JEDDAH, 27 May 2007 — Saudi novelist and newspaper columnist Abdu Khal faced off with a group of vocal critics at a literary event in Hail, Arab News learned yesterday.

Some of the men in the audience demanded that Khal be prosecuted for what they called unacceptable writing that criticizes the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

The 46-year-old Jeddah-based writer, who is also a columnist for the Saudi daily Okaz, was reading at the Hail Literary Club on Wednesday. The event had been planned months ago and had been announced on the club’s website.

A few weeks ago posts on the extremist website Al-Saha started to appear with hateful language toward the author for both his newspaper column and his published fiction. The posts accused Khal of being a threat to Islamic values.

A source at the Hail Literary Club said they received numerous threats, including one saying: “Protect him if you can.” The club members then informed Hail officials about the threats.

“I wasn’t following the cyber threats against me and no one told me about them until I reached Hail,” said Khal.

Khal said he thought the tight security at Wednesday’s reading was normal procedure in Hail, and that it wasn’t until later that he realized there were numerous undercover security officials present at the reading to protect him.

About 150 audience members, mostly in support of Khal’s reading, attended. However, eyewitnesses told Arab News that there was a contingent of men in one part of the audience that condemned Khal’s works after he had read two of his pieces.

Among those critics was Eissa Al-Matroudi, who described Khal’s writing as unacceptable from an Islamic standpoint. Al-Matroudi read an excerpt from Khal’s novel “Immorality”. In it two lovers are torn apart when members of the religious police intervene.

At one point during the confrontation between Khal and the group of men, including Al-Matroudi, Khal asked them if he was on trial at that moment. Khal then said that Al-Matroudi shouldn’t profess to be an expert on the art of fiction writing.

“In a novel, I tend to give a voice to all characters,” he said. “I create light and darkness. That is fiction.”

Another man in that group of critics, referring to Khal’s newspaper column, said the writer should not attack the religious police. Khal disagreed when the man described the virtue commission as a “life jacket” of Saudi society. “They are not life jackets,” he said.

Khal was escorted out of the literary club under heavy security.