Cairo - A family court yesterday rejected a suit by an Islamist lawyer seeking to forcibly divorce a leading Egyptian feminist writer from her Muslim husband of 37 years on the ground that she is an apostate, reports Michael Jansen.
The lawyer, Mr Nabih al-Wahsh, accused Dr Nawal al-Saadawi (70) of abandoning her faith after she called for sexual equality in Muslim inheritance laws and said that the Muslim pilgrimage has pre-Islamic pagan origins. The public prosecutor dismissed the lawyer's petition in May while the family court ruled that he had not followed correct procedure.
Dr Saadawi's work, The Hidden Face of Eve, is a classic on the position of women in Islam, while her autobiography, A Daughter of Isis, deals with female genital mutilation and child marriage.