Fans of the Harry Potter books will know that J.K. Rowling doesn’t like sensationalist journalism, embodied in her character Rita Skeeter. Unsurprisingly, she took issue with Rupert Murdoch’s recent tweets on the Paris terrorist attacks, particularly his thoughts on Muslims.
Last week, Rupert Murdoch tweeted out that the Muslim community needed to be “held responsible” for its “growing jihadist cancer,” and he railed against perceived “political correctness.”
Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 10, 2015
Big jihadist danger looming everywhere from Philippines to Africa to Europe to US.
Political correctness makes for denial and hypocrisy.— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 10, 2015
In response, J.K. Rowling tweeted that as a Christian, she refused to take responsibility for Rupert Murdoch, the Spanish Inquisition, and Jim Bakker.
I was born Christian. If that makes Rupert Murdoch my responsibility, I'll auto-excommunicate. http://t.co/Atw1wNk8UX
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 11, 2015
.@dom209 The Spanish Inquisition was my fault, as is all Christian fundamentalist violence. Oh, and Jim Bakker.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 11, 2015
She also took the time to point out a rather inconvenient statistic for Murdoch’s argument.
.@peeyushmalhotra Eight times more Muslims have been killed by so-called Islamic terrorists than non-Muslims. http://t.co/JXLfZOmcKl
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 11, 2015
Murdoch has been criticized on many occasions for his thoughts shared on Twitter, including his tweets on Ridley Scott’s Exodus. He joined Twitter back in January 2012 and has over 547,000 followers, compared to Rowling’s over 4 million followers.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter