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UK: Graphic novel depicting Muslim suicide bomber pulled from publication for “Islamophobia”

Nov 30, 2018 11:40 am By Robert Spencer

It sounds as if it was a stupid book: “When a young boy enters a library wearing an explosive vest hidden underneath his lovely new red jacket, he has only one plan on his mind. But as he observes those around him becoming captivated by the books they are reading, the boy can’t help but question his reason for being there.”

This reflects the false assumption that many non-Muslims hold, that jihad stems from poverty and ignorance. Zainab Akhtar wasn’t far off when she described the book as “an illiterate brown Muslim boy who goes into a library with a suicide bomb only to start having second thoughts because people seem so into the world of books and if only he could read.”

In reality, suicide bombers can read, and they read the Qur’an’s guarantee of Paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah (9:111).

But the letter calling for the banning of the book said: “The simple fact is that today, the biggest terrorist threat in the US is white supremacy.”

That is a false claim. But even if it were true, what does it matter? Would the existence of the supposed white supremacist terror threat mean that there is no threat from Muslim suicide bombers? Does the existence of white supremacist terrorists mean that no jihad terrorists exist, or that we cannot discuss them?

A stupid book indeed, but the reasons for dropping it from publication are even worse.

“Graphic novel ‘steeped in Islamophobia’ pulled after protests,” by Alison Flood, Guardian, November 26, 2018 (thanks to Ralph):

A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library, a controversial new comic that has been described as “wilfully fear-mongering and spreading harmful stereotypes”, has been pulled from publication following a barrage of criticism.

The graphic novel, written by the Newbery medal-winning author Jack Gantos and illustrated by Sandman artist Dave McKean, follows a young, brown-skinned would-be terrorist. It was due to be released in May 2019.

“When a young boy enters a library wearing an explosive vest hidden underneath his lovely new red jacket, he has only one plan on his mind. But as he observes those around him becoming captivated by the books they are reading, the boy can’t help but question his reason for being there,” reads a description from its publisher, Abrams.

Comics publisher Zainab Akhtar described the comic on Twitter last week as dealing with “an illiterate brown Muslim boy who goes into a library with a suicide bomb only to start having second thoughts because people seem so into the world of books and if only he could read”.

“Because reading will help the ignorant brown Muslim boy question/renounce his beliefs, you see, in addition to being some vague kumbaya about how a specific interpretation of culture will save the barbarian,” she wrote.

An open letter to Abrams from the Asian Author Alliance, signed by more than 1,000 writers, teachers and readers, called the book “steeped in Islamophobia and profound ignorance”.

The letter continued: “The simple fact is that today, the biggest terrorist threat in the US is white supremacy. In publishing A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library, Abrams is wilfully fear-mongering and spreading harmful stereotypes in a failed attempt to show the power of story.”

Gantos’s story was originally part of Here I Stand, a 2016 young adult anthology for Amnesty International, which said at the time that Gantos’s story “celebrates the power of books to transform lives”.

As criticism of the comic spread online, McKean, one of the UK’s most acclaimed comics illustrators, responded, saying that the book was “firmly on the side of literacy, empathy and non-violence”.

“The premise of the book is that a boy uses his mind and faith to decide for himself that violence is not the right course,” he tweeted. Responding to a reader who had said the story was about “a brown boy basically learning all this from a white space”, McKean said that he had “had just this anxiety when the script came to me. I just hoped we’d moved beyond each of us only being able to talk to and from our own little cultural bubble. My responsibility was to research, talk to consultants.”

On Monday, McKean told the Guardian he felt it was “absolutely the right decision to bin the book”. “A few factors changed from the initiation of the project until now, and I’m sure we all have our own thoughts to take away from all this. I already had my doubts that a story like this should come from outside the community involved, and the arguments on Twitter convinced me that it shouldn’t,” he said. “I’ve listened and learned a hard but valuable lesson.”…

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Filed Under: "Islamophobia", claiming victim status, Featured, free speech Tagged With: A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library, Abrams, Dave McKean, Jack Gantos, Zainab Akhtar


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Comments

  1. Walter Sieruk says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 12:17 pm

    This jihad “graphic novel” is just another sinister and insidious means and method to dangerously influence to hears and minds of impressionable young people . The evil influences of Islam has no limits.

