Can a publisher somewhere please grow a pair and not keep letting fundamentalist assholes who want to see the world revert to the good old days of the 13th Century run their houses? The Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones' historical novel about the little girl wife of Muhammad that Random House dropped because it was afraid of offending crazy people, is now on shaky ground with its British publisher. When that publisher, Gibson Square, was firebombed a couple weeks ago, they said they were going forward with publication anyway. Now, not so much.

Remember how we tore into Random House relentlessly, calling them pussies for being too scared to publish Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones's historical novel about Aisha, the child bride of Muhammad? Perhaps it's just self-fulfilling prophecy, but it looks like they may have been kinda-sorta right about that whole "it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical [Islamic] segment" thing: last weekend, four men were arrested after throwing a firebomb into the house of the book's British publisher, Martin Rynja. So who is this guy, anyway? Rynja has a colorful publishing history with controversial books:

After Random House pussed out on publishing Sherry Jones's historical novel Jewel of Medina about one of the wives of the prophet Muhammad—they were scared that it might incite violence from extremists, which is kind of the publishing equivalent of some big dude calling the cops on a girl—she told Leipziger Volkszeitung that a German publisher would print the book in English, inshallah. [NY Sun]