Norway: Appeal for book burnings

Shabana Rehman, a controversial Norwegian-Pakistani comedian and writer, started off the opening show of the Literature Festival in Lillehammer, by calling for more book burnings and holding a burning candle to a koran.

"This book has more power than any other in our time. If you burn it.. maybe it will get even more power. There should be more book burnings in this country," she said. "Don't be afraid your books will be burned, be afraid they won't be burned." she said as she thanked the crowd and blew out the candle.

The koran stayed intact. Among the many surprised spectators was also publisher William Nygaard. The publisher, who was shot at and injured after publishing Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" in 1993, clearly did not appreciate the incident and shook his head while the rest of the hall clapped for Rehman.

Source: Dagbladet (Norwegian, with video), h/t Hodja (Danish)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really, atleast translate it correctly. It makes no sense the way you have put it (unless you ofcourse want it to be misread)

"This book HAVE (not are) more power than any other in our time. If I (not you) burn it... it might get even more power. There should be more book burnings in this country, it really should."

The final comment is the one you are screwing up most on, remember this is infront of hundreds and hundreds of writers.

"Dont worry about YOUR book getting burnt, worry about it not getting burnt."

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Esther said...

Hi Freak,

I do make mistakes sometimes.. I'm not a Norwegian speaker. I fixed it up based on your comment.

Regarding the final comment - that's what I thought she said, and originally translated it that way, but she was not using proper Norwegian and I thought I misunderstood her. So, thank you for your correction.

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