Rantings of a schizophrenic? Well, on second thoughts . . .

Perhaps we spoke too soon when we queried “wot, no fatwa?” in our post of yesterday, after the author Sebastian Faulks had said naughty things about the Koran.

We now learn that he’s distanced himself from his own remarks.

He said the Koran had “no ethical dimension” and that the words of Mohammed were the “rantings of a schizophrenic”.

“He said the Islamic holy scripture was a ‘one-dimensional book’ that has little literary value,” wrote Lucy Cockcroft in a story, since pulled, in the UK’s Telegraph, “and added that when compared with the Bible its message seemed ‘barren’.”

Now, the Guardian has a tale saying Faulks has apologised:

“While I believe the voice-hearing of many Old Testament prophets and of John the Baptist in the New might well raise psychiatric eyebrows today, it is absurd to suggest that the Prophet, who achieved so much in military and political – quite apart from religious – terms, can have suffered from any acute illness.

“Only a fully cogent and healthy person could have done what he did,” Faulks told the Guardian today. He went on to offer “a simple but unqualified apology to my Muslim friends and readers for anything that has come out sounding crude or intolerant. Happily, there is more to the book than that.”

Hmm.
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NOTE: Faulks has also penned his own piece in the Telegraph, under the headline The book I really can’t put down.