Near the end of June, Queen Elizabeth II made the controversial decision to knight Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses. The reason this is controversial is because upon publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini, the religious leader of Iran, placed a bounty on Rushdie's head for writing material that was "blasphemous to Islam."

Rushdie went into hiding, and several people were killed in riots or assassination attempts. It was like The DaVinci Code controversy on crack. Rushdie lived to write again, and although there is still a bounty on his head, the fervor caused by the Ayatollah's fatwa has died back down.

Now, once again, there are protests against the British government for choosing to place Rushdie among England's elite with the knighthood. The idea is that the government should at least distance itself from Rushdie, and his book should be banned.

I picked up The Satanic Verses a few months ago, and upon finishing it, I wondered: How many of the protesters have read the book? It's not really that bad. I mean, sure, there are some parts that could be considered blasphemous, but it's nothing to kill over. In fact, the most scathing attack on anyone or anything in the book is not against Islam, but rather, against Ayatollah Khomeini himself.

So the question arises: Can you really condemn a book before reading it? Shouldn't banned books be read before they are burned? Then at least you know what you are burning.

Another example is this weekend's release of the seventh and final (say it ain't so!) Harry Potter book. Anyone who has read the Harry Potter books knows that they are hardly "how-to" manuals for aspiring witches and wizards...trust me, if they were, you can bet your life that I wouldn't be wasting my time at Penn State when I could be learning to make stuff hover and catch on fire at Hogwarts. But there are still some hard-line Christians who claim that the books promote witchcraft and Satanism.

Most book banning in the United States, however, takes place in the schools, by parents.

A popular target is Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, for its alleged overuse of the "n-word," a charge that seems to ignore the obvious anti-slavery/anti-racist content of the novel. Or, take Lolita, which is often removed from school libraries for its sexual content. Yes, it may not be "age appropriate" for all kids, but what is the purpose of removing it from the library? In the words of J.K. Rowling, "You have a perfect right, of course, as every parent does...to decide what your child is exposed to. You do not have the right to decide what everyone else's children are exposed to."

In addition to all of this, book banning is self-defeating. A banned book gains a certain "forbidden fruit" appeal to it, which will undoubtedly drive many readers -- who may have had no interest in the book otherwise -- to go out of their way to read it. This is especially true for rebellious children and teens. You are doing the book more of a favor by casting it into a fire than you would if you merely let it sit on a shelf.

Also, no one bans bad books. By banning the book, you are giving it legitimacy that, by simply allowing it to exist, you would deny. The list of frequently banned books on Wikipedia reads something like a Top 100 most influential books of the 20th century.

You have to ask yourself what you can gain from book banning. Who will come out looking better? If The Satanic Verses had never been decreed the work of an apostate, Sir Salman Rushdie's name would probably never have gone down into the history books as a martyr, and the Iranian government would have just a bit more credibility these days. If The DaVinci Code and Harry Potter were accepted as great works of popular fiction, those who worked against them wouldn't look like narrow-minded fools.

So please don't try to ban the book. Let it exist. Maybe even read it. This doesn't mean you have to like it or believe in it, but in the words of Aristotle, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

By leaving the book on the bookshelf, you add nothing to the fire. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go buy a wizard hat and a pentagram necklace for my Harry Potter party tomorrow.