Saturday, 7 August 2004: Australia has had its share of literary fakes, but the most recent addition to the "genre", Norma Khouri’s worldwide best seller, Forbidden Love, must surely take first prize. It has become an embarrassment to the literary world, the Immigration Department and her Australian publisher, Random House.

Khouri last year gained a permanent residency visa from Minister Amanda Vanstone, under the Department’s "Distinguished Talent" category. The Distinguished Talent program is designed to attract people with an internationally recognised record of exceptional and outstanding achievement in a profession including the arts, sport and research or academia, to settle permanently in Australia.

The Department has already stated that Khouri’s permanent residency visa would not be withdrawn, even if recent media allegations were confirmed that her book turns out to be a fake. Khouri’s Australian publisher, Random House, claims it did not sponsor the author to migrate to Australia, but it did provide information in support of her application for a visa.

When the alleged fabrications were first revealed by the Sydney Morning Herald the publisher immediately withdrew the book from sale and said it would give a refund to customers returning Forbidden Love to retailers. However, Khouri must be laughing all the way to the bank, given that anecdotal evidence suggests the controversy may have boosted sales of her book.

Why does all this not surprise me? "The more things change, the more they stay the same." According to Khouri’s former Chicago flatmate and best friend for five years, Brandy Murphy, "she hates Muslim men". Given the fact that she left Jordan when she was three and stayed only a week there in 2000 to obtain travel documents, indicates to me that she probably knows next to nothing about Muslims. She certainly knew very little about her country of birth.

She seems to be writing for an audience that readily accepts the stereotype about Islam and Muslim men in particular – they are all ogres, mistreating their womenfolk, perpetuating brutal religious practices, and generally being undemocratic and anti-Western. There is no argument that ‘honour killings’ are criminal acts or that they do occur in countries like Jordan. The Jordanian National Association for Women, for example, works to rid their society of such barbarity. The fact is that such murders do occur in many other countries from time to time, including Australia.

In the post 9/11 world, it has become very easy to whip up hysteria about Muslims and subject them to the sort of shallow scrutiny and condemnation so favoured in the past by the likes of the medieval Inquisitors.

Khouri’s probably hoping for a repeat performance with her sequel, A Matter of Honour, that she has been struggling to finish. Although still in the publisher’s list for December, the controversy raging about her first book means the second may never be printed.

I wonder what Ms Vanstone thinks of all this? Khouri has been granted a PR visa under what might be described loosely as false pretences. Can her work that underpinned her application still be considered "an internationally recognised record of exceptional and outstanding achievement"? I don’t think so. If a Muslim refugee, for example, was discovered to have gained a PR visa in such an underhand way, I am in no doubt she would be incarcerated in Baxter Detention Centre until such time as her deportation papers could be put in order.

I think it’s time for a bit of retrospective legislation to be enacted that would deal effectively with literary fakes who rort the system and contribute to the misrepresentation that Muslims are evil and despicable. We do need anti-vilification laws to protect Muslims and other minorities from the sorts of attacks that people like Khouri and her publishers thrust upon us.