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Al-Ahram Weekly 14 - 20 October 1999 Issue No. 451 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 14 - 20 October 1999 Issue No. 451
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Lyrical liberties?
By Ranwa YehiaLebanese intellectuals organised a meeting in support of Lebanese singer and composer Marcel Khalifeh on 5 October, which rapidly turned into a mass rally of 1,500 people demonstrating in favour of freedom of expression. Khalifeh had been the object of a court indictment accusing him of disrespecting Islam by using a verse from the Holy Qur'an in one of his songs. At the rally in his support the verse, which is taken from the Qur'anic sura (chapter) of Joseph, was chanted again and again by the crowd, with Khalifeh's supporters, who included the Lebanese writer Elias Khoury, saying they would continue to stand by the singer.
Should the court pursue this "ridiculous decision", then this would involve imprisoning many others besides Khalifeh, Khoury warned.
The suit against the singer had been filed in 1996 by Dar Al-Fatwa, the highest Sunni Muslim religious authority in Lebanon and the seat of the country's Grand Mufti, Mohamed Rashid Qabbani. Its subject, a song on Khalifeh's 1995 album "Arabic Coffee Pot", includes among its lyrics words taken from a 1992 poem by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, and ends with a quotation from the Holy Qur'an.
The verse from the Qur'an which Khalifeh sings is: "I saw 11 stars, and the sun and the moon bowing down before me."
Khalifeh has repeatedly said that he has not set a Qur'anic verse to music, but has only set a poem that deals with the plight of the Palestinian people. The poem compares the oppression of the Palestinians in some Arab countries to that of Joseph at his brothers' hands, as this is recounted both in the Qur'an and in the Bible.
Lebanese intellectuals denounced the judiciary's response when the issue first arose in 1996, with the then Prime Minister Rafik Hariri reportedly ordering a halt to judicial proceedings against the singer. But Beirut's newly-appointed Chief Investigating Magistrate, Abdel-Rahman Chehab, reopened the case on 1 October, indicting Khalifeh and requesting that he be jailed for a period of six months to three years on charges of "disrespecting" a religious text. Under article 473 of the Lebanon's penal code, blasphemy is punishable by one month to one year in prison, while Article 474 authorises imprisonment of six months to three years for publicly insulting a religion.
After the revival of the case, Qabbani commented that the move was necessary, since Al-Azhar, Egypt's highest Sunni religious authority, had forbidden "any musical arrangement of a Qur'anic verse in order to prevent any violation of Islam". Al-Azhar's rulings are generally followed by Sunni Muslims the world over.
Nevertheless, Lebanon's leading Shi'a Muslim cleric, Sayed Mohamed Hussein Fadlallah, denied that Khalifeh had insulted Islam by singing the words. "The performance of a poem, including a verse from the Koran, is not an offense to the sacredness of the holy book when that performance is for humanitarian ends," he said. Another renowned Shi'ite cleric, Sayed Mohamed Hassan Amin, who last year sanctioned cloning for medical purposes, shared this view.
The Higher Shi'ite Council's (HSC) reaction on Monday was, however, more conciliatory. A statement said that although the HSC opposed Khalifeh's being brought before a court, it still considered the inclusion of a Qur'anic verse in a song to be a religious violation.
According to the statement, the head of the HSC, Sheikh Mohamed Mehdi Shamseddine, said that he accepted Dar Al-Fatwa's position on the matter because this complied with Islamic religious considerations but that he opposed having the case tried in court. "Our job as religious leaders is only to issue religious rulings," the statement said. Both Fadlallah and Amin are known to be at odds with Shamseddine on religious as well as political matters.
International human rights organisations have also expressed their concern at the Lebanese court's efforts to prosecute Khalifeh. The US-based Human Rights Watch on 8 October condemned efforts to prosecute Khalifeh in a statement, saying that "the right to freedom of expression protects everyone, including musicians and artists." "Lebanese law is being used to brand as a criminal a leading Arab singer. These proceedings should be dropped and this case should be closed," said Hanny Megally, executive director of the organisation's Middle East and North Africa division.
The Lebanese press has loudly protested against the alleged violation of the singer's freedom of expression, running headlines such as, "Why Wasn't Mahmoud Darwish Targeted Too?" and "More Oppression."
Lebanese intellectuals' heightened reaction to the case is a result not only of perceived attacks on Khalifeh's freedom of expression, but also follows a broader crackdown on public freedoms in Lebanon, something which they attribute to the increasing power of religious fundamentalism in the country. Last week worshippers at a mosque in Beirut demanded that sculptors participating in an exhibition along the city's Corniche remove some of their works on the grounds that these were 'disrespectful' to Islam. One of the sculptures, made out of tiles with the words "We are the embodiment of Infinity" written on them, and another in the form of a golden statue of a Roman goddess, were criticised for their portrayal of infinity, which is a sensitive subject for monotheistic religions. Worshippers said that Islam forbade human representation, and therefore demanded that the second statue be withdrawn. Ironically, the mosque is only 20 meters away from a statue of the former Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel-Nasser.
