Journalism Doctor John Miller has responded to Mark Steyn’s latest challenge with a conciliatory gesture—sort of. He acknowledges Mr Steyn’s verification of a contentious quotation from Ayatollah Khomeini, but maintains that Steyn presents his views in a way that is unfair to Muslims.

Strangely, Miller even claims that there are essential differences between two independent translations of the ayatollah’s notorious teaching on treatment of shagged sheep. I beg to differ. I can’t comment on the original text because I don’t know Farsi, but the two English translations convey the same meaning. (Miller doesn’t claim to know Farsi, either.)

Last month, John Miller made this categorical statement:

[N]o one has verified that the Ayatollah ever said: “A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin.”

Steyn had quoted that in his Macleans magazine review of Oriana Fallaci’s The Force of Reason.

In response to Miller’s allegation, Steyn cited another translation of the ayatollah’s book of teachings.

[W]hen she [Fallaci] and I refer to the Ayatollah’s “Blue Book” we’re referring to that Nashr I Sharia’t edition of the Resaleh. It was translated into English, unabridged, by J Borujerdi and published in 1984 by Westview in London and Boulder, Colorado under the title A Clarification Of Questions.
[…]
Here is a page from Mr Borujerdi’s translation. In case you’re on a slow dial-up in Mexico and the j-peg’s taking its time a-loading, I’ll reprint a bit:

#2631. It is loathsome to eat the meat of horse and mule and donkey and if somebody makes coitus with them, that is an intercourse, they become unlawful and they must be taken out of the city and sold elsewhere.

#2632. If they have intercourse with a cow and sheep and camel their urine and dung becomes unclean and drinking their milk will also be unlawful and they must be killed and burned without delay, and the person who had intercourse with them must pay money to the owner. Further, if he had intercourse with any beast its milk becomes unlawful.

Miller acknowledges this as confirmation of, well, something.

I am willing to accept this as evidence that the late Ayatollah did indeed have something to say about having sex with animals.

But, for some reason, Miller insists that the translation used by Ms Fallaci impugns Muslims, whereas Mr Borujerdi’s does not.

Do you not see a fundamental difference between the Fallaci version and the version you now cite from A Clarification of Questions? You say in your most recent blog, “Now, it’s true that La Fallaci’s wording differs from Mr. Borujerdi’s. But so what?” I’ll tell you so what: Fallaci, and you, use the quotation to imply that the Ayatollah, and in fact a great many Muslims, condone bestiality. The quotes from A Clarification of Questions, on the other hand, make clear that he considered the practice “loathsome” and “unlawful.”

I shook my head when I read that. I hate to challenge Prof Miller’s understanding of the English language, but that is simply wrong. In fact, the two translations say substantially the same thing.

The quotations from A Clarification of Questions say only that eating the meat or drinking the milk of sodomised animals is “loathsome”. Like Fallaci’s quotation, Borujerdi’s quotation does not state that bestiality itself is “unlawful”.

In #2631, the pronoun “they” refers back to “horse and mule and donkey”, so it is the animals that become “unlawful”, not the “somebody” who had intercourse with them.  Likewise, #2632 calls for the burning of the animals, not of the persons who had intercourse with them.  Neither 2631 nor 2632 mandates a reprimand or any other kind of sanction against anyone who had intercourse with an animal, so the teachings present no “clear” condemnation of bestiality.

Miller has read into the texts something they do not actually say.

Moreover, neither the Borujerdi quotation nor the Fallaci quotation says that any Muslims “condone bestiality”, unless one mistakenly assumes that failure to condemn is equivalent to condoning.

John Miller is grasping at ever thinner straws in his efforts to avoid admitting that Mark Steyn is right about this.

UPDATE (4 Dec.): In no uncertain terms, Mark Steyn tells John Miller to get lost.

Possibly related posts

• 13 November 2008 -- John Miller’s mind is made up
• 16 November 2008 -- More information on Ayatollah Khomeini’s book
• 16 November 2008 -- John Miller: Steyn “does most of his research on blogsites”
• 12 November 2008 -- Mark Steyn lays it out for John Miller

Tags: Ayatollah Khomeini, John Miller, Mark Steyn
Filed under: Canada, Media and Journalism
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