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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 February 2000 Issue No. 467 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 February 2000 Issue No. 467
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Special Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Censoring the Arabs
By Sherine BahaaA court in Kuwait last week sentenced Alia Shuaib and Laila El-Othmani to two months in prison on charges of blasphemy in the case of Shuaib and immorality and pornography in that of El-Othmani. The charges had been levelled by Kuwaiti citizens described as holding fundamentalist views.
"I expected myself to be found innocent, though sometimes I thought I would be fined to serve the interests of certain groups. But it did not cross my mind that I would be given a prison sentence," said El-Othmani in a telephone interview with Al-Ahram Weekly from Beirut.
Charges were brought against El-Othmani for descriptions in four of her works that the plaintiffs found pornographic and indecent. Alia Shuaib, a professor of Ethics at Kuwait University, was sued for a line of poetry in which she described "God's secret map".
The court also fined the two women and their publisher, Yehia Rubian, 100 Dinars (US$330) each for printing the books without a permit from the Ministry of Information, which El-Othmani insists she had received.
El-Othmani received this month a prize from the Egyptian Writers' Union for one of her novels, which had been selected as one of the top 100 Arab novels of the twentieth century.
According to El-Othmani, the timing of the proceedings made little sense. "The books were approved by the Ministry of Information, and they have been on sale since the 1970s," she said.
Shortly after the court handed down its sentence, lawyers filed an appeal on behalf of the two authors.
According to Ahmed El-Baghdadi, professor of Political Science at Khaldiya University in Kuwait, the gulf state's intellectuals are now eagerly awaiting the results of the appeal and had been "shocked by the severity of the sentence." El-Baghdadi himself faced a similar verdict last October, when he was imprisoned for "offending Islam" in a 1996 article in which he suggested that the Prophet Mohamed had failed in at least part of his mission.
Nevertheless El-Baghdadi told the Weekly he was optimistic about the future of freedom of expression in Kuwait, despite this week's proceedings. He cited the fact that Sami Muneis, head of the Human Rights Committee in the Kuwaiti parliament, had called for imprisonment to be excluded as a penalty in the country's publishing laws.
The case against the two women authors is not unique. Shamlan Issa, a prominent Kuwaiti professor of Political Science, is currently facing a similar lawsuit on a charge of criticizing certain rulings in Shari'a and advocating greater democracy. Ahmed El-Din, a similarly well-known Kuwaiti journalist and publisher, is also facing charges for "crimes of thought."
According to El-Baghdadi, such proceedings are part of a larger strategy employed by the country's Islamists. "With the focus on the legal side, [the issue] comes across as a legal one, and no one can call the Islamists extremists," he said. Since, however, the Islamists have shown themselves ready and willing to use the country's existing laws to attain their ends, El-Baghdadi believes that these should be altered to prevent this.
For Kuwaiti intellectuals shocked at the verdicts, one hopeful sign came only two days after the court handed down the sentences. According to the provisions of a draft press law presented by the government on this occasion, there would be no possibility of a prison sentence in such cases, with a maximum penalty of a fine of 10,000 Dinars being allowed.
El-Baghdadi, however, suggested that a spell in prison might still be a possibility, since the maximum fine "was such an exaggerated amount [that it might lead to the imprisonment of people who cannot afford to pay.]"
The cases had arisen because in Kuwait books are not censored before publication, and can be the subject of legal proceedings should a member of the public file a complaint about their contents. "Books can be sold for years without being censored; however any person can file a lawsuit accusing the work of anything he wants," said El-Baghdadi.
According to El-Othmani, Shuaib had presented a certificate by four Shari'a professors, one of whom was the Mufti of Kuwait, Khaled El-Madkour, certifying that the poetic line in question "had nothing to do with Islam, and is rather a means of contemplation." But she said that the court had refused to admit the certificate.
Political observers believe that such blasphemy cases are part of a struggle in Kuwait between the well-organised and influential Islamist political trend and a re-emerging liberal force that made important gains in last July's parliamentary elections.
However El-Othmani said that the phenomenon of the trials of writers and intellectuals for blasphemy was not particular to Kuwait, but extended across the Arab world, and pointed to similar cases concerning the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, the Lebanese singer Marcel Khalifa, and the murder of 70 writers in Algeria during that country's long wave of violence.
"[This] is a common trend in the Arab world," El-Othmani said. [It involves the complicity of foreign intervention and local Islamists] to undermine the image of Islam. We all know this, but nobody acts."
El-Othmani said that she believed the trials had not been so much about "blasphemy," but had actually been about limiting the freedom of expression enjoyed by writers.
"[These radical groups] want us to confine our writings to reformist and sociological writings that are devoid of any content, so as not to provoke people, or more particularly women, [to confront the reality] of our communities," she said.
"But I want to provoke women to fight for their rights," she added.
