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Investigative reporter, author and former federal agent Chuck Hustmyre has seen the ugly side of life, from A to Z. Here he gets the last word on politics, crime, local government and pop culture.

Last week, New York publishing giant Random House proved just how cowardly elite, big media are when it cancelled publication of the novel The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones.

Jones's novel tells the story of one of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's 13 wives, A'isha, whom Muhammad married when she was 9 years old.

Random House paid Jones a $100,000 advance for the novel and its sequel and set an Aug. 12 release date for Jewel, along with an eight-city book tour to promote it.

Then they cancelled the whole thing.

Why? Here's what Random House had to say in a carefully worded press release:

"After sending out advance editions of the novel THE JEWEL OF MEDINA, we received ... cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

So Random House, publisher of the paperback edition of The Da Vinci Code, which millions, perhaps tens of millions, of Christians found very offensive, caved in to pressure from a handful of Islamic scholars who read advance copies of the novel.

The publisher's press release went on to say, "We decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel."

So, according to its own press release, Random House was afraid that violent, radical Muslims might attack the author, the publisher's employees, bookstores and distributors.

Offending Christians worldwide is good business, at least in the eyes of Random House, but offending Muslims is out of bounds.

To be fair, the publishers' concerns aren't without precedent. Riots, arsons and murder followed the 1988 release of the novel The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, as well as the 2006 publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting Muhammad.

Remember the U.S. government-funded "art" exhibit featuring a Christian crucifix submerged in a cup of urine? Can you imagine the outrage, the riots, the bombings, the shootings such a display would have caused had the object submerged in urine been an icon of Islam instead of Christianity?

But don't publishers in a country that honors a free and open press as much as America does have a duty to fight the forces of darkness and tyranny by publishing controversial work even in the face of threats from those very same forces?

Didn't the first American publishers, men like Samuel Adams, cut their printers' teeth publishing controversial and dangerous commentary on the tyrannical rule of King George of England, often under the threat of execution?

Yet Random House surrendered before the first shot was fired, pulling the plug on its new novel because of potential Islamic threats.

What courage, what resolve, what dedication to free speech Random House displayed. How ironic that the fictional characters in Random House's other novels would be ashamed of their publisher since at its heart most fiction is the story of "a hero's journey," undertaken, often reluctantly, to fight the forces of evil, no matter the odds.

So where is CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which cries "ISLAMOPHOBIA" at every turn? Isn't Random House's decision to bow to perceived threats and not publish the book true Islamophobia? Doesn't its decision further the stereotype that Islam is a religion of violence?

I'm still waiting for the groundswell of moderate Muslim support for Sherry Jones and The Jewel of Medina. Surely, Random House's decision, and not Jones's novel, is the true insult to Islam.

What do you say?

Chuck out.

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