Support Denise Spellberg

Muhammad's Sex Life in Print!???
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

Another Salvo in the Ongoing Zionist Attack on Middle East Studies at Columbia?

Muslims excoriate the explicit pictorial depiction of the Prophet.

Muslims would almost certainly find profanation and an attack or incitement against Islam and all Muslims in a novelization of the life of `A'isha (alayha-s-salam) if the story included a rather explicit description of the consummation of her marriage with Muhammad, for such a novel would reasonably be perceived as part of an orientalist attempt either

• to deny that Islam is a "genuine" religion or
• to imply that Islam is alien to "American" Judeo-Christianity.

Asra Nomani reports in the WSJ:

In April, looking for endorsements, Random House sent galleys [of Sherry Jones's book entitled The Jewel of Medina] to writers and scholars, including Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas in Austin. Ms. Jones put her on the list because she read Ms. Spellberg's book, "Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of 'A'isha Bint Abi Bakr."

But Ms. Spellberg wasn't a fan of Ms. Jones's book. On April 30, Shahed Amanullah, a guest lecturer in Ms. Spellberg's classes and the editor of a popular Muslim Web site, got a frantic call from her. "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.

In an interview, Ms. Spellberg told me the novel is a "very ugly, stupid piece of work." The novel, for example, includes a scene on the night when Muhammad consummated his marriage with Aisha: "the pain of consummation soon melted away. Muhammad was so gentle. I hardly felt the scorpion's sting. To be in his arms, skin to skin, was the bliss I had longed for all my life." 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. "I don't have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can't play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography."

Already the blogosphere is calling for harassment of Spellberg.

The issue is not free expression. We do not have free expression in the USA.

How many Palestinian sympathetic Hollywood films have been produced? (Planet of the Zionist Apes)

Pluto Press lost its distribution through the University of Michigan because of Joel Kovel's Overcoming Zionism. (Summary: Pluto Press, Kovel)

A book pointing out that the Holocaust of Zionist mythology has only the most tenuous factual connection to real history of the mass murders of Jews during WW2 would have extreme difficulty in finding a publisher, and the usual culprits would defame the author mercilessly. (See Bringing Holocaust Religion to Arabs, The Pattern of Ethnic Ashkenazi Genocidalism: The Jewish Century by Yuri Slezkine, and Holoexaleipsis, Holocaust, Holosphage and Holodomor .)

While far too many Jews (including Elie Wiesel) reject attempts to understand the Holocaust rationally, I have discussed my ideas about Muhammad and early Islam in many Muslim forums (Islamic Marcionism in Malaysia). Yet, I have never had a problem because no one perceives me as denigrating either Islam or Muslims.

Please write University of Texas President William Powers, Jr. at president@po.utexas.edu to express support for Dr. Spellberg for stating the obvious, for her decency and for her common sense!

If you cc me, I will post a selection on this blog. Note that the call to harass Dr. Spellberg may be part of the ongoing Zionist attack on Middle East studies at Columbia University, from which Dr. Spellberg received her PhD.

Sphere: Related Content