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Censored: 5 plays and novels banned around the globe

Censorship of the arts has a long history, from ancient Greece to present-day Thailand. Here is a list of five plays and novels banned, for a variety of reasons, in regions across the globe.

2. The Satanic Verses

  • By Whitney Eulich Staff writer
  • Emily Powers Contributor

Portrayals of the prophet Muhammad perceived as blasphemous by many Muslims have generated tension and violence in the past. A Saudi blogger received threats and faces a possible death sentence for tweets on the prophet’s birthday that were deemed apostate and atheist, and in 2005 Muslims responded to a cartoon of the prophet in European newspapers with violent protests.

Literature is no exception when it comes to the respect that Muslims expect for the prophet. Award-winning author Salman Rushdie’s magical-realist novel “The Satanic Verses” was banned upon its release in all Arab states, plus India, Pakistan, and South Africa. The ban was a response to Mr. Rushdie’s depiction of Islam, and a character, described by The New York Times as “a businessman turned prophet named Mahound – a figure Muslim critics regard as a thinly and perversely disguised representation of the Prophet Mohammed.”

Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Rushdie in 1989, calling for his death. It still stands more than 20 years later.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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