If you were living in a country where the Satanic Verses is banned, and you wholeheartedly approve of the ban, and you didn’t read the book before the ban, then how would you know that the Satanic Verses exists?
If somebody quotes from it, then how do you know that somebody is quoting from it? You wouldn’t recognize the actual text. It would be possible to train an actor to perform a role as the author of a book that was never actually written, and to issue a fatwa against that non-existent book. This is a bit like a textbook that Richard Feynman refused to evaluate because the book itself was not yet available. Other textbook reviewers gave it a review, despite having no access to the book itself.
If you were living in a country where the Satanic Verses is banned, and you wholeheartedly approve of the ban, and you didn’t read the book before the ban, then how would you know that the Satanic Verses exists?
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