LETTERS Offensive books
Sir: Paul Johnson (The press, 17 June) suggests a 'compromise': suppress the Rushdie book and hand over the money, if the ayatollahs suppress their incitements to riot .and murder, because 'you cannot separate race, religion and culture' (that's news to me).
Now we know what should have been done about Gibbon's Decline and Fall (deeply offensive to many Christians), Orwell's Animal Farm (communism is a form of culture; pigs, indeed . . .) Dar- win's Origin of Species, Shakespeare's Henry VI (so insulting to Joan of Arc) and all those books that criticised Thuggee, scientology and the Flat Earth theory — a list as long as the Bible (which, at least in languages that the common people could read, was for long on the Index). Those who objected (and still object) to them should have yelled incitements to murder, as in the good old days when dissidents and their writings were burned. Of course, if Mr Johnson's compromise had been ap- plied, there wouldn't be much to read. As the Caliph Omar is reputed to have said in 641 when he burned the library of Alexan- dria, one book is quite enough.
However, my culture is offended by Mr Johnson and the book-burners. Where do I buy a Kalashnikov compromise-inducer?
John P. Harris
Lieuran-Cabrieres, 34800 Clermont l'Herault, France
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