August 6, 2008, - 9:29 am
“Moderates”: American Muslims (Along w/ Liberal Jew) Threaten Terrorism Against Random House, Suppress Book
By Debbie Schlussel
We’re constantly told the fairy tale that American Muslims are different from their violent, extremist, co-religionist thugs around the world.
What makes them different here, since they believe in the same hateful Koranic and Hadith precepts, since they hear the same violent, jihadist sermons at their mosques, etc? We’re frequently told that because Muslims here enjoy prosperity and economic opportunity, they’re different here. Meanwhile they’re suing America left and right, claiming they’re shut out of prosperity and economic opportunity.
And of course, we know that economic opportunity and socio-economic status has nothing to do with it. It’s about an ideology, called Islam. There are plenty of wealthy people who believe in it, and several of them were among the 9/11 hijackers and other terrorists before and since.
Bottom line: Muslims in America are NO different than their brothers and sisters in Europe and the Middle East, just a few years behind in critical mass and the level of bending over of non-Muslims. But soon, they will catch up.
That brings us to the book, “The Jewel of Medina,” written by Islamopanderer Sherry Jones. Ms. Jones wrote this book about six-year-old Aisha, one of Mohammed’s wives, which included some sex scenes. It was set to be published and sold throughout America by Random House. But Random House reneged because of threats of violence, NOT from so-called “extremists” on the fringes or from Europe or the Middle East, but from threats of violence from mainstream American Muslims and American Muslim leaders.
And no “moderate” Muslims spoke out, but for Asra Nomani, a Muslim apostate and former Wall Street Journal reporter. Nomani, a friend of the late Daniel Pearl’s, is an outcast in most of Islam because she had a kid out of wedlock and tried to pray in a mosque on equal footing with the men.
Her op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal should tell you a little something about your “moderate” American Muslim friends and neighbors, if you don’t already get it: They’re not peaceful. Muslims–AMERICAN Muslims, along with pan-Islamist professor Denise Spellberg of the University of Texas at Austin–threatened violence against Random House employees and its buildings. (Note how Ms. Spellberg had no prob with “The Last Temptation of Christ” movie, but “defile” Islam. No way, Hussein!)
And don’t worry, there’s no “FBI investigation into hate crimes” over these threats. Nope. The publisher just buckled:
Starting in 2002, Spokane, Wash., journalist Sherry Jones toiled weekends on a racy historical novel about Aisha, the young wife of the prophet Muhammad. Ms. Jones learned Arabic, studied scholarly works about Aisha’s life, and came to admire her protagonist as a woman of courage. When Random House bought her novel last year in a $100,000, two-book deal, she was ecstatic. This past spring, she began plans for an eight-city book tour after the Aug. 12 publication date of “The Jewel of Medina” — a tale of lust, love and intrigue in the prophet’s harem.
It’s not going to happen: In May, Random House abruptly called off publication of the book. The series of events that torpedoed this novel are a window into how quickly fear stunts intelligent discourse about the Muslim world.
Random House feared the book would become a new “Satanic Verses,” the Salman Rushdie novel of 1988 that led to death threats, riots and the murder of the book’s Japanese translator, among other horrors. In an interview about Ms. Jones’s novel, Thomas Perry, deputy publisher at Random House Publishing Group, said that it “disturbs us that we feel we cannot publish it right now.” He said that after sending out advance copies of the novel, the company received “from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.”
Nothing “small” and “radical” about them. This is the mainstream of Islam. In America.
After consulting security experts and Islam scholars, Mr. Perry said the company decided “to postpone publication 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.” . . .
“I’m devastated,” Ms. Jones told me after the book got spiked, adding, “I wanted to honor Aisha and all the wives of Muhammad by giving voice to them, remarkable women whose crucial roles in the shaping of Islam have so often been ignored — silenced — by historians.”
Sucker. This woman, Jones, is definitely your typical attendee at “Lunch in Tul Karem.” This is what happens when an infidelette fool tries to help Muslims. She gets burned.
This idiot authoress, Jones, sent her manuscript to Denise Spellberg the UT professor, who then frantically called her friend Shahed Amanullah, editor of a MAINSTREAM popular Muslim website, who got the death threat train going.
“She was upset,” Mr. Amanullah recalls. He says Ms. Spellberg told him the novel “made fun of Muslims and their history,” and asked him to warn Muslims. . . .
Says Ms. Spellberg: “I walked through a metal detector to see ‘Last Temptation of Christ,'” the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
Soon Amanulllah sent out a mass e-mail to American Muslims, it was posted on Muslim web sites, and then another Muslim,
Ali Hemani proposed a seven-point strategy to ensure “the writer withdraws this book from the stores and apologise all the muslims across the world.”
