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No Satanic Verses reading in mosque

German journalist and author Gunter Wallraff has been trying to get permission to read from Salman Rushdie’s infamous novel The Satanic Verses in a mosque in Cologne, but has so far been denied permission.

From DW-World:

The request posed a dilemma for the Turkish-Islamic union DITIB, an Ankara-funded religious foundation: If the group members denied Wallraff’s request, they would be seen as not being liberal, but granting permission would anger a large number of their members.

DITIB officials said they had discussed the proposed reading with Wallraff until two weeks ago, but negotiations failed after he refused to compromise.

“He lacks understanding for the feelings and needs of members of our Muslim community,” said a spokesman, without specifying what DITIB had proposed to Wallraff.

Any sentence with the words “Muslim” and “Rushdie” in it tends to raise temperatures on all sides of an issue, and to be fair, it’s unlikely that one would easily get permission to read, say, The Da Vinci Code in a cathedral. Maybe, like so many of us, the DITIB officials just don’t care for literary readings?

Either way, Wallraff has vowed to keep trying.

(hat tip: The Literary Saloon)

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