Ali on Whipped-Up Controversy

Monica Ali wrote a piece for the Guardian in which she derides the media (including the newspaper that published her article) for giving so much attention to the handful of people who protested the making of her book into a film. Here’s a very quotable excerpt:

As seems to be the way with these things, press coverage began (in this newspaper) with the reporting of the views of a couple of self-appointed “community leaders”. I love it when a journalist does this. I think of him stumbling around Tower Hamlets, waving a notebook and echoing the old colonial cry from down the ages: take me to your leader.

Of course, writers who have ancestral roots in Muslim nations are used to this: Any kind of a protest over a supposedly offensive book is blown way out of proportion in the West, and the author turned into a martyr, whether she likes it or not.

See also:
Department of WTF.
Tempest in a Teacup.