Cairo | Monday
A COURT here on Monday rejected a lawsuit aimed at annulling the marriage of a leading Egyptian feminist on grounds she had abandoned her Muslim faith.
The Cairo Family Affairs Tribunal rejected the complaint against novelist Nawal al-Saadawi, saying the lawyer who lodged it had failed to follow proper legal avenues.
The lawyer, Nabih al-Wahsh, had first accused Saadawi in April of defaming Islam in a media interview, but his request for the prosecutor’s office to file a suit against her was dismissed in May.
He then went ahead and filed his own suit with the family court, arguing that Egypt’s penal code permits the state to order Saadawi’s divorce from her husband, Egyptian intellectual Sherif Hetata.
“The ruling is a victory for freedom of opinion against backward trends which are hiding behind religion in a bid to suppress free opinion,” said Hatata, who had awaited the ruling from a coffee shop outside the court. Saadawi was not present inside or outside the courtroom.
“It is also a victory for law, freedom, justice, the Egyptian justice system and for the prosecutor general. It is a victory for all people against cultural backwardness in Egypt,” Hatata exclaimed.
Wahsh, who specializes in filing lawsuits against famous people, argued that the law contravened Islamic law which, according to the 1981 Egyptian constitution, is the main source of legislation.
Wahsh had based his case on quotes attributed to Saadawi in the independent weekly Al-Midan in March, which said that the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca was “a remnant of paganism” and that the Koran made no mention of an obligation for women to wear the Islamic hijab, or scarf.
But the prolific writer and feminist whose novels have been translated into English has denied abandoning Islam, saying she was misquoted by the newspaper possibly for “commercial or political ends.”
Saadawi, a psychiatrist, has published 40 books with themes of women’s rights and the battle against female circumcision.