Now this is the way to sell a book; like when we were kids if it was banned in Boston -you knew it was a best seller. But then people went to war over a Document entitled the Declaration of Independence and a war was fought over an ear once..... So how to sell a book - send yourself a lot of death threats, all the police, the FBI, and terrorize yourself with death threats......throw in a little bit of sex - or earthy matters and people will be panting and fighting to get the book. Saba Welcome, saba22 Sign Up for Newsletters | Log Out Go to Advanced Search June 30, 2001 Muslim Cleric Calls for Death of Author Who Wrote on Islam By DEAN E. MURPHY The New York Times Khalid Duran, a Muslim author who has been called an apostate. Expanded Coverage In Depth: Religion radical Muslim cleric in Jordan has issued a religious opinion that advocates the death of a Muslim scholar in the United States in punishment for a book he wrote about Islam. The cleric, Sheik Abdel Moneim Abu Zant, declared the author, Khalid Duran, an apostate and called on Muslims in the United States "to unify against him," a Jordanian newspaper aligned with the cleric reported. The paper also reported that Mr. Abu Zant urged two prominent Sunni Islamic religious institutions to issue judgments of apostasy against Mr. Duran, the equivalent of a death sentence. The book, "Children of Abraham," an introduction to Islam, was commissioned by the American Jewish Committee as part of a project to promote better understanding between Jews and Muslims. It was reported to be offensive for "distorting Islam" by focusing too much on issues like female circumcision, the relationship between men and woman, whether Ramadan observances decreased productivity and whether head scarves contributed to marital infidelity. The edict was reported on June 6 in the weekly Arabic newspaper Al- Shahed, or The Observer, which is aligned with the Islamic Action Front, the party of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Mr. Abu Zant belongs. It is the main political opposition party in Jordan. The newspaper reported that the book's publication was "evidence of an evil intention to besmear the image of Islam in the United States." The intended result of the edict was that Mr. Duran's "blood will be shed," the newspaper said. Michael J. Wildes, Mr. Duran's lawyer, said that Mr. Duran, 61, had been moved from his suburban Washington home and was being provided 24-hour private security. The American Jewish Committee condemned the threat but said it had no plans to withdraw the book, which is for sale on the Internet and will be in bookstores soon. "In a free society no one should tolerate the threat to kill an author," said David A. Harris, executive director of the Jewish group, which is also publishing a book about Judaism for Muslims. "All Americans, not least Muslims, should immediately speak out against this outrage and assault on democratic society." Mr. Duran, who was born in Germany and moved to the United States in the 1980's, said yesterday that he had received death threats over the years because of writings that criticize extremist Islamic groups. But he had never been the target of a religious edict. He said the edict surprised him because unlike much of his academic and journalistic work, "Children of Abraham" was meant to have no particular point of view. Its aim was to present a variety of opinions. "One thing is clear: He has not read the book," Mr. Duran said of Mr. Abu Zant. "I hear every day from other Muslims who have read the book that they like the book." David Schenker, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the edict by Mr. Abu Zant did not carry the same religious authority as the one against Salman Rushdie, which was issued in 1989 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Mr. Schenker described Mr. Abu Zant as more of a populist religious figure than an accomplished Islamic religious scholar. Even before its publication, the book and its author were criticized by some Muslims in the United States, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, an advocacy group in Washington that often sides with Muslim hard-liners on Middle East issues. The groups questioned Mr. Duran's credentials and suggested that the book sensationalized some issues, like the treatment of women in Islamic societies. Officials at the American Jewish Committee said that attacks by CAIR most likely laid the foundation for Mr. Abu Zant's edict, particularly since the article in Al-Shahed mentioned the American group. But Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for CAIR, said the Jewish organization was making too much of the Al- Shahed article. Mr. Hooper described the article as "an editorial in a party newspaper that nobody ever heard of." He said that Mr. Abu Zant was making a recommendation to the Sunni religious authorities, not issuing a death sentence of his own. "Even if he said what the American Jewish Committee says he said, it is not a fatwa, it is just some guy in a party newspaper in Jordan," Mr. Hooper said. "This isn't about a death edict, it is about the American Jewish Committee going around pressing Islamaphobic hot bottons trying to get publicity for their deceitful book." But Reuven Paz, academic director of the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, near Tel Aviv, said that Sheik Abu Zant's declaration was serious. "What Abu Zant said literally is that his blood is `permissible,´ " he said. "Though there is no direct translation of that in English, it means that any Muslim can and should kill Duran." Mr. Abu Zant, a former member of the Jordanian parliament, was jailed in 1999 for denouncing his government's decision to close the Amman office of the militant Islamic movement Hamas. Last year he issued a religious threat against a Jordanian poet and he has joined other clerics in denouncing Pokemon as a Jewish plot against Islam. Home | Back to National | Search | HelpBack to The New York Times Newspaper. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
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