Lebanon: Da Vinci Code Banned

A fictional account of conspiracies spanning centuries, The Da Vinci Code does not paint a very flattering picture of the Catholic Church. Because of that, Catholic officials in Lebanon complained - and the government agreed to ban the popular book.

World Wide Religious News reports:

"It was definitely one of our most popular books," said Roger Haddad, assistant manager at Virgin Megastore's bookshop in downtown Beirut. "This is censorship, people should be allowed to read what they want ... This book is fiction, everyone knows it's fiction. It is not political or propaganda or history."

For Lebanon's Catholic Information Center, whose criticism apparently led to the ban, it struck too deeply against Christianity for a country with a history of sectarian conflict. "There are paragraphs that touch the very roots of the Christian religion ... They say Jesus Christ had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene, that they had children," the center's president, Father Abdou Abu Kasm, told Reuters. "Those things are difficult for us to accept, even if it's supposed to be fiction. Lebanon is a country with many different religious communities and there are still laws that ban articles that offend different communities."

I can certainly understand concerns about security in a nation with a long history of sectarian strife, but I'm not sure that banning the book completely was such a good idea. It gives people the impression that Catholic officials have something to hide and something they want kept from the people. It would make more sense, I think, to leave the book alone but publish a rebuttal that explains how the book is just fiction and not a reflection of reality.

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