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Last updated on August 8th, 2017 at 05:33 pm
Someone alert Antony Loewenstein! There’s been a major silencing:
A leading children’s publisher has dumped a novel because of political sensitivity over Islamic issues.
Scholastic Australia pulled the plug on the Army of the Pure after booksellers and librarians said they would not stock the adventure thriller for younger readers because the “baddie” was a Muslim terrorist.
A prominent literary agent has slammed the move as “gutless”, while the book’s author, award-winning novelist John Dale, said the decision was “disturbing because it’s the book’s content they are censoring”.
“There are no guns, no bad language, no sex, no drugs, no violence that is seen or on the page,” Dale said, but because two characters are Arabic-speaking and the plot involves a mujaheddin extremist group, Scholastic’s decision is based “100 per cent (on) the Muslim issue”.
As LGF points out, get a load of what they are willing to publish:
This decision is at odds with the recent publication of Richard Flanagan’s bestselling The Unknown Terrorist and Andrew McGahan’s Underground in which terrorists are portrayed as victims driven to extreme acts by the failings of the West.
The Unknown Terrorist is dedicated to David Hicks and describes Jesus Christ as “history’s first … suicide bomber”.
In McGahan’s Underground, Muslims are executed en masse or herded into ghettos in an Australia rendered unrecognisable by the war on terror.
Scholastic’s general manager, publishing, Andrew Berkhut, said the company had canvassed “a broad range of booksellers and library suppliers”, who expressed concern that the book featured a Muslim terrorist.
“They all said they would not stock it,” he said, “and the reality is if the gatekeepers won’t support it, it can’t be published.”
These are the same types who whine all the time about “censorship” and the “crushing of dissent”. Andrew Bolt reviews the current state of play:
• Newspapers will not publish cartoons of Muhammad for fear of riots.
• Film scripts such The Sum of all Fears are rewritten to change the villains from Muslims to South Africans and Germans.
• Acts that joke about Muslims are banned from the Melbourne Comedy Festival.
• The Pope is damned for quoting a Byzantine emperor’s warning about Islam’s jihadist culture.
• Two Christian pastors who preach at a church seminar about violence and Islam are convicted in Victoria for hate speech.
• a Dutch director who makes a film criticising Islam has his head nearly sawn off by an Islamist.
• a best-selling author who writes a novel satirising the Koran is condemned to death by Iranian ayatollahs, and has one translater murdered and another stabbed, but finds few Western authors rally to defend his right to free speech.
• a performance of Mozart’s Idomeneo in Germany is cancelled because one scene shows the severed head of Muhammad.
• SBS destroys a tape of the Mufti of Australia calling suicide bombers “heroes” to stop viewers getting the “wrong” idea.
Hit Andrew’s site for links within the above.
- More and more, the craven fear of the self-styled “gatekeepers” is proving true the harshest criticisms of Islam.Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 11 25 at 03:01 AM • permalink
- Islam (in its whaabi phase anyway) is in terminal decline. the only question is how much damage it will do on its way out.
As a death cult its a bit too effective, and as a subversive movement much too violent.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 11 25 at 03:07 AM • permalink
- Add to this the fact that pretty much any ‘young adult’ fiction that gets an award here is Australia is usually about a teenage lesbian junkie (who eventually turns out to be a vampire) who is being sexually abused by her father, before going on to battle racism in her small redneck town, and halt the evil machinations of a property developer with links to a conservative political party, etc., etc.
they would not stock the adventure thriller for younger readers because the “baddie” was a Muslim terrorist.
Why?
a) Such a thing would be fictional ? Despite the book being, well, fiction.
b) It will incite Muslims to react violently? When of course there is no precedent for such print-based aggression
Remember when the only PC baddies in movies were South Africans? Who next? You cant show real baddies as being baddies. My pick, climate change unbelievers! Either that or Romanians.
- “Someone alert Antony Loewenstein.”
We could. But then again, he might be crying because no one has bought his latest shithouse of a book.
He would say that this latest episode is a Mossad inspired event. Dumb fuckwit.
Posted by The Best Infidel on 2006 11 25 at 04:17 AM • permalink
- Recall that in 1988 we had a referendum “to extend freedom of religion”. It was comprehensively thrown out with 70% of people rejecting it. We could see the writing on the wall, in big black letters, even back then.
My thought at the time was that Muslims would use it to strong-arm local Councils to approve the building of mosques in residential areas against the wishes of residents.
There are mosques being built but they are mostly in industrial areas where permits are easier to obtain.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 11 25 at 05:03 AM • permalink
- The Australian’s subsequent editorial on the matter is spot on.
Such acts of self-censorship to avoid alarming Islamic sensibilities strengthen the hand of that violent faction of Muslims who lash out in anger whenever anyone suggests their faith might have a darker side. And it shows the hypocrisy of the literary Left, which refuses to be truly “edgy” and turn their pens against those who would really silence them, namely Islamofascist terrorists.
- “There are no guns, no bad language, no sex, no drugs, no violence that is seen or on the page” … would be a good reason to drop a book by a publisher. OK, it’s a kid’s book. Only joking.
