| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Jihad Watch | Robert Spencer | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog |  |
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
They banned it because it says Islam spread by force and persecuted Christians. Are the "experts on Islamic history" who commented on the book in Cairo really experts on Islamic history, or on the whitewashing of that history?
All this is especially ironic in light of the fact that the New York Times quoted a Muslim spokesman just the other day, saying that "for centuries Muslims have been told that Islam was spread by the sword." Muslims can say it; men named George Bush can't.
From Reuters, with thanks to JS and Ali Dashti:
CAIRO (Reuters) - The censors at al-Azhar, Cairo's center of Islamic learning, have recommended the government ban a 19th century biography of the Prophet Mohammad by a scholar portrayed in the Arabic media as an ancestor of President Bush.An al-Azhar official, who asked not to be named, said on Monday the ban applied to the original English version of The Life of Mohammad by the scholar George Bush, first published in 1830 and reissued in the United States in 2002.
He did not give a reason but press articles on an Arabic translation of the book have criticized its account of early Islamic history. They quote Bush as saying Muslims spread Islam by force and persecuted Christians, for example.
Excerpts have appeared in the Cairo daily Nahdet Misr, with critical comments by experts in Islamic history.
Posted by Robert at December 14, 2004 4:58 AM
Print this entry
| Email this entry
| Digg this
| del.icio.us
Wow.
What propaganda value.
Am pretty much sure most denizens of arabs wouldn't care less to distinguish between the george bush of 1830 and that of 2004 (after all they're having a hard time distinguishing the 7th century from the 21st!).
What immense propaganda value for the west. The Arabd street thinks the US president actually wrote a book, which according to the uncensored 1830 text would be pretty forthright and politically incorrect, I must hope.
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 14, 2004 7:31 AM
Was it really written by a George Bush in 1830? This is news to me. Perhaps they thought "a George Bush, they're all the same, let's slander him".
Posted by: Ibn Rushd at December 14, 2004 11:42 AM
Oops, just reread the article, yes the facts were in there. But still, I didn't know about this book.
Posted by: Ibn Rushd at December 14, 2004 11:43 AM
One has an urge to read that book. In fact, it might be the perfect Christmas present for the Bush-supporters on your list this year.
Unfortunately, no matter how often some Bush-unsupporters may be assured that the George Bush in question was not, and could not possibly have been, the present President ("Not that 'Yurij Miloslavskij'" as Gogol's Chichikov says in "Dead Souls"), they may need to supply themselves with other options. May one suggest, for that Christmas list, books by Robert Spencer, or Ibn Warraq's "Why I Am Not a Muslim," or Sir William Muir's "Life of Muhammad" (nice big yellow cover, large-format, reprint of the abridged 1858 edition, and can be ordered from Kennikat Press on-line). For those wanting to make a future killing, or subscribers to the Hugoye-list (for lovers of Aramaic), just buy the second edition (the first is out-of-print) of Christoph Luxenberg's "Die syro-aramaische Lesart des Koran" and hold onto your hat -- in a few years, worldly Kuwaiti billionaires, with their private collections of naughty books on Islam, possibly brought out for fellow Muslims-in-name-only Arabs when visiting their estates in the Home Counties -- and what could be naughtier than Luxenberg -- will be paying fabulous sums even for that second edition.
And just today, December 14th, in Italy, in time for the season in which, of course, the Western world now traditionally honors Little Red Riding Hood, a quartet of books, published by Rizzoli, in a nice cofanetto has gone on sale -- all by Bat Ye'or, and all mostly about you know what. La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio, La Forza della Ragione, Oriana Fallaci intervista Oriana Fallaci, and the fourth, just-published volume, L'Apocalisse." Just the thing to give that friend who keeps telling you she (or he) has been meaning to take up Italian -- so as to visit hill-towns in Umbria, or follow an opera better, or for restaurant reasons. Start that friend off with a good dose of Oriana Fallaci's vivid and racy prose.
Posted by: Hugh at December 14, 2004 11:47 AM
Can anyone read that about "Cairo's center of Islamic learning (sic)" and not think "What a bunch of f***ing morons?" You mean these ... these are the kinds of freaking idiots that are causing such havoc in the world? How is that? I mean, how do they find their way to work in the morning? Can they even be potty trained for that matter? The impression is they are all wandering around with dried sh*t in their pants thinking they are God's appointed rulers of the world not unlike a bunch of snot-nosed two year olds demanding their way.
f.g.
Posted by: f.g. at December 14, 2004 12:52 PM
If George W. Bush reads just one book
next year...
I hope it it this one -by his namesake.
Kudos to the publisher.
Ban the book, pith the people.
at December 15, 2004 10:21 PM
Oh, please.... Anything to try to smear dirt on George Bush. I fully agree with the comment made by F. G. These morons are an insult to kindergarden intelligence.
Posted by: flameon1 at December 16, 2004 3:51 PM
(Note: Comments on articles are unmoderated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dhimmi Watch or Robert Spencer. Comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying may be summarily deleted. However, the fact that particular comments remain on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Robert Spencer of the views expressed therein.)