The New Yorker‘s Book Bench blog has followed up on my blog post about the decision by the publisher Creation House (an imprint of Strang Communications) to scrub all reference to the book Islam is of Devil, by Terry D. Jones. The book came out in August, shortly before Jones became globally notorious for his planned Koran-burning stunt. Notes blog author Ian Crouch:
It’s fairly straightforward that Strang would choose to distance itself from Jones, though other writers whose images have been burned in effigy, as Jones’s was on Monday in Afghanistan, have likely seen their sales rise. Still, it seems especially disingenuous to hide the book away at this point. The content is no different this week than it was last week, and seems to be in line, at least in tone, with the publisher’s other titles on Islam.
Crouch notes titles such as Penetrating the Strongholds of Islam, about life in the Philippines, and a novel called The Y Factor. According to the blurb:
Computer scientist Eric Colburn and geneticist Alana McKinsey make a shocking discovery. While working on National Geographic’s genographic project, they uncover Muslim researcher Dr. Alomari’s plot to co-opt the program so he can prove that Ishmael is Abraham’s rightful heir. Can Eric and Alana stop him before his plan inflames the Muslim world to destroy Israel?
(This kind of fantasy is typical of the bottom-end of evangelical publishing, and Muslims are not the only target: let us recall Charles Colson’s Gideon’s Torch, in which gays clamour for aborted fetus tissue as a cure for AIDS.)
Another Islam-related volume from Strang Crouch discusses is Mohamed’s Moon, about a Muslim terrorist who comes to California, only to discover that he has a Christian twin brother, and that “the operation will destroy both his brother and the woman he believes should rightfully be his.”
Copies of Islam is of the Devil are apparently still available from Jones’s Dove World Outrearch Center in Gainesville – it looks like it may end up being a rarity.
Unlike the Koran, despite Jones’s efforts.
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