Iran Boycotts World’s Largest Book Fair

By Walter Brasch

      Iran is boycotting the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest trade convention for publishers and vendors.

      The six-day convention, which ends Sunday, brought more than 7,400 exhibitors from 100 countries. Attendance is more than 300,000.

      The reason for the boycott?

      Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, was the keynote speaker.

      In 1989, a year after its publication, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s religious and political leader, banned the book and issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death because the Ayatollah and millions of Muslims believe no one should insult Muslims, the religion Islam, or write against the prophet Mohammed. Although a new government a decade later cancelled the death threat, the fatwa still exists.

      Militant Muslims aren’t the only ones who believe in suppressing literature and thought.

      Nazi Germany banned books by Jews, and created fires where the people could throw their books. At the same time the Nazis were burning books, Hollywood was bowing to the self-imposed “film standards” of the Hays Commission, which was vigorously keeping American film “pure” of evil thoughts and sexual depictions.

      A decade after World War II ended, and with Hollywood censorship still restricting script content, Americans threw rock and roll records, which they called the Devil’s Tool, into bonfires.

      Two weeks before the Frankfurt Book Fair was Banned Book Week in the United States. The annual information campaign is sponsored by the American Library Association to highlight the problem with censorship. Most of the reasons why school boards and others want to ban books is because they challenge authority or present social and political issues that certain people don’t want to hear—and don’t want others to hear.

      Among classics that Americans have banned have been The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Catch-22, Gone With the Wind, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

      Most book bans are led by conservatives who know—absolutely know—that they are the custodians of some kind of moral code, and that their own religion is the one true religion. But, conservatives aren’t the only ones who want to ban books.

      A base of the liberal philosophy is that all views should be heard, but some liberals have tried to ban Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, considered by literature scholars as the best novel in American literature. These misguided liberals wrongly believe that Twain, a fierce abolitionist, was a racist because his novel used words, common at that time, that no one should hear or read. Some liberals, like some conservatives, have often led campaigns to ban speakers who don’t agree with their views from college campuses. But, holocaust deniers, those who claim 9/11 was a Jewish plot, or that Afro-Americans are mentally inferior also deserve to have their views be heard, even if those views are odious and those who believe it are obnoxious.

      In 1644, before the English parliament, John Milton boldly spoke out against censorship, arguing that those who destroy books destroy reason itself, and that mankind is best served when there is a “free and open encounter” of all ideas. It was a revolutionary concept in an empire that required printers to get a license and be subjected to the whims not only of a monarch but the government as well. In the 18th century, Lord Blackstone, one of the kingdom’s most distinguished jurists, spoke out against prior restraint of free speech and of the press. The views of Milton and Blackstone became a basis of The First Amendment in the United States, one of the most liberal parts of the Constitution. It was this amendment that assured freedom of the press, speech, and religion; that amendment allows people to peacefully assemble and, if they wish, to protest government actions; it gives the people the right to petition the government for a “redress of grievances.” During the next two centuries, others cemented this belief into American law and culture. In the mid-19th century, philosopher John Stuart Mill stated, “We can never be sure that the opinion new are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion, and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.” At the beginning of the 20th century, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that democracy is best served in “a marketplace of ideas.”

      The theme of this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair was Tolerance Through Literature. Let’s hope that all people, no matter their religion, culture, or political views, will embrace that belief.

      [Dr. Brasch, an award-winning journalist and author of 20 books, is a strong First Amendment advocate who frequently speaks out against government abuse of free speech and due process. His book, America’s Unpatriotic Acts (2002), was a major call to eliminate the unconstitutional parts of the PATRIOT Act. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting With Disaster.]

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Banning the First Amendment

by Walter Brasch

            Parents demanded it be banned.

            School superintendents placed it in restricted sections of their libraries.

            It is the most challenged book four of the past five years, according to the American Library Association (ALA).

            “It” is a 32-page illustrated children’s book, And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, with illustrations by Henry Cole. The book is based upon the real story of Roy and Silo, two male penguins, who had formed a six-year bond at New York City’s Central Park Zoo, and who “adopted” a fertilized egg and raised the chick until she could be on her own.

            Gays saw the story as a positive reinforcement of their lifestyle. Riding to rescue America from homosexuality were the biddies against perversion. Gay love is against the Bible, they wailed; the book isn’t suitable for the delicate minds of children, they cried as they pushed libraries and schools to remove it from their shelves or at the very least make it restricted.

            The penguins may have been gay—or maybe they weren’t. It’s not unusual for animals to form close bonds with others of their same sex. But the issue is far greater than whether or not the penguins were gay or if the book promoted homosexuality as a valid lifestyle. People have an inherent need to defend their own values, lifestyles, and worldviews by attacking others who have a different set of beliefs. Banning or destroying free speech and the freedom to publish is one of the ways people believe they can protect their own lifestyles.

            During the first decade of the 21st century, the most challenged books, according to the ALA, were J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, apparently because some people believe fictionalized witchcraft is a dagger into the soul of organized religion. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series was the 10th most challenged in 2010. Perhaps some parents weren’t comfortable with their adolescents having to make a choice between werewolves and vampires.

            Among the most challenged books is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the vicious satire about firemen burning books to save humanity. Other books that are consistently among the ALA’s list of most challenged are Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut), The Chocolate War (Robert Cormier), Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou), Forever (Judy Blume), and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain), regarded by most major literary scholars as the finest American novel.

            Name a classic, and it’s probably on the list of the most challenged books. Conservatives, especially fundamental religious conservatives, tend to challenge more books. But, challenges aren’t confined to any one political ideology. Liberals are frequently at the forefront of challenging books that may not agree with their own social philosophies. The feminist movement, while giving the nation a better awareness of the rights of women, wanted to ban Playboy and all works that depicted what they believed were unflattering images if women. Liberals have also attacked the works of Joel Chandler Harris (the Br’er Rabbit series), without understanding history, folklore, or the intent of the journalist-author, who was well-regarded as liberal for his era.

            Although there are dozens of reasons why people say they want to restrict or ban a book, the one reason that threads its way through all of them is that the book challenges conventional authority or features a character who is perceived to be “different,” who may give readers ideas that many see as “dangerous.”

            The belief there are works that are “dangerous” is why governments create and enforce laws that restrict publication. In colonial America, as in almost all countries and territories at that time, the monarchy required every book to be licensed, to be read by a government official or committee to determine if the book was suitable for the people. If so, it received a royal license. If not, it could not be printed.

            In 1644, two decades before his epic poem Paradise Lost was published, John Milton wrote a pamphlet, to be distributed to members of Parliament, against a recently-enacted licensing law. In defiance of the law, the pamphlet was published without license. Using Biblical references and pointing out that the Greek and Roman civilizations didn’t license books, Milton argued, “As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable create [in] God’s image,” he told Parliament, “but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God.” He concluded his pamphlet with a plea, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

            A century later, Sir William Blackstone, one of England’s foremost jurists and legal scholars, argued against prior restraint, the right of governments to block publication of any work they found offensive for any reason.

            The arguments of Milton and Blackstone became the basis of the foundation of a new country, to be known as the United States of America, and the establishment of the First Amendment.

            Every year, at the end of September, the American Library Association sponsors Banned Book Week, and publishes a summary of book challenges. And every year, it is made more obvious that those who want to ban books, sometimes building bonfires and throwing books upon them as did Nazi Germany, fail to understand the principles of why this nation was created.