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Monday 5 October 2009

More self-censorship

Here we go again: people are afraid to speak because nutty Islam might get uppity.

This time it’s a German publisher, reported by the blog Monsters and Critics, quoting Der Spiegel.

“A German publisher has cancelled plans to publish a mass-market novel out of fears that it might face violent protests due to a rude reference to the Koran,” it says.

It’s a crime novel about an honour killing. The story says:

It [the magazine] said the publisher had first asked the author, Gabriele Brinkmann, writing under the pen name WW Domsky, to tone down dialogue in To Those Worthy of Honour which might be construed as offensive, but she had refused.

Spiegel reported that the offensive phrase in question was a character saying: “You can shove your Koran up . . .”

A character, note, is saying this. It’s fiction. There’s no saying there would have been violence, of course, but it’s come to something when we’re forever censoring ourselves because of religious sensitivity.
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Related links:
Aisha: the on/off story continues
Aishia: on . . . off . . . on again

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