Pondering half-shelved projects

I've been following bits of the Wiscon/Elizabeth Moon debacle, as one does, though Wiscon is a con I have actively never considered going to, and the last couple of days I've been pondering picking up The Otter and Saint Jude again. I think I need to do some hefty revisions to get it back on track, but ...

... I started writing this thing years ago. And one of the things that's important about it in this context is that the Otter is a Sufi, more or less. (A chance-encounter-converted-this-species-to-Islam sort of Sufi.) And it's a major part of her character, but it's not, in the grand scheme of things, important to the story; she's just a Muslim character in spaaaaaaaaace. (I'm not writing it to write a Muslim character, y'know, it's just that the character I'm writing is.)

But I'm left with the sense that somehow this book needs to be written so that it might be out in the world. Because I'm more than a little agitated by james_nicoll being able to rattle off more than one "Scary scary Islam!" SF title when asked. So I'm not writing it to make a political point, but I might finish it to make a political point. Or something.

( A bit of the draft, in which Otter quotes the Qur'an. )