Inflammatory Words

Suzanne Morrison provides me with a link to the Seattle Times article about the pulling by Random House of Sherry Jones's Jewel of Medina. The report makes clear that on being told by academic Denise Spellberg that the book was inflammatory and 'pornographic', Muslim website owner Shahed Amanullah did not take up the baton of alarm, as some British newspapers have (mainly by omission) implied, but simply sent out emails asking postgraduate students if they had heard of the book, presumably in order to discover Muslim opinion. He is reported as saying this:

"What I got back was a collective shrug of the shoulders. The thing that is surreal for me is that here you had a non-Muslim write a book, and you had a non-Muslim complain about it, and a non-Muslim publisher pull the book."

Well, now of course the British publisher of the book has been firebombed.

Looking back on this story it's easy to see whose words were inflammatory.