#3 thefrollickingmole: I’ve read the same opinion some time ago about Islam being in terminal decline. It was in the New Scientist magazine. I don’t know, is it more wishful thinking on the author I read, not unlike the view that the Debnham opposition would defeat an Iemma Government, or Baillieu would defeat a Bracks Government?
I’m interested to know if anyone else shares the view that Islam is in terminal decline. No offence thefrollickingmole, but I’d like to know if there is any substance to that argument.
- Stevo, this is the view of Theodore Dalrymple, amongst others. This article from The Brussels Journal offers some interesting insights into this debate…
FTA: Theodore Dalrymple thinks that “Islam has nothing whatever to say to the modern world,” and states that “Personally, I believe that all forms of Islam are very vulnerable in the modern world to rational criticism, which is why the Islamists are so ferocious in trying to suppress such criticism. They have instinctively understood that Islam itself, while strong, is exceedingly brittle, as communism once was. They understand that, at the present time in human history, it is all or nothing. (…) Islamism is a last gasp, not a renaissance, of the religion; but, as anyone who has watched a person die will attest, last gasps can last a surprisingly long time.”
- Islam survived for hundreds of years by prohibiting emmigration and resisting any innovation beyond military and a handfull of others.
It is a recent phenomena, the emmigration, and it is not going well.
Up until the end of the Ottoman empire there was bugger all secure land title or legal rights beyond that of the semi-feudal sattraps who “owned” their serfs.
There are so many examples of decay and backwardness inherent in the fanatics mindset they make the Amish look like Bill Gates.Islam will survive but not in the fanatical Wahhabi style of Bin liner and co.
The only question is how much damage they will be ALLOWED to do.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 11 25 at 08:06 AM • permalink
- I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name. It felt good to be out of the rain.
Gee, the novel ain’t so bad. It just needs a quick and sensitive rewrite. In fact, it could be a rollicking good pirate tale. One where the wind is a sandstorm and the ship is a camel and the final destination is the other side of nowhere.
- #20, thefrollickingmole”
Islam will survive but not in the fanatical Wahhabi style of Bin liner and co.
I disagree with that assessment.
Consider this. “The Average Joe” is not the kind to go about making fine and rather arbitrary distinctions in sect and such once he’s been hit hard enough to be more enraged than afraid.
And that distinction is arbitrary. The only actual “moderate muslim” is the muslim that has already largely walked away from his religion.
The islamists will, most probably, end up completely destroying islam as a religion and may even cause the entire race of arab to be reduced to a few protected enclaves and road-side tourist attractions.
- The sheer cowardice of left wong intellectuals and the media is what amazes me. I had never believed that they could actually be so spineless and really now wonder if it was any different in the days BEFORE WW2 when the threat of Nazism threatend to engulf us.
Perhaps they have acted no differently than they always have.
Melanie Philips book Londonistan was rejected by every London Publisher, she informs us on her website, and Bat Ye’or’s “Islam amd Dhimmitued” , also not available except from Amazon.
It’s sad to think that those who are meant to inspire us have always been cringing cowards in the face ot threats and intimidation .
- The WWII commies in the U.S. took their marching orders from the Kremlin. When Uncle Joe made nice with Hitler, then Hitler was no threat at all. Once Hitler invaded Russia, then he suddenly became what the rest of the world knew he was by then. The left has always been a bunch of apes waiting for someone to tell them what to think.
- saltydog
To be a bit fair there was a fair few chinless wonders in euroupe not from the left who thought he was the ducks nuts as well.
I think they woke up a lot quicker than the lefties did though.Grimmy
It wont be quick, but look at the attractiveness of it to most people. It rejects most modern thought. It brainwashes its young. It is funded by a finite resource (oil). It views dying as preferable to living. I think Saltydogs prof may be closer to the mark.
This is not to advocate doing nothing though, it needs to be “encouraged” to self destruct.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 11 25 at 06:48 PM • permalink
- #29, thefrollickingmole:
I hear ya, and I’m not trying to be contentious or any such with ya on this issue. I’ll even concede up front that I realize I may well be wrong.
But, here’s issues that folk tend to forget when considering the long term survival of islam as a religion, culture or belief in general and the arab race in particular.
1. India has nukes. India has also had approx 1000 years of experience with the islamist. There’s even a major religious sect that sprang up in India specifically from the constant wars with the muslim.
2. China has nukes. China is also dealing with disruptive attacks in their western provinces by islamists and islamism is being spread by the sword in the Chinese hinterlands. China is also taking a very dim view of resurgent islamism in the various former USSR states to their west.
3. Russia has nukes. Russia has also had Chechnya, Beslan, the Moscow Theater and some civilian aircraft vs muslim suicide bomber issues.
There’s also basic human nature to consider. Once those that tend to keep their heads down and mind their own business get so enraged as to pick their heads up and start taking care of business, then everyone associated with the issue that woke them up gets put down.
Mobs dont do finesse.
The islamists are not capable of not going to far and once they do then retaliation wont be scripted by the reasonable, rational or compassionate.
- Grimmy. Nah I think we are in fairly broad agreement. i just think an internal collapse may happen before they manage to attract that sort of attention.
Now on the other hand if they didnt have oil…..Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 11 25 at 08:56 PM • permalink
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