    Those heinous and horrible jihad suicide/homicide attacks committed by mind-programmed Muslims be those murderous jihad attacks occur in Pakistan or Indonesia or in any other nation. For that demonic type Islamic terror murder attacks are, for a large part, the results of those deceitful and manipulative imams who brainwash even entire families into actually wanting to become human bombs. Those sly and insidious imams, and sometimes the mullahs , with their methods of mind control as well as their lines and lies .As “We will honor you” and “You will go to paradise “ and “We are doing this for Allah.” That’s some very strand kind of “We.” For the reader to should well understand the same Muslim clerics who brainwash other people and then send them out to commit a murderous jihad attack are never, ever the one who do in themselves. They brainwash and just brainwash and manipulate into carrying out those evil and deadly actions. All the while the mass murders are going on those same Muslim clerics sit home safe. This alone show what totally despicable cowardly villains those kind of Muslim clerics actually are. The Bible informs its reader that “The counsels of the wicked are deceitful.” Proverbs 12:5. [N.K.J.V.]

    • gravenimage says

      Nov 30, 2018 at 8:16 pm

      Walter, this graphic novel is *Anti* Jihad.

      While the idea of a Jihad suicide bomber being deterred by the chance to read is not realistic, this book still presents this kind of terrorism as a *bad thing*. It is *not* urging children to wage violent Jihad.

      • mortimer says

        Nov 30, 2018 at 9:55 pm

        IT’S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME FOR JIHAD

        • gravenimage says

          Nov 30, 2018 at 10:37 pm

          More brilliant stuff from the talented Sye Ten Atheist. Thanks for the link, Mortimer.

    • J D S says

      Dec 1, 2018 at 11:10 am

      These stupid suicide bombers…..They just don’t get it…They have been easily brainwashed with 1400 years of nonsensical hogwash.
      The FACT that they are bound for that awful Lake of Fire is unable to enter their brainwashed mind..Pitiful!

  2. Jayell says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 12:30 pm

    So they’re alsio going to ban World War 2 books and films because these are ‘Germano-phobic’ or at least ‘Nazi-phobic’? And crime books and films because these are ‘criminal-phobic’?

  3. Jean (old) says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 12:38 pm

    “I already had my doubts that a story like this should come from outside the community involved, and the arguments on Twitter convinced me that it shouldn’t,” he said. “I’ve listened and learned a hard but valuable lesson.”

    McKean proclaims that he has learned the lesson “shut up, you’re white.” Too bad for him.

    . . .

    “the book was “firmly on the side of literacy, empathy and non-violence”.”

    That was exactly its problem from the point of view of those who complained. We can’t have any jihadis getting second thoughts, can we?

    . . .

    The logic of the open letter is hopelessly broken. It demands that the book be kept from the readers because of its “failed attempt to show the power of story”. In other words: Because narratives are not actually powerful at all, it is urgent that we employ censorship to keep this narrative from influencing anyone.

    The dogged mindlessness of evil is one of its most horrifying qualities.

    Never surrender your logic, or you will soon be lost to insanity.

  4. Jean (old) says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 12:50 pm

    Yslaire did it back in 2003: drew a comic about a female Arab suicide bomber falling in love with a Jewish boy and renouncing her terror plot. Instead of bombing the Brussels metro she has sex with him in a hotel room, still wearing her suicide belt. The author dubbed the couple “the Romeo and Juliet of our times”, and identified the work as a deeply felt anti-war statement.

    Le ciel au-dessus de Bruxelles (The sky above Brussels)

    https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/466228/un-bedeiste-rattrape-par-ses-premonitions

    • gravenimage says

      Nov 30, 2018 at 8:20 pm

      Yeah–only if “Juliet” had plotted to slaughter all of Romeo’s family…

      • Jean (old) says

        Dec 1, 2018 at 6:17 am

        gravenimage.

