Religion Dispatches has a review of a new romance novel in the UK about Muhammad. “Its UK publisher hides under police protection, even as its author insists she means to build a bridge between cultures”:
This spring Sherry Jones’ The Jewel of Medina was rejected for publication by Ballantine Books. The novel is now at the center of the latest round of controversy about fictionalizing the history of Islam and the lives of Muhammad and his relatives. Media reaction was minimal until the Wall Street Journal picked up the story under the head, “You Still Can’t Write About Muhammad.” The refusal of the publisher to go ahead with the publication of the book, which also involved a contract for a second book, has raised charges of censorship, of caving in to radical Islam, and echoes of the controversy about Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. Just this week the Telegraph reported that the UK publisher of the book is hiding and under police protection after being targeted by extremists. “Why,” many are asking, “can’t we write about, make movies about, or draw cartoons of religious figures such as Jesus, the Buddha, or Muhammad without raising the ire of these ‘overly sensitive’ religious groups? Have religious topics now become off limits for secular art?”
Continue reading at Religion Disptaches.