Don’t look for this story in your local newspaper. Do you think it would get covered if Christians tried to get a book “killed” by its publisher?
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.
By way of Power Line.
The author of the banned (maybe I shouldn’t use that word) book says, “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.”
I have a serious question. I’m not being snarky. Do women have a real voice in Islam? Maybe that’s too broadly stated, but since we are afraid of certain Muslims willing to riot and murder over a book or cartoon, are those Muslims (whatever their tradition) at all interested in giving women a proper place at the table? I thought women were servants, second-class, to them.
The society that Aisha lived in was not Muslim as we understand the term. It was really a pre-Islamic society, overlaid with teachings of the new religion. Customs die hard (look at how long Israelites worshiped idols, for example).
Muhammad’s first wife, Khadijah, managed to run a merchant business for quite a few years. That would argue that some pre-Islamic women were independent, in a way modern Saudi women are not.