BookFox has been tracking with the Random House decision not to publish the Islamically-offensive “The Jewel of Medina” from the beginning, but this blacklisting from The Langum Charitable Trust comes as a complete surprise. On the heels of a Random House defense from Stanley Fish and a rebuke from Salman Rushdie, the Langum Trust announced that it will not consider ANY Random House books until they publish the Jewel of Medina.
This is not an empty threat: Random House books have frequently won the awards offered by the trust. The Langum Trust statement to the public calls the Random House move a “cowardly act of self-censorship” (no Stanley Fish, self-censorship is not an oxymoron). Galleycat tallies up the authors most likely affected by this blacklisting, and the Guardian has an article that quotes David Langum, founder of Langum Trust:
“Random House had already paid a $100,000 advance, arranged for book club publication, and foreign publication. It changed course and self-censored solely on the political grounds of fear of offending Muslims or fomenting violence.”
It is not the easiest publicity pickle to be stuck between the risk of “fomenting violence” and sacrificing the Western view of free speech, but there are very few scenarios in which Sherry Jones’ “The Jewel of Medina” would be offensive enough to warrant this publishing guillotine. Perhaps Random House is thinking of danger to itself and its subsidiaries (remember the translators and publishers killed in regards to Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses”) but courage is a virtue required by both authors and publishers, although it seems to have been replaced on the publishing side by avarice.
