CAIRO, 5 November 2003 — The blacklisting of a book on women and love by the Al-Azhar university has stirred a dispute with the government and advocates of freedom of expression. Samir Sarhan who heads the government-run General Publishing Authority said yesterday that his institution “will not take the book off the market despite Al-Azhar demands.”
The university’s Center of Islamic Research found that the book by the Egyptian poet Ahmed Al-Shahawi “Commandments on Women’s Love” “used sayings of the Prophet Muhammad out of context to call on women to love without reservation.”
It also “contains commandments calling on women to surrender themselves to passion, give themselves up absolutely and without shame, and parade naked before their lovers. It glorifies carnal pleasure, that’s why we’ve decided to ban it,” Sheikh Saber Thaalab told reporters on Monday.
But Sarhan retorted that “Al-Azhar has no right to seize books, it can only recommend that, and its recommendations are not binding.”
“Only the justice system can decide in this matter,” he said, adding that a commission attached to his institution “had not found this book to be offensive to religion or morals.”
The Pen Club’s Egyptian branch, presided by 1988 Nobel Literature Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, criticized Al-Azhar’s stance in a statement sent to AP.
“Such a decision constitutes a threat against freedom of opinion and expression ... Al-Azhar has no right to call for the confiscation of literary works,” read the statement.
