Dan Brown Worse than Protocols?

From the UPI:

Jordanian authorities reportedly confiscated copies of the controversial bestseller, “The Da Vinci Code,” for slandering Christianity.

Amman’s daily al-Ghad said copies of the book were seized from a publishing house in the Jordanian capital and its owner, Ahmed Abou Tawk, was summoned for interrogation.

The paper quoted the president of the state’s Publication Department, Ahmed Kodat, as saying other titles were confiscated in addition to “The Da Vinci Code” for undermining religions.

“This book is largely harmful for Christianity and was banned from many countries, including Lebanon,” Kodat said, noting Christian clerics in Jordan demanded the ban.

I haven’t been able to find out what the “other titles” worthy of censorship are. But I think we can assume that one title in particular is not included. From an axt.org profile of Jordan (1996):

Until recently, a broad range of Arabic translations of antisemitic texts including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was widely available. Since the signing of the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, however, such material has been phased out of mainstream bookshops and is available today primarily in Islamist bookshops.

Plus from the New York Times (2002):

Stay in a five-star hotel anywhere from Jordan to Iran, and you can buy the infamous forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

While according to al-Jazeera:

Lebanese officials have rejected US calls to intervene with Hizb Allah over a mini-series on Zionism airing on its television station.

Government officials said doing so would be a violation of free speech.

…The State Department said on Tuesday that it had complained about the series to the governments of both Lebanon and Syria on the grounds that it incorporated elements of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous 19th-century forgery.

(Tipped from Come and See)

6 Responses

  1. […] The Publishing News article also alleges that “Not surprisingly, the book was banned in many Catholic countries.” Given that most Catholic countries I can think of are democratic with freedom of speech, and that the Index has been discontinued, in fact I would be surprised. The only places I know of where it has been banned are Lebanon and Jordan. […]

  2. This is a great site! I’ve bookmarked you in my bloglines account. Keep up the great work :)

    SLH

  3. P.S. I just noticed you have a few really great links for book reviews. If you are interested in being a book reviewer for me, let me know because I’d love to have you. Just see my blog at http://www.blogforbooks.com and look under the requirements.

  4. […] (Previous entries on the Code here and here) […]

  5. […] same Egypt which recently ran an epic TV mini-series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (I noted the same hypocrisy in the case of Lebanon a while ago), and the same Farouk Hosni who in 1998 […]

  6. […] the 108 countries which voted in favour of the resolution was Lebanon, which in 2005 banned The Da Vinci Code while allowing Hezbollah to broadcast an anti-Semitic TV programme on the […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.