        Well, actually Romeo killed Tybalt, a member of Juliet’s family, in the feud between the families, so there is something in the comparison. And Romeo and Juliet had to flee their families and still ended up dead instead of happily married. Just like so many young couples entangled with islam do today…

        You remember this dreadful story, right? Shakespeare would have written a tragedy about it, had he lived today.

        https://www.voanews.com/a/man-blinded-by-father-siblings-for-falling-in-love/4410181.html

        Here is another Juliet, killed only for loving. As a Pakistani, she was not allowed to marry an Afghan. She eloped and married him anyway. The last night she lived – on their wedding night – they sought shelter in a Christian church, but were (shamefully!) turned out into the street. The next morning, they were gunned down at a train station by her brother. Romeo survived, but Juliet died.

        http://memini.co/memini/ghazala-khan/

        It was the first time in Western Europe that a whole family was sentenced for conspiracy to kill a family member (‘honor’ killing).

        Though not Shakespeare, still the person who wrote this poem in Ghazala’s honor did it well (there’s no name on it – possibly too dangerous for the author?):

        The train on the tracks,
        Moves,
        With the ebbs and flows
        Launching forward, backward,
        Forward again.

        The air is still.
        Betraying a secret,
        A sacred bond between parent and child,
        To be broken.

        By blood.
        Her blood.
        In its purest form.

        She loved,
        It was denied.
        She tried,
        It was trampled,
        She hoped,
        It was delayed.
        She finally trusted,
        It was broken.

        How can you who gave her life
        think you have the right to take it away?
        You, mortal, the most broken of all,
        Think, she is anyone’s but God’s?

        She is God’s!
        He put soul into her being,
        And love into her heart
        And faith as your daughter.

        It is You who have transgressed!
        God is on her side,
        As she is on His.

        She is free as she was born,
        It is You who are now on eternal trial.

  5. Jean (old) says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 12:51 pm

    Yslaire did it back in 2003: drew a comic about a female Arab suicide bomber falling in love with a Jewish boy and renouncing her terror plot. Instead of bombing the Brussels metro she has sex with him in a hotel room, still wearing her suicide belt. The author dubbed the couple “the Romeo and Juliet of our times”, and identified the work as a deeply felt anti-war statement.

    Le ciel au-dessus de Bruxelles (The sky above Brussels)

    https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/466228/un-bedeiste-rattrape-par-ses-premonitions

  6. Jedothek says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 2:01 pm

    Robert did not mention ( what I am sure crossed his mind ) the issue of freedom of the press. How, if at all, is this enshrined in English law? Can someone inform us?

    • gravenimage says

      Nov 30, 2018 at 8:21 pm

      England has a long tradition of freedom of speech. That tradition is in increasing danger now.

  7. mgoldberg says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 2:56 pm

    A better book is ‘The Path to Paradise’-the inner world of suicide bombers and their dispatchers by Anat Berko. She’s an Israeii who served as a colonel in the IDF

    • mgoldberg says

      Nov 30, 2018 at 2:58 pm

      forgot to add: I wonder if that one is available for sale there…. esp. since it’s not a novel but very much the story of the homicidists in their words.

    • gravenimage says

      Nov 30, 2018 at 8:22 pm

      mgoldberg, you can buy that book here:

      https://www.amazon.com/Path-Paradise-Suicide-Bombers-Dispatchers/dp/1597973645

  8. Ray Jarman says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 4:30 pm

    Maybe someone on the left and the world of the cult can explain to me the difference between this and the burning of the books that most of us have seen that took place during the prelude to the internment of the Jews in German. Dave McKean is a coward and should be shunned forever.

  9. underbed cat says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 6:26 pm

    Pull the graphic novel and pull the other book that influenced the main character to become a jihadist and the places it is taught.

  10. FYI says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 7:45 pm

    You know when Amazon sometimes recommends a book?…

    The Asian Author Alliance might like to read

    “Steeped in Christophobia,antisemitism and profound theological ignorance”

    The koran

    It is certainly classifiable as a fantasy fiction genre/comic novel:

    It has TALKING ANTS in it koran 27:18…a TALKING INFANT IN A CRIB koran 19:30.. a FLYING HORSE WITH WINGS and Solomon’s Jinn Army koran 27:17
    A “prophet” who split the Moon in half,Villains{the Jews}and a cast of millions..of innocent victims…

    Who could fail to love TALKING ANTS in the most “perfect” book ever written?

