Extremist website makes death threat against poet
Published: Mar 18, 2010 01:28 Updated: Mar 18, 2010 01:28
JEDDAH: Death threats have been made on an extremist website against a Saudi poet who recently attacked conservative fatwas in a poem she wrote.
Hissa Hilal recited the poem on the “The Poet of a Million” show on an Abu Dhabi television channel. It was widely reported that she was referring to Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Nasser Al-Barak’s recent fatwa about the mingling of men and women.
Speaking to Arab News, Hilal said she had not received any death threats personally, but had learned from journalists that a forum had been discussing her execution.
Hilal said that when she wrote her poem she did not target Sheikh Al-Barak, who said anyone allowing men and women to mix should be executed.
“I don’t know Al-Barak and I don’t know if he is extremist or not. I was talking about the condition of fatwas in the Arab world in general and their increasing popularity with people who are extremists.”
Hilal explained that she did not look at the website that attacked her, adding that she is not even interested in following what they are writing about her.
“I am participating in a competition and I don’t want anything to distract me,” she said.
Hilal, who went into poetry some 18 years ago and wears a full niqab, said she is not conservative but is “attuning herself to the customs of her society.”
Hilal said it was the first time she had expressed her opinion openly in public about any issue, adding that her poems focus on humanitarian issues including motherhood, divorce, love and death.
“Mediapeople want to make news that interest the public, but they were unjust to me when they linked my poem to Al-Barak’s fatwa,” she said.
“I have told newspapers over and over again that I am not attacking Al-Barak. It is not my fault that journalists made their own conclusions.”
Al-Watan newspaper columnist Odwan Al-Ahmari wrote on Tuesday that the online Al-Muslim Forum, which has already posted videos of terrorists, has a number of its members discussing killing Hilal after her poem was aired. One member asked if anyone knew where she lived.
Al-Ahmari also reported that the members were discussing whether killing Hilal was obligatory in terms of hudud or tazir.
Hudud is defined as specific punishments prescribed in Islamic law for a finite set of crimes such as adultery, theft and slander. Tazir however is the punishment for a crime at the discretion of a ruler or a judge.
Al-Ahmari said that while some fatwas have antagonized ordinary people, the poem has angered takfeer groups — extremists who label all who do not agree with their version of Islam as infidels.
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