From the Globe and Mail:

This month, Random House in New York shelved plans to release The Jewel of Medina, an historical novel about the Prophet Mohammed’s second and youngest wife, Aisha. Their reason: It might incite a violent backlash.

Might? That’s all it takes these days? According to whom?

Welcome to where things get interesting. Long before the controversy arose, Random House sent an endorsement request to Denise Spellberg, a non-Muslim history professor at the University of Texas. She found parts of the manuscript offensive and decided that Muslims should feel the same.

Reportedly judging the book to be a “national security threat,” she depicted it as “more dangerous than the Satanic Verses.” Prof. Spellberg ought to know: She teaches Salman Rushdie’s notorious novel in her class. Clearly, she doesn’t back censorship.

And yet her lawyer warned Random House not to use Prof. Spellberg’s name in or on the novel. Random House then consulted more “scholars of Islam.” In effect, the publisher invited postcolonial theorists with ulterior agendas to make mincemeat of its mass-market offering. Also pulled in was the corporation’s head of security.

Meanwhile, a listserv of graduate students in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies caught wind of the still-unpublished novel. They heard about it through a Muslim website manager who claims to have received a “frantic” call from Prof. Spellberg. His postings got forwarded to various forums, ultimately reaching a blogger who circulated a protest strategy.

There’s no evidence that anybody paid serious attention to his plan.

However, no matter the resounding lack of threats, Random House announced it would postpone publication for the sake of safety – including that of the author, Sherry Jones.

Mind you, Ms. Jones is free to court a fatwa: Random House has now terminated her contract so she may shop the manuscript elsewhere. “We stand firmly by our responsibility to support our authors,” its corporate statement reads. That’s one way to prove it.

How to begin unravelling the absurdity of this decision? For starters, Random House is in the business of free expression. Of course so are newspapers – and most of them didn’t reprint the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

But this novel can’t be compared to those cartoons. The Jewel of Medina treats both the Prophet and his bride with deep affection. My own conversation with Ms. Jones affirms her respect for the dignity of Aisha.

“I wrote Jewel, in part, because I recognize the absence of women’s voices in the way Islamic history is told,” she explained by phone. “Women played a huge leadership role in the founding of the faith. Silencing my voice only achieves more silencing of theirs.”

Thus another absurdity. The muzzling of Sherry Jones originated with a woman. To boot, Denise Spellberg is non-Muslim. Why no cries of interference, imperialism, even racism from those who typically tell non-Muslims to stay out of Islamic issues?

And a curious form of racism the pulping of this book is. Random House has revealed what low expectations it has of Muslims. Pre-emptive censorship – PC, you could say – reduces all believers to the status of children, incapable of handling sensitive material with civility. Now, that’s offensive.

Although Irshad Manji, has been critical of Muslim fanatics, she is missing the point here. It’s true that Prof. Spellberg – like most academics – is suffering from terminal Political Correctness and Random House are behaving like gutless poltroons, but their doing so is not entirely without cause. The perpetration of such delights as beheadings, stabbings, death threats, fatwas and general jihad mayhem tends to be the response of Muslims when righting a perceived minor slight against an alleged prophet. Although, in polite Canada, symbolic decapitation through an extended whine to the Human Rights Commission is often the preferred route.

And we have low expectations of Muslims because they can’t handle ‘sensitive material with civility’. I wonder why.

Those who make the decisions at Random House, of course, are not in the business of free expression; they are in the business of making a profit and living long enough to enjoy it.

That being said, it’s good to see that a Muslim is saying that the suppression of this book is absurd. And not all Muslims are desperate to find a reason to chop someone’s head off, so I expect there will be a groundswell of rational Muslims protesting to have it published. Maybe not.