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Dear Professor Miller,
I see you have now taken your critique of my writing a stage further. From reports of your remarks in Halifax, I understood your complaint to be that my quotation from Ayatollah Khomeini was not widely cited by anybody else and therefore I shouldn't be using it. I confess I found it a curious line of argument - that journalists should only recycle familiar bromides everyone already knows - but what do I know? You're the professor. Anyway, I now find you've moved on to accuse me of making the quotation up:
As an example, I mentioned Maclean’s columnist Mark Steyn’s lack of responsibility in quoting Ayatollah Khomeini, who allegedly said that it’s okay for a man to have sex with animals, as long as he kills them after orgasm and doesn’t feed the meat to his own village. He gave no citation for the quote, and I suspect it was made up. The only places I could find it on the Internet were on some right-wing blogsites.
Really? There are those who beg to differ. As I said, I'm not a trained journalist such as yourself, merely a dilettante. However, over the years I've written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, The Irish Times, The Sunday Times of South Africa, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sunday Star-Times of New Zealand, and even The Globe And Mail, so I've had occasional interaction with credentialed editors and fact-checkers around the globe and they all react pretty much the same way. Had you penned the above paragraph for, say, my old editor at The Atlantic Monthly, he would have said, "Er, John, we hate to bother you, but we have a bit of a problem with you saying that Steyn 'gave no citation for the quote'. Unlike you, we looked at his actual piece. It's a book review. A review of a book by the late Oriana Fallaci called The Force Of Reason. And he seems to make it pretty clear to most sentient beings other than amoeba and journalism professors that the quotation comes from her book. So are you saying that Fallaci made it up? Or that Steyn made it up and somehow planted it in Fallaci's book? Possibly while melting the steel in World Trade Tower Seven?"
Here's what I wrote in Maclean's:
Signora Fallaci then moves on to the livelier examples of contemporary Islam -- for example, Ayatollah Khomeini's "Blue Book" and its helpful advice on romantic matters: "If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen, he cannot enjoy her any longer." I'll say. I know it always ruins my evening. Also: "A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin." Indeed. A quiet cigarette afterwards as you listen to your favourite Johnny Mathis LP and then a promise to call her next week and swing by the pasture is by far the best way. It may also be a sin to roast your nine-year-old wife, but the Ayatollah's not clear on that.
Seems pretty clear to me where it comes from. However, I think the easiest way to resolve the issue is for me to mail you a copy of the Ayatollah's book. As you pride yourself on being far more clued in to the Muslim community than I am, I'm sure you'll have no difficulty getting it translated. But, in case you do, I'll also send you the standard English translation. That should settle it, don't you think?
So please email me a mailing address to steyn@marksteyn.com. If I don't hear from you, I'll ship it to your employers at Ryerson, together with a polite suggestion that either you might like to apologize or they might be advised to offer refunds to any students who paid good money to be taught journalism "ethics" by your good self.
Yrs, etc,
Mark Steyn
PS I see you bill yourself as "The Journalism Doctor". One hesitates to say "Journalism physician, heal thyself", but that strange leaking coming from your ass is your credibility.
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