Egyptian group wants to censor Arabic classic--"Arabian Nights"

[Elmore Furth]

There has been a world-wide trend for the last decade by conservatives to censor what we read both in print and online.

http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/in08a.htm

http://news.cnet.com/ISP-censorship-seen-as-trend/2100-1023_3-203398.html

http://news.cnet.com/ISP-censorship-seen-as-trend/2100-1023_3-203398.html

Arab writers and poets through the centuries have spiced their tales with explicit language and carnal desire. Even during the height of the Islamic Empire, when Sharia law dictated virtue across the Middle East, storytellers revealed a fondness for the unholy.

But nowadays fundamentalist Muslims are campaigning to "purify" one of the great works of Arabic literature, the "One Thousand and One Nights."

"The book contains profanities that cannot be acceptable in Egyptian society," said lawyer Ayman Abdel-Hakim, venting his disgust at one of the "Nights" poems in which a woman challenges Muslim men to fulfill her insatiable sexual urges. "We understand that this kind of literature is acceptable in the West, but here we have a different culture and different religion."

Hakeem is a member of Lawyers Without Shackles, a group determined to delete salacious passages from contemporary literature and cherished classics. Its campaign against the masterpiece, also known in English as "The Arabian Nights," is part of a religious conservatism that has been growing in Egypt since the mid-1990s. The lawyers don't expect to win many cases — Egypt's government is vigilant against hints of extremism — but say they are duty-bound to use lawsuits to protect society from anti-Islamic tendencies.



Egyptian group wants to censor Arabic classic

[msongs]

1. coming to a country/society near you - imposition of islamic law nt

[iamjoy]

2. You Know What's Obscene

you know what I find obscene about the 1,001 Arabian Nights? The frame story.

Every day Shahryar would marry a new virgin, and every day he would send yesterday's wife to be beheaded. Supposedly, he killed three thousand such women by the time he was introduced to Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter.

So, let's make sure I understand correctly - hints of sexuality are obscene, but murdering 3,000 innocent girls is okay.

[dimbear]

11. agreed about the frame story, but

English versions are almost always heavily edited and abridged, mostly because the corpus is vast and repetitive and eventually rather tiresome.

Not to mention ill defined. The cream of the crop forms a wonderful sampler, but once you are aware of the rest of it, you can die happy without reading it.

And to those who criticize wannabe Islamic editors, first take the time to find a complete unexpurgated English version. That'll while away some idle hours.

[madrchsod]

3. what`s the difference between christian and islamic extermists?

it would seem nothing. i`m not sure about jewish extremists so i did`t include them.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Then you are blind...

When in this century did the most extreme xtains stone someone to death?

[TZ]

7. Stones are too primitive they use guns and bombs now

What do you think the murderers of George Tiller and the bombings of Eric Robert Rudolph were? Sorry, xtian extremeists differ only by methodology of murder...

[closeupready]

10. Ironclad point.

+1000

[TheDebbieDee]

9. I think that the only difference between Christian and Islamic

extremists is that Christians tend to be willing to kill you to save your soul where Muslims are willing to kill themselves while trying to kill you!

[Ozymanithrax]

4. Many of the stories are considered pre-Islamic...

going back to Persia (Iran), the Arabian Peninsula, and India.

I'm not surprised that some hyper-religous sexually frustrated conservatvie cleric (of any religion) might want to change them. Fortunatly, they can only do so in their own country.

[burnsei sensei]

5. God, that's terrible.

These stories are some of the most important in the world's founding literature.
How could anyone even think of censoring them?
The truths they tell are complete, and if any part of them makes you feel uncomfortable, then you'll at least deliberate after reading.
That's what makes books classics.

[closeupready]

8. Thank God for Gutenberg.

n/t

[pscot]

12. When my kids were about 10 years old

I read them the story of the night Abu Hassan farted. It still comes up in conversation 30 years later.