A new book being published that, unlike Yale University Press, will include the Muhammad cartoons. The Volokh Conspiracy has the news:
I’m pleased to be the first to report that the newly founded Voltaire Press at Duke University has just published Muhammad: The “Banned” Images. The book includes all the images that were omitted by the Yale University Press from Jytte Klausen’s The Cartoons That Shook the World — including the 12 Mohammed cartoons — plus many more historically significant items (a total of 31), together with brief discussions of the context behind each work. The images, reproduced in high quality and in full color, include works by William Blake, Gustave Dore, and Salvador Dali, as well as Muslim artists from the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires.
The book includes an Introduction by Prof. Gary Hull, Director of the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace at Duke University, who has been the driving force behind the book. It also includes as an afterword, a Statement of Principle, which I am honored to have been asked to sign. (The Statement is followed by a disclaimer that “The above signatories agree with the ideas expressed in the Statement of Principle. However, they were not involved in the creation of Muhammad: The “Banned Images”, and have no responsibility for its contents.”
The disclaimer to the Statement of Principles wreaks of dhimmitude and is obviously a wink and a nod to Muslims who will cry blasphemy as they charge forward, effigies and ‘Death to Voltaire’ signs in hand. Read the Introduction:
From the Introduction by Dr. Hull:
Muhammad: The “Banned” Images is a “picture book” — or errata to the bowdlerized version of Klausen’s book as published by Yale University Press. It is of course more than that. It is a statement of defiance against censors, terror-mongers, and their Western appeasers. It is a rallying cry for free speech, freedom of the press, and for open scholarship unfettered by fear.
The Statement of Principles is also interesting. The creators seem to go out of their way to not single out or offend Islam or Muslims, while equivocating violence and stifling of speech across religions and groups, and they even seem to support freedom of speech for terrorists like Bill Ayers. Anyway, in an age of almost total submission to Islamic sharia law, two steps forward and one step back, is better than three steps back.
There is a wonderful quote on the website as well:
If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. ~ George Washington
Halal slaughter? There is also an excellent supplement to the book, in PDF, titled “Murder, Mayhem & Self-Censorship A timeline of reactions to images and descriptions of Muhammad.” Here is a sampling:
1955 – April: Eight-foot sculpture on the Appellate Division of the First Department of the New York State Supreme Court (at Madison Square Park), in place since ca. 1900, is identified during renovation as Muhammad, and removed after the Egyptian, Indonesian and Pakistani ambassadors to the United Nations protest its presence. See Muhammad: The”Banned” Images p. 13.
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,866187,00.html
http://www.meforum.org/pipes/5487/destroying-sculptures-of-muhammad
1988 – September 26: Publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses
1988 – October (early): Satanic Verses banned in India
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/11/salman-rushdie-satanic-verses
1989 – January 14: Satanic Verses publicly burned by Muslims in Bradford, England
http://students.stlawu.edu/theweave/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=712&Itemid=39
1989 – February 14: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issues fatwa against Salman Rushdie
1989 – March 1: Cody’s Books and a branch of Waldenbooks in Berkeley, CA, are firebombed after their managers assert that they will continue to sell Satanic Verses
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/01/world/2-bookstores-in-berkeley-are-firebombed-rushdietie-is-explored.html
1989 – April: Collets and Dillons in London are firebombed for stocking Satanic Verses; bombs also at High Wycombe, on London’s King’s Road, in the Liberty department store, and the York Penguin bookshop. Unexploded devices discovered at Nottingham, Guildford, and Peterborough
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/11/salman-rushdie-satanic-verses
1989 – August 3: Unidentified 21-year-old Lebanese man dies priming a book bomb he intended to use to kill Rushdie
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article531110.ece
1991 – July 3: Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator of the Satanic Verses, is beaten and stabbed in Milan, after death threats by Muslims
http://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/g/general/general3926.pdf
1991 – July 12: Hitoshi Igarashi, professor of comparative culture and Japanese translator of the Satanic Verses, is stabbed to death at Tsukuba University, near Tokyo
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/18/specials/rushdie-translator.html
1993 – July 2: Attack targeting Aziz Nesin, a translator of the Satanic Verse, kills 37 Alewi intellectuals at the Madimak Hotel in Sivas, Turkey
http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/domestic/9331717.asp?scr=1
1993 – October 12: William Nygaard, publisher of the Satanic Verses in Norway, was shot and injured
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/11/salman-rushdie-satanic-verses
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/12/world/publisher-of-the-satanic-verses-in-norway-isshot.html
1997 – Council on Inter-American Relations (CAIR) objects to the figure of Muhammad in Adolf Weinman’s frieze of lawmakers in the Supreme Court, Washington, D.C. Chief Justice Rehnquist replies that it is unlawful to remove or injure any architectural feature of the Supreme Court, but that the Supreme Court will change its tourist literature to be more sensitive to Muslim religious beliefs. (See Muhammad: The “Banned” Images, p. 13 and no. 28.)
