So the associate editor of an organ of our *free press* believes that a work of fiction should be banned because it may offend religious sensibilities. Absolutely staggering. pic.twitter.com/zyfA9dK7kU
— Paul Embery (@PaulEmbery) 1 maart 2019
Uit het artikel van de boekenverbrander:
Mobeen Azhar, a lively presenter on the BBC Asian Network, with a modish Mr Whippy-style quiff, was a mere toddler in 1988 when Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses was published, and was blissfully unaware of the subsequent fatwa – death sentence – levelled on the author’s head by the Ayatollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, no less.
(…)
The conclusion Azhar comes to is conventional – that there is no case for banning, or burning, the book. Yet I am more persuaded by a former jihadi named Shahid Butt, who now spends his time deradicalising misguided souls in Birmingham. To him, another rioter from 1989, Rushdie is simply “a dickhead”. He says: “What kind of literary writer, academic, are you that the only way that you can get any fame is by being derogatory and by insulting billions of people. Is that the best you can do?”Rushdie’s silly, childish book should be banned under today’s anti-hate legislation. It’s no better than racist graffiti on a bus stop. I wouldn’t have it in my house, out of respect to Muslim people and contempt for Rushdie, and because it sounds quite boring. I’d be quite inclined to burn it, in fact. It’s a free country, after all.
