RIYADH, 22 March 2005 — Crown Prince Abdullah has quashed a sentence of flogging and imprisonment imposed by a Shariah court on a Saudi writer, an informed source told Arab News.

Shariah court Judge Suleiman Al-Fantookh had sentenced Saudi Professor Hamza Al-Mizeini — not Ali as was reported by Arab News yesterday — to 275 lashes and a four-month imprisonment after his opponent, Dr. Abdullah Al-Barak, an Islamist who teaches in the same King Saud University as Al-Mizeini, filed a case against him accusing the writer of demolishing his image and saying Islamic textbooks taught at King Saud University were radical.

Prince Abdullah issued the decree to annul the court ruling. Al-Mizeini had also been told that he would be banned from writing in the Saudi media. The decree was in response to the judge’s violation when he issued a verdict against the writer despite his knowledge of a Royal Decree announced last week which states that all conflicts that concern publication matters must be dealt with through the Ministry of Culture and Information.

The war of articles between the two professors went on in Saudi newspapers for some months, before Dr. Al-Barak finally went to a Shariah court to ask that Dr. Al-Mizeini be punished on religious grounds.

“I cannot express my joy when I heard of the crown prince’s decree to cancel the court’s ruling,” Dr. Al-Mizeini told Arab News on the phone.

“This is an honorable, brave, and fair stance taken by Crown Prince Abdullah and we will all remember him and thank him for this,” he added.

“Laws must be respected. It was evident from the start who the concerned authority in this case was as it was a matter that concerned the media and publications. The leader’s decision stressed that the Royal Decree issued in this matter earlier must be followed in any case, not just mine.”

“Harm would have come to a large section of thinkers and writers had it not been for the Royal Decree,” he added. It was not immediately known whether Dr. Al-Barak filed his case against Dr. Al-Mizeini after being pushed by other Islamists or not. However, Arab News has learned that the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice had no hand in the case, unlike what was published earlier.

The story unfolded on June 24 last year when Dr. Al-Mizeini wrote an article in Al-Watan newspaper under the title “Enlightenment has vanished just as the smile has disappeared from Asir”. The professor’s article was in response to Al-Watan’s columnist Dr. Ali Al-Mousa’s article “Enlightenment: King Saud University, an example”, published on May 23, 2004. Dr. Al-Mizeini said in the article that the quality of education at the university had nosedived due to Islamic political movements that fled from their countries of origin and took refuge in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s and 1970s creating a social and cultural hegemony.

In the article, the professor also said that the university had given up its enlightenment role which has been reduced by time with the introduction of new curricula which are taught as mandatory subjects to all university students. He said that topics from the “Islamic Culture” textbooks are derived from Islamic political movements and its ideology such as the Muslim Brotherhood “Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen” was formed in Syria and Egypt in the early 1960s.

The decline of cultural programs in the university, according to Al-Mizeini’s article, was due to the strong grip of Islamist teachers on students programs, particularly those in the college of education.

The professor’s accusations prompted Dr. Abdullah Al-Barak to write an article in Al-Madinah newspaper under the title, “Dr. Abdullah Al-Barak defending King Saud University” which was published on Aug. 20, 2004.

Dr. Al-Barak rejected Dr. Al-Mizeini’s accusations, saying that the university’s textbooks helped enrich the awareness and knowledge of students and kept them attached to their Islamic identity. He questioned why Al-Mizeini would think that the textbooks’ themes were derived from Islamic political movements, wondering whether it was appropriate to “just walk away from every thought mentioned in the dialogues of these movements”.

Dr. Al-Mizeini then wrote another article in Al-Watan newspaper on Dec. 2, 2004, under the title “Dr. Al-Barak’s wrong ideologies”. After the article, Dr. Al-Barak filed a private suit against Dr. Al-Mizeini in the Riyadh court and demanded his private rights. Dr. Al-Mizeini accused him of being an extremist Islamist who does not appreciate other people’s opinions and has a bad influence on his students in King Saud University.

The trial of Dr. Al-Mizeini first started last Ramadan. It was concluded on Saturday after six sessions with Judge Al-Fantookh sentencing him.

The crown prince’s decision to annul the ruling has finally closed the case.