Then, Ms. Spellberg, who has a contract with Random House to write about Thomas Jefferson’s Koran, threatened Random House, and of course they obliged. An editor wrote:
“She thinks there is a very real possibility of major danger for the building and staff and widespread violence. Denise says it is ‘a declaration of war . . . explosive stuff . . . a national security issue.’ Thinks it will be far more controversial than the satanic verses and the Danish cartoons. Does not know if the author and Ballantine folks are clueless or calculating, but thinks the book should be withdrawn ASAP.” . . .
On a May 21 conference call, Random House executive Elizabeth McGuire told the author and her agent that the publishing house had decided to indefinitely postpone publication of the novel for “fear of a possible terrorist threat from extremist Muslims” and concern for “the safety and security of the Random House building and employees.”
Of course, your “moderate,” “peaceful” Muslims at CAIR, MPAC, ISNA, ICNA, MAS, MSA, etc.–none of them have said a peep. Why? Because they have no prob with the implied death and bombing threats and with the censorship, blackmail, and extortion. This is their way.
The geographic boundaries that constitute America do not block out the extremism that constitutes Islam. They only welcome it in.
And there is more we must consider about this disturbing case. Denise Spellberg is Exhibit A of why I tell Americans not to rely on the Jews for their terrorism analysis. Far too many of my fellow co-religionists-in-name-only bend over backward for our enemies in the “Religion of Peace.” They lend them legitimacy, a legitimacy we cannot afford to let stand.
Spellberg is a far-left Jewish woman, who has devoted her life to spreading the BS propaganda that Islam is peace, that America has a “forgotten” Muslim history (no, we don’t), etc.
She is the one who started these terrorist threats on their path. She is the one who warned Random House that they’d all be blown to Kingdom Come if the book was published. Why is she not being prosecuted? If I contacted Random House and said that if they published her sleazy “Thomas Jefferson’s Koran” lie, that the building would be blown up and its employees murdered, do you think I’d be free today? No, I’d be behind bars.
Instead, Ms. Spellberg delivered a paid lecture sponsored by the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas, and she is identified as a faculty member of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies.
In that capacity, she lectures on stupid things, designed to make Jews and Christians find an artificial commonality with Islam. But here’s what I don’t, as a Jew, and you don’t, as Christians, have in common with this bitchy, terrorist co-religionist of mine: We don’t threaten book publishers with violence if they publish something we don’t like. We don’t tell them that their employees will die if a book is distributed.
E-mail Denise Spellberg and tell her that terrorist threats and censorship are not welcome in America.
Let me tell you a little something about the “Schusterman” whose name is in the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies. Charles Schusterman was a Jewish oil baron in Oklahoma, who came from nothing. He amassed millions from offshore oil drilling throughout the world. He was a proud Jew and very pro-Israel. I met him several times, and he was a donor to my campaign for the Michigan House of Representatives. He would be turning over in his grave, knowing that his good name was now associated with this Jewish pan-Islamist terrorist.
Sadly, Mr. Schusterman, who passed away in 2000, no longer controls the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation, which apparently paid Ms. Spellberg. Mrs. Lynn Schusterman has given millions to left-oriented, allegedly “pro-Israel” speakers and college programs run by left-wing staffers at the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC. Schusterman also funds many anti-Israel, left-wing Hillel [a Jewish organization on most college campuses] foundations and their directors of the same ideology.
Still, I think you should complain to Mrs. Schusterman and her daughter Stacy Schusterman about their surname being used to further terrorist threats in America.
Since she is a staff member of the Schusterman Center, they pay Denise Spellberg’s salary and sponsor her lectures, and that should end, accompanied with a condemnation. Maybe you will get through to them.
I don’t feel we should email Spellberg or the Schustermans. I don’t state this because it is a bad idea. I just think this issue is bigger than that.
This is far from the first time Islamofacists have had something banned here in the US. What we need to do is contact the book publishers and the retail book outlets and let them know we will boycott them if this this continues.
[IAM: NOW YOU’RE SOUNDING LIKE AN IDIOT. WHILE I AGREE WITH YOU ON RANDOM HOUSE, THE SCHUSTERMANS SHOULD CERTAINTLY BE CONTACTED. THEY’RE FUNDING HER. IN NO WAY SHOULD THEY BE FUNDING THIS WOMAN AND THEY SHOULD BE CONTACTED AND PRESSURED, SINCE THEY HAVE NO APPARENT OVERSIGHT OF WHERE THEIR MONEY GOES. DS]
I_am_me on August 6, 2008 at 10:49 am