Novel banned from Dubai literary festival

Feb 18 2009

This story caught my attention for two reasons: First, it’s in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. I have been to Dubai and it’s a beautiful, vibrant city with very nice, hospitable people. Dubai is also very much a "literary" city where poetry is very popular (much more so than here in the US).

The second reason why this story caught my attention is because it deals with censorship. I take a hard, unyielding stand on any form of literary censorship because I firmly believe that literature reveals fundamental truths about the human condition – and those truths cannot be suppressed.

The book A Gulf Between Us by Geraldine Bedell was rejected from the Dubai Literary Festival that is coming up next week. Bedell wrote this piece in the Guardian, obviously upset by her book’s exclusion from the festival. She first describes how her book is not offensive to the Arab culture and might even shed some positive light in that region:

The book certainly isn’t a PR handout for the region, but I suspect (even hope) that makes the overall warmth towards it that much more telling. The book is an affectionate portrait, and I rather expected readers to be surprised that there could be so much to like.

Then Bedell describes the reason why the book was banned:

After all the initial excitement on both sides, they took the book, sat on it for a long time and finally came back with an almost comically long list of reasons why they couldn’t have it at their festival. These included "it is set in the Gulf", "it talks about Islam", and "it focuses on the Iraq war and could be a minefield for us".

The book also features a gay character, which no doubt played a role in the book being rejected.
Furthermore, the director of the festival made a statement regarding A Gulf Between Us, saying this:

Isobel Abulhoul, director, has now issued the following statement: "I have lived in Dubai for forty years. Based on my knowledge of who would appeal to the book-reading community in the Middle East, and having read 150 pages of Bedell’s manuscript I knew that her work could offend certain cultural sensitivities. I did not believe that it was in the festival’s long term interests to acquiesce to her publisher’s (Penguin) request to launch the book at the first festival of this nature in the Middle East."

Isobel Abulhoul is making a classic assumption in cases where a book is banned – she’s assuming this novel would offend "cultural sensitivities" and thus speaking for everyone, not even giving the literary community in Dubai a chance to judge the work for themselves.

It happens here in the US as well. One group or another tries to get books out of libraries and bookstores because it’s offensive to them, and thus no one should read it (so their logic goes).

As I said at the beginning of this post, I take a firm stand against this kind of censorship. It should never be tolerated. At the same time, I hope those in charge of this literary festival in Dubai will come to their senses and let this book be a part of it. If the people don’t like it, then they can protest by simply not buying it. At least then the decision remains with the public, not just a select few.

2 Responses

[...]If they did hype up the idea that Bedell’s book was “banned” Penguin – and Bedell – should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Self-righteously stirring up Islamophobia to sell books – twenty years after the Satanic Verses affair – is not very smart.[...]Arts & Ecology

William Shaw 2/20/2009 8:52 pm
@William: I think I might have jumped the gun with this post. I’m working on another post that is a correction of sorts.
It’s now coming out that Dubai didn’t ban this book, and are actually having a debate about censorship.
The new post should be up later tonight and I hope to clear the air then.
Thank you for your comment, I really appreciate it!
-Brad

Brad 2/22/2009 11:34 am