http://www.cair-net.org/pdf/10th_anniversary_report.pdf, p. 22.
2002 – June 24: Police foil plot by fundamentalist Muslims to bomb the Cathedral of Bologna, which contains a 15th-c. fresco depicting Muhammad in Hell. (See Muhammad: The “Banned” Images, p. 13 and no. 6.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jun/24/arts.artsnews
2006 – January 30: Former President Bill Clinton, speaking in Qatar of the Danish cartoons: “None of us are totally free of stereotypes about people of different races, different ethnic groups, and different religions … there was this appalling example in northern Europe, in Denmark … these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam.”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2006/01/clinton-warns-of-rising-anti-islamic-feeling.html
2006 – February 3: Kurtis Cooper, spokesman for the U.S. State Department, announces: “We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable.”
http://www.redorbit.com/news/politics/379434/us_backs_muslims_in_cartoon_dispute/index.html
2006 – February 7: New York Times states, “The New York Times and much of the rest of the nation’s news media have reported on the cartoons but refrained from showing them. That seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are so easy to describe in words.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/07/opinion/07tue2.html
2006 – February 17: Two editors of the University of Illinois’ student newspaper, the Daily Illini, are suspended (one is later fired) for reprinting the cartoons
http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/bigblogoncampus/archive/2006/02/17/editor-suspended-overcartoons.aspx
2006 – February 17: Italian Minister Roberto Calderoli appears on TV wearing a T-shirt depicting one of the Danish cartoons. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi demands Calderoli’s resignation. Calderoli states, “What happened in Libya has nothing to do with my T-shirt. The question is different. What’s at stake is Western civilisation.” He later quits under protest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/international/europe/19cartoon.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4728188.stm
2006 – February 28: one or more of the cartoons have been printed in at least 143 newspapers in 56 countries.
www.boston.com/news/world/worldly_boston/chronology.doc
2006 – March 7: From November 4, 2005 to March 7, 2006, 28 American periodicals published some or all of the cartoons; 10 of these were university newspapers.
2006 – March: Studi Cattolici publishes a cartoon that pokes fun at Italian politicians who cave in to Muslim pressure. Even though Muhammad does not appear in the cartoon, Italian Muslims profess outrage, and the Catholic organization Opus Dei (one of whose members publishes Studi Cattolici) promptly issues an apology.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/apr/17/pressandpublishing.italy
http://sixthcolumn.blogspot.com/2006/04/new-muhammad-comic-printed.html
http://alemaniasociedad.blogspot.com/2006/04/opus-dei-on-studi-cattolici-cartoon.html
2006 – April 6: Police foil another plot by fundamentalist Muslims to bomb the Cathedral of Bologna, which contains a 15th-c. fresco depicting Muhammad in Hell (see also 2002). Today the public is denied access to the part of the church where the fresco is situated. (See Muhammad: The “Banned” Images, p. 13 and no. 6.)
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/20080641217873
2006 – April 27: Dutch judge rules that Ayaan Hirsi Ali must abandon her home, since neighbors complain that her presence is an unacceptable security risk to them.
http://www.slate.com/id/2141276/
2006 – April 1: Borders and Waldenbooks refuse to stock the April/May 2006 issue of Free Inquiry magazine, because it includes the Danish cartoons: ”For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority,” says a spokeswoman for the Borders Group. Paul Kurtz, editor in chief of Free Inquiry, says, ”To refuse to distribute a publication because of fear of vigilante violence is to undermine freedom of press – so vital for our democracy.”
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E2D71230F932A35757C0A9609C8B63
2006 – September 17: Pope Benedict XVI apologizes to Muslims twice in 2 days for quoting (in a discussion of reason vs. violence) a 14th-c. comment by Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aKbMHhuvCE6A&refer=home
(again, this is just a sample, it is a long, long list that continues to grow)
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