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The backlash contiunes for The Jewel of Medina

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LCW
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Location: Southern California

Post by LCW » Mon December 8th, 2008, 5:27 pm

Well at least they're advocating peaceful protest for a change! I'd love to see them speak out against the violence and hate speech that has already occurred from the Muslim community in response to this book. But I do have to say it's much ado about nothing! If they hadn't gotten their knickers in a knot in the first place and responded so ridiculously this awful book, awful because of the writing not the content, would've been a flop but instead is generating enourmous press that should've gone to a much more deserving book.
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them. --Arnold Lobel

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LCW
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Joined: August 2008
Location: Southern California

Post by LCW » Mon December 8th, 2008, 5:34 pm

I found this in the Q&A on the book's site. Pretty convenient "revelation" from God, if you ask me!!

Muhammad’s initial support of women’s equality was undermined by his male followers, who resisted sharing power with their wives. In fact, in giving women rights they’d never had before, such as the right to testify in court and to inherit property -- rights that women didn’t possess in western culture until many centuries later -- Muhammad created a monster in the eyes of Islamic men. Soon their wives were asserting their rights, including the right to say “no” to sex! So many men complained that Muhammad, forseeing the loss of followers, received a compromise revelation from God allowing men to beat their wives “lightly” for refusing sex -- but only after first trying other, nonviolent measures.
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them. --Arnold Lobel

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MLE (Emily Cotton)
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 3566
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: started in childhood with the classics, which, IMHO are HF even if they were contemporary when written.
Favourite HF book: Prince of Foxes, by Samuel Shellabarger
Preferred HF: Currently prefer 1600 and earlier, but I'll read anything that keeps me turning the page.
Location: California Bay Area

Post by MLE (Emily Cotton) » Mon December 8th, 2008, 6:25 pm

I would dispute her comment 'rights that women didn't possess in Western culture until many centuries later.' Which western cultures? There were plenty of them, all with differing customs on the topics mentioned.

Comments lose their credibility with me when I sniff 'culture-baiting' attitudes where two things are compared by taking the worst possible example of one side and comparing it to a much more favorable example of the other. Bad statistical methodology, bad history, and basically just another way of mis-representing the truth.

Muhammad's revelations were convenient on a lot of levels: when he ws in Mecca, a minority with few followers, all his revelations were about peace and harmony-- they sounded as though he had lifted it from the Nestorian Christian priest who was an uncle to his first wife, Kadijah. That's where you get the Qur'anic verse "There shall be no compulsion in religion."

Later, after Kadijah died and he had more followers, (and wives) his visions became militant. From that point onwards, most of the revelations involved rationales as to why it was a good thing to kill and dominate whoever didn't agree with him.

Qur'anic scholars deal with this by the principle of 'abrogation' -- meaning if he said "Christians good, make the friends" in one surah, and "Christians bad, you are rewarded for killing them" (there aren't any surahs which say nice things about Jews) then they say whichever revelation came last overrides the one that came first.

The problem with this is that, since the sayings in the Qur'an were collected years after Muhammad's death, and there is no agreed on timeline for the sayings, everybody gets to argue about which came first: love or hate.

Ash
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Post by Ash » Sat December 13th, 2008, 3:58 pm

Quite a damning review of the book in this morning's NYT. Let alone the controversy, her writing appears to be less than stellar.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/books ... ams-t.html

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Divia
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Post by Divia » Sat December 13th, 2008, 4:14 pm

I'd really like to know how much this book has made.
News, views, and reviews on books and graphic novels for young adult.
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Ariadne
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Location: At the foothills of Mt. Level

Post by Ariadne » Sun December 14th, 2008, 1:32 am

I'd read in Publishers Weekly that it sold 3000 copies in its first few weeks, which is decent, but it had an announced printing of 50,000 copies, and generally poor reviews. I doubt it's done anywhere near as well as the publisher expected.

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Misfit
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Post by Misfit » Sun December 14th, 2008, 1:52 am

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,832 in Books
Although clearly people want to read it. My library system,
31 holds on first copy returned of 30 copies

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