I think it was Wednesday when the news broke that Random House pulled the book “The Jewel of Medina” that was set to be released on August 12 to be accompanied by an eight city publicity tour. It was a fictional novel that told the story of the child bride of the Prophet Mohammed, A’isha. She was engaged to the Prophet at the age of 6, married at the age of 9, consummated the relationship at age of 11, and reportedly was the Prophet’s great love.
Random House pulled the publication due to “cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.”
One scholar accused author Sherry Jones of writing “soft porn” but Jones told Publishers Marketplace that there were no sex scenes in the book.
The SmartBitch thread on this topic has garnered over 400 comments.
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Open Threads at Dear Author. Want to know what new releases are out this month and what readers are excited about reading? Check out the threads below. 
We don’t like to censor comments nor do we endorse the comments of any poster. We do reserve the right to moderate comments but most of the time will not, believing, as Justice Brandeis did, that the greater good is in “more speech, not enforced silence.”
I have a feeling I will be happier not reading those comments.
Have no fear. As a poster to that string, I can tell you that the conversation is a good one. There’s only about two instances of what might be described as a flamer and those were disputed and discussed…So, it’s really interesting to read through the posts.
It does take a while though.
Yes, I read through quite a few of them myself on the day it came out, talking about bringing people out of the woodwork. I posted the info on F. Paul Wilson’s website and boy did I get responses. People couldn’t believe that something like that would happen in America in today’s world. Shame on Random House.