Ticking Book Bomb

For those of you who don’t know, the Koran claims that the Prophet Mohammed married a six-year-old named A’isha  and had sex with her when she turned nine.  Later, she became one of his favorite wives.  Those were wacky times, so many Muslims are fine with this.  So fine, in fact, that they don’t like anyone saying anything bad about Mohammed or A’isha.  But to save time actually reading and discerning the meaning of things, they’d just prefer you didn’t mention A’isha at all.  And by “prefer you didn’t mention”, I mean “would like to murder you for mentioning”.  Case in point: the new book Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, which is a fictionalized retelling of the A’isha story with particular emphasis on the idea that A’isha became one of Mohammed’s closest and most trusted advisors.  The offices of Gibson Square Books, the UK publisher, were attacked by arsonists, and Random House refused to publish the novel in the US for fear of similar attacks.  Courageously, Beaufort Books has stepped in to release it in the states.  Like those offended by this book, I haven’t read it, so I don’t know if it’s any good.  But that really doesn’t matter.  Those Danish Mohammed cartoons from a few years back weren’t particularly clever either, but someone needs to call out instead of defer to the crazies.  And it helps to be reminded from time to time that freedom also includes the freedom to cause offense.  That said, I will kill you and your family if you ever say anything bad about The Goonies.  I just love that movie.  More details here.