    “O Ants!Enter your dwellings lest Solomon and his armies crush you,unperceiving”
    Koran 27 v18

    Look out Solomon!It’s allah’s TALKING ANTS…mind you don’t step on them..

  11. FYI says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 7:58 pm

    Is it too soon for my own graphic novel-possible future film screenplay?

    The Brothers Mustafa

    3 boys on a mission…

    One goes into the camel decorating,polishing and repair business.
    One becomes a jihadist and accidently kills himself with 66 fellow jihadists.
    One comes out of the closet,becomes an Atheist and runs off to the Great satan of USA with his ex-IDF Jewish Israeli boyfriend…

    mustafa camel…mustafa bomb….mustafa deathwish

    What?what?”too soon after 9-11?”

    Now:I’m off to “meet a muslim”

    “Hey Mohammed!How YOU doin’…. High Fi..{KaBoom}”

    • gravenimage says

      Nov 30, 2018 at 8:30 pm

      I am seriously considering doing a graphic novel life of Muhammed.

      Here is a piece I have already done on Muhammed’s rape of little Aisha. (Warning! Graphic Image!)

      http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/gravenimageartist/media/bWVkaWFJZDo1MTM3OTE0Mw==/?ref=1

      Would any here be interested?

    • Anjuli Pandavar says

      Dec 1, 2018 at 4:52 am

      FYI

      🙂 love the “must have a” pun. Is “mustafa camel” also intended as an allusion to Mustafa Kemal Pasha Ataturk?

      I had an idea for a two-brothers story along similar lines, but I doubt I’ll get around to writing it. Keep us posted.

  12. gravenimage says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 8:13 pm

    UK: Graphic novel depicting Muslim suicide bomber pulled from publication for “Islamophobia”
    ………………………

    This is just shameful–and whatever the shortcomings of this work, it is at least broaching the issue of Jihad terror–and the use of children to wage it. It should be welcomed on that basis, at the very least–this is more than most writers and artists are doing these days.

    More:

    Comics publisher Zainab Akhtar described the comic on Twitter last week as dealing with “an illiterate brown Muslim boy who goes into a library with a suicide bomb only to start having second thoughts because people seem so into the world of books and if only he could read”.

    “Because reading will help the ignorant brown Muslim boy question/renounce his beliefs, you see, in addition to being some vague kumbaya about how a specific interpretation of culture will save the barbarian,” she wrote.
    ………………………

    Is Zainab Akhtar here admitting that Jihad terror is due to closely held beliefs?

    And is she sneering at the idea that a child being coerced into blowing up a library full of innocent people–including other children–is barbaric? *Ugh*.

  13. infidel says

    Nov 30, 2018 at 9:09 pm

    These wretched Koranimals are not interested in anything good or anything progressive or even the slightest of reform.

  14. Capn Jack says

    Dec 1, 2018 at 11:01 am

    ,” he said. “I’ve listened and learned a hard but valuable lesson.”…

    BS…It sounds like they got to you. Did they threaten your family,
    as usual?

  15. Noel says

    Dec 1, 2018 at 11:09 pm

    This book does sound pointless, but it doesn’t matter how bad the book is. I can remember British libraries stocking books such as “I have two daddies” – trying to normalise the abnormal.
    What does matter is that it can be stillborn because it’s pointless, bad or ill-informed.
    Those qualities are possessed by countless books, television programmes and art.
    My wife and I walked into an art gallery once and saw a blank canvas entitled “Untitled”. I’ve not been in a gallery since. Crap books and crap art can be seen everywhere. One has to be discerning, not have the judgement made for you by your “betters”.

  16. Carolyne says

    Dec 4, 2018 at 9:40 pm

    Hey I’m still worried about the words to “Baby it’s Cold Outside.” Can’t waste time on trivial things like suicide belts. The world has gone crazy.

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