I Didn’t Kill The Jewel of Medina
A Follow up to the story about The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones. Denise Spellberg has responded in the Wall Street Journal with the following letter:
I Didn’t Kill ‘The Jewel of Medina’
August 9, 2008; Page A10
Asra Q. Nomani’s “You Still Can’t Write About Muhammad” (op-ed, Aug. 6) falsely asserts that I am the “instigator” of the Random House Press decision not to publish a novel about the Prophet’s wife titled, “The Jewel of Medina.” I never had this power, nor did I single-handedly stop the book’s publication. Random House made its final decision based on the advice of other scholars, conveniently not named in the article, and based ultimately on its determination of corporate interests.
As a historian invited to “comment” on the book by its Random House editor at the author’s express request, I objected strenuously to the claim that “The Jewel of Medina” was “extensively researched,” as stated on the book jacket. As an expert on Aisha’s life, I felt it was my professional responsibility to counter this novel’s fallacious representation of a very real woman’s life. The author and the press brought me into a process, and I used my scholarly expertise to assess the novel. It was in that same professional capacity that I felt it my duty to warn the press of the novel’s potential to provoke anger among some Muslims.
There is a long history of anti-Islamic polemic that uses sex and violence to attack the Prophet and his faith. This novel follows in that oft-trodden path, one first pioneered in medieval Christian writings. The novel provides no new reading of Aisha’s life, but actually expands upon provocative themes regarding Muhammad’s wives first found in an earlier novel by Salman Rushdie, “The Satanic Verses,” which I teach. I do not espouse censorship of any kind, but I do value my right to critique those who abuse the past without regard for its richness or resonance in the present.
The combination of sex and violence sells novels. When combined with falsification of the Islamic past, it exploits Americans who know nothing about Aisha or her seventh-century world and counts on stirring up controversy to increase sales. If Ms. Nomani and readers of the Journal wish to allow literature to “move civilization forward,” then they should read a novel that gets history right.
Denise A. Spellberg
Assoc. Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies
University of Texas at Austin
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Not a word about freedom of speech in this defensive reaction. The jewel of Medina may well be a badly researched, provocative or crappy novel, most of us will never know as a result of Random House’s cowardly act of self-censorship. My gods are freedom, justice, truth and love, and they are profoundly offended by this act of submission (islam means submission) to the terrorism of the zealots of what is an ideology of oppression, violence and totalitarism. Acts of capitulation like Random House’s and the spineless apologetics of this academic, like collaborators of the Nazis, will disappear in the refuse of history after, or even before, they die a peaceful natural death having forsaken any pretence at defending the very condition of their own existence: Freedom of Speech. SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!