A rchive Date
[ 11-06-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Kuwait ]
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[http://www.foxnews.com/books/032700/news_blasphemy.sml
Court Acquits Woman Writer of Blasphemy
2:26 p.m. ET (1926 GMT) March 27, 2000
KUWAIT — An appeals court on Sunday acquitted a woman writer of blasphemy, and replaced the suspended jail term handed to another writer for indecent writings with a fine.
The court found Alia Shuaib, who teaches philosophy at Kuwait University, innocent of blasphemy and "publishing opinions that ridicule religion" in a book she published in 1993. A misdemeanors court had sentenced her in January to a suspended two months in jail.
Laila al-Othman's conviction of using indecent language in her book The Departure was upheld, but her sentence was commuted to paying a $3,260 fine.
The appeals court also dismissed a suspended sentence of two months imprisonment handed down to the publisher, Yehya al-Rubaian, who had been convicted of publishing Shuaib's book without state permission. But it raised his fine to $3,260.
The prosecutions were initiated by citizens of Muslim fundamentalist views who brought court actions against the women writers.
Shuaib, 36, had maintained that the controversial line in her poetry collection Spiders Bemoan a Wound contained no insult to God or religion. It said: "I dream of passing, even for one moment, through God's secret map."
Kuwaiti courts do not usually explain their rulings on the day they are announced, but supply them a week later.
Al-Othman's attorneys have said their client's book of short stories was approved by government censors in 1984. They told the court that although the writer used words such as "lustful" in describing the relationship of one sea wave with another, she did not intend it to have a sexual connotation.
The lawyers, Rashid al-Enezi and Mansour al-Fadhli, also said when a character in one of the stories tells his roommates, in a moment of despair, that they can rape him, he did not really want to have sex with them. The remark was an expression of his psychological state.
Sunday's rulings were final. The women were not in court, and they could not be immediately reached for comment.
In earlier comments to The Associated Press, Shuaib had complained that the court case has turned her into an "intellectual leper" with Kuwaitis looking the other way when they recognize her in stores and restaurants.
Muslim fundamentalists have gained ground in this conservative oil-rich Gulf state. They are represented by some 20 lawmakers in the 50-seat Parliament.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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