

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. [Longing for bliss all her life? She was nine year old.]

Prior to their paying the author, Sherry Jones, 100,000 for the book and then deciding out of fear of Muslims not to publish it, hadn’t the people at Random House heard of Salman Rushdie? Maybe the Eighties were before their time.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 06, 2008 01:04 PM | Send