V. S. Naipaul pulls out of Turkey conference after protests

Nobel laureate author V. S. Naipaul has been forced to pull out of a major literary event in Turkey after conservative Muslims in the country took objection to his criticisms of Islam.

V S Naipaul, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 Photo: AFP

By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent 5:36PM GMT 25 Nov 2010

Naipaul had been due to give the opening address at the European Writers’ Parliament, a gathering of prominent authors who are meeting in Istanbul to discuss the future of literature.

But he made what was described as “a mutual decision”, taken with the conference’s organisers, to withdraw at the last moment following a concerted campaign against him in Turkey’s religious press.

A number of Turkish writers had threatened not to attend the event in protest at Naipaul’s portrayal of Islam in two of his 30 books as a religion that sought to enslave and eliminate other cultures.

Calls for a boycott were led by Hilmi Yavuz, a columnist for the Zaman newspaper, who wrote: “How can our writers bear to sit by the same table with Naipul, who has seen Muslims worthy of so many insults?”

Born in Trinidad of Indian ancestry, Naipaul, 78, has condemned the manner in which Islam established itself in the non-Arab world.

Converts in countries such as Iran and Indonesia had been forced “to strip themselves of their past” in order to submit to the Muslim faith, he wrote.

“It is the most uncompromising kind of imperialism,” he wrote in Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples.

Naipaul has also courted controversy by attacking Pakistan while voicing support for the Indian nationalist party the BJP and other right-wing Hindu parties. Most notably he defended the destruction in 1992 of a mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, by a mob of BJP supporters as an act of “historical balancing” – even though nearly 2,000 Muslims were killed in the ensuing riots.

The campaign to keep Naipaul out of Turkey threatens to tarnish Istanbul’s credentials as this year’s “European Capital of Culture” and other writers at the conference insisted that he had the right to be heard.

“I feel that we would be stronger and more credible if we were to deal with divergent views within this meeting rather than excluding someone because of fear that offence might be given,” Hari Kunzru, the British novelist, told delegates as the event got under way.

via V. S. Naipaul pulls out of Turkey conference after protests – Telegraph.