26 April - 2 May 2001
Issue No.531
|
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 April - 2 May 2001 Issue No.531 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Over the line
Lawyer Nabih El-Wahsh is demanding that feminist Nawal El-Saadawi be separated from her husband, but she counters that he has gone too far to further his own ends, reports Khaled Dawoud
Lawyer Nabih El-Wahsh is clearly pleased with the coverage he has received from local and international media since filing a complaint with the prosecutor-general against prominent feminist writer Nawal El-Saadawi earlier this month. Following the publication of an interview with El-Saadawi in the independent weekly Al-Midan in early March, Egypt's mufti, Nasr Farid Wassel, fired off an enraged letter to the paper strongly attacking El-Saadawi for her comments. In the uproar that followed, El-Wahsh filed his first complaint.
Nawal El- Saadawi
On Monday, El-Wahsh took his case a step further and filed a second complaint asking the judiciary to separate El-Saadawi from her husband, Sherif Hitata. Claiming that her views "ousted her from the Muslim community", El-Wahsh said that she cannot remain married to a Muslim. Although Islamic law allows Muslim men to marry women of other faiths, such as Christianity and Judaism, it forbids marriage to an apostate. El-Wahsh said a civil affairs court in north Cairo agreed to hear his case on 18 June.
The request sent shock waves across the Egyptian intelligentsia, recalling the notorious case of literature professor Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid, who was ordered by a court to separate from his wife in 1995 after an Islamist lawyer filed a case against him alleging his writings were against Islam. Abu Zeid lives with his wife in exile in the Netherlands.
In the Al-Midan interview, the controversial Saadawi reiterated some of her previously known views on Islamic inheritance laws and the veil. Islamic law dictates that a son inherits double what a daughter receives, but El-Saadawi says that men and women should be equal in inheritance rights. Muslim scholars insist that wearing a veil which covers the whole body, except for the hands and face, is compulsory for Muslim women, but this, too, is denied by El-Saadawi. However, it was her alleged statement that the hajj (pilgrimage) is a "vestige of pagan practices" that brought her under heavy fire from conservatives and sparked the mufti's reprisal.
In his letter to Al-Midan, Wassel, the highest religious authority for issuing edicts on Islamic issues, refuted El-Saadawi's views from a religious point of view and concluded that if the statements attributed to her were correct, it would "oust her from Islam." The mufti's statement encouraged El-Wahsh to file his case and lent credence to his allegations.
In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, El-Saadawi denied that she made such a statement on hajj, and lashed out at Al-Midan for allegedly misquoting her. "This is a purposeful campaign, which the newspaper concocted in order to increase sales," she said. "I spoke to the journalist [from Al-Midan] on many issues, but he picked up sentences from here and there to make headlines and claim things that I did not intend," El-Saadawi said.
She was also unhappy with the mufti's letter, which he sent to the newspaper "before even asking me whether these statements were mine or not." She added: "What the mufti wrote, saying that my views oust me from Islam, amounts to incitement against me. How could he make such a quick judgment?"
El-Saadawi told the Weekly that she did not send a correction to the newspaper after the interview came out because she was on a European tour that lasted from the beginning of March through mid-April. She said that since her return to Egypt, she has not received notice from the prosecutor-general's office. The office did summon El-Wahsh to listen to his complaint, however, meaning that a case against El-Saadawi is still a possibility.
After numerous Islamist lawyers filed scores of cases against intellectuals in the early 1990s seeking condemnation of anti-Islamic views, the People's Assembly amended the law so that only the prosecutor-general's office can file such cases -- known in Arabic as hisba, or filing a case on behalf of the community. El-Saadawi says El-Wahsh has filed his complaint because he "simply wants to attract media attention and become famous. I think that he has managed to do that already."
She added that, personally, she was surprised by the move to bring a case against her at this time, "because all my views have been the same over the past half century." Saying it is the current campaign against her that is the insult to Islam, El-Saadawi contends that "I have been condemned even before a trial takes place. And even if I was found innocent, a lot of damage has been done already. This is an affront to the dignity of an Egyptian citizen. My reputation is more important than my life, and that is why some narrow-minded Islamists have repeatedly targeted my reputation. They are using religion to achieve their own political goals in their fight to take power and divert people's attention from more important issues, like the Intifada in Palestine, and the daily killing of Palestinians by Israelis."
El-Saadawi, 70, has written 35 books in Arabic, the majority of which have been translated into several languages, making her a renowned figure worldwide. She was also one of the pioneers in fighting the widespread practice of female genital mutilation (female circumcision) in Egypt. It took many years for her to win the battle, and the practice is now prohibited in public hospitals. But people continue to perform it in their homes using, the local barber or midwives.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page