Skeleton 03 - The Constantine Codex by Paul L Maier Read Free Book Online Page A

coverage, did an entire half-hour special on the typographical error in Jon’s book and how it had happened. They even had footage of the typesetter at his computer inside the editorial offices of the Cairo publisher, who blamed Osman al-Ghazali for the error, followed by footage of Osman in Cambridge blaming the typesetter. The program concluded with close-ups of the corrected text in the second printing of Jon’s book. Islam was now the greatest challenge to Christianity, not the greatest evil .
    Sunni Muslims across the Islamic world—that broad band of latitude from Morocco to Indonesia—soon responded, almost with pride, at the corrected reading that showed their powerful counterpoise to Christianity. Still, Jon was hardly home free. The Shiites were silent. Although they represented only 16 percent of world Islam, it was the Shiite clergy in Iran who had placed the fatwa on his head. That fatwa had not been lifted.
    Jon discussed the matter with Osman. They had been in continual phone contact over the past two days. Predictably, the translator took some credit for Al Jazeera’s finally announcing the error, but he also took the wind out of his own sails by confiding his surmise as to their delay.
    By dragging their feet in announcing the error-cum-correction, he told Jon, the Sunni Al Jazeera got the Shiites to make fools of themselves with their instant fatwa. “There’s just no end to the rivalry between Sunnis and Shiites.”
    “You really think the grand ayatollah and his Iranian clergy are embarrassed by the fatwa?” Jon asked.
    “Not embarrassed. More like mortified, I’m sure. In fact, I’ll bet that they’ll never even mention this again.”
    “What! Not even to lift the fatwa?”
    “Probably not. That would look like they’d made a mistake. And of course, they did! But it’s the same reason Rushdie’s fatwa was never lifted.”
    “So I have to live the rest of my life with this hanging over my head?”
    “Welcome to the club, Jon. Since I converted from Islam to Christianity, I’d also face a sentence of death in almost any Muslim country if I returned. But I think you can put away the worry beads. Salman Rushdie lives, as you may have noticed, and I understand that VOA and Al Arabiya have also been giving full coverage to the truth in their Farsi broadcasts. Truth will win, even in Iran.”
    Jon was neither entirely convinced nor consoled.

A week later, something happened that shocked not only Jon and Shannon, but much of the Western world as well. It was a very pleasant shock. Sheikh Abbas al-Rashid—probably the most influential Muslim theologian in the world—came down on Jon’s side. Al-Rashid was the grand sheikh and imam at al-Azhar Mosque and University in Cairo, the number one Islamic theological school and the oldest university in the world. Before giving the commencement address at al-Azhar, he had alerted Al Jazeera, as well as network reporters and stringers from other nations, that they might find his remarks rather more newsworthy than was usually the case for commencement addresses.
    This was enough to attract a small army of media sorts, all festooned with cameras of every description, to cover the occasion. Thousands of miles away in Weston, Massachusetts, Jon and Shannon joined the international audience in watching the televised address, which was titled “Freedom for Truth.” Al-Rashid opened by telling of an observer that the Sung dynasty in China dispatched in the year 987 to survey life in the West. When he returned home, the observer reported that the Roman Empire had fallen and been replaced by two great civilizations in the West: one was Byzantine, the other Islamic. The latter, however, was far superior to the former. Then, as an afterthought, he also told of a third—that of the Frankish kingdoms in Europe. “But they are sunk in barbarism,” he concluded.
    Al-Rashid continued—in Arabic, of course, but with simultaneous translations. “The observer