EGYPT: Charges dismissed against prominent feminist

August 22, 2001
Issue 

BY SARAH STEPHEN

The Personal Status Court in North Cairo has dismissed a lawsuit brought against Egyptian feminist and writer Nawal el-Saadawi.

Nabih Al Wahsh, an Islamic lawyer, attempted to have 70-year-old Saadawi forcibly divorced from her husband, Sherif Hatata, on the grounds that she is an apostate, guilty of renouncing Islam. Under Islamic law, an apostate cannot be married to a Muslim.

An Islamic ruling, called a hisba, allows any Muslim male to sue another for beliefs which harm society. As the influence of fundamentalist groups has risen in Egypt, a number of Islamic lawyers have filed hisba cases against intellectuals and artists, claiming that their work violated Islamic teachings and calling for a ban on the intellectuals' work or for their imprisonment.

In 1995, a Cairo court ordered the separation of university professor Nasr Abu Zeid from his wife, against their will, after bringing a similar case against them. He and his wife have been living in exile in the Netherlands ever since.

The law was amended soon after this trial so that only Egypt's general prosecutor could file a hisba case. It was on the basis of this amendment that the case against Saadawi was dismissed on July 30.

Saadawi considers herself fortunate, but says that all intellectuals are still threatened by such a law. She plans to campaign for the total abolition of the law of hisba, calling it an "un-Islamic law" that was used centuries ago and "places the future of intellectuals in the hands of the general prosecutor".

Saadawi said she and her husband of 37 years had survived "this ordeal through ... resistance, firmness and refusal to yield to the mentality of the dark ages".

Islamic groups launched the campaign against Saadawi following her comments in the Egyptian weekly newspaper Al Midan that the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca was a "vestige of a pagan practice" and that Muslim inheritance laws which favour males should be abolished. She argues she was misquoted and reported out of context.

Saadawi has suffered at the hands of those who would prefer her outspoken views silenced. In 1981 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat put her in prison. She was released one month after his assassination.

In 1991 the government banned the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, six months after closing down its magazine, Noon, which Saadawi edited. AWSA had taken a strong stand in support of women's rights and in opposition to the Gulf War.

Saadawi, through books such as The Hidden Face of Eve, has played a significant role in shaping a feminist understanding of the experiences of women in the Arab world.

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