Arab Journalists’ Blasphemy Trial Points to Jordan’s Predicament

AMMAN, Jordan -- Handcuffed, their oversize prison uniforms dragging on the floor, three Arab men were led through a bare courtroom to an iron cage. Only when they were locked inside did the day’s proceedings begin.

Have they been charged with terrorism, kidnapping, murder? No. They are on trial for publishing an article about the sex life of the prophet Muhammad’s wife Aisha.

The three Jordanian journalists at Al Hilal, or the Crescent, a weekly newspaper with a circulation of 7,000, are accused of “harming the reputation of the government,” “harming the dignity of Muslims” and, perhaps most significant, “destabilizing society by publishing perversity and false news.”

They were arrested Jan. 16, are being held without bail and could receive a maximum sentence of three years. Their newspaper was shut down.

The trial is taking place in State Security Court, usually the venue for crimes associated with potential physical threats to society. For offenses such as those the three men are accused of -- technically misdemeanors -- the verdicts and sentences of the court are final; only the decisions in serious crimes can be appealed.

The flap caused by the article in this Islamic country, which is generally described as moderate, suggests how vulnerable the Jordanian government perceives itself to be on the eve of a possible U.S.-led war on Iraq, which many believe could ignite fundamentalist forces here.

The tough prosecution appears to be the government’s effort to show its respect for the sensibilities of Jordan’s conservative majority and to provide a counterweight to controversial pro-American policies.

“The government thinks they’d better do something about it so they don’t face commotion, riots. It’s like insulting the flag,” said Kamal Salibi, director of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies in Amman.

Jamil abu Baker, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Arab Islamic movement and a leading Jordanian opposition group, has similar sentiments. “The government must put an end to these practices; otherwise, things will not be in control,” he said.

“We believe in freedom of expression, but for things that have to do with the secular world, not the holy world of religion,” he added.

On the opening day of the trial, the military prosecutor, Lt. Col. Mahmoud Obeidat, said the newspaper article “deformed the image of the prophecy” of Islam’s founder by exposing Muhammad’s active sex life.

Religious scholars in the Islamic Action Front -- the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood -- lost little time making their position known.

In a fatwa, or religious edict, released Jan. 21, Muslim scholars affiliated with the opposition movement wrote, “The article comes amid a Western crusade and Jewish attack against the standing of the prophet Muhammad and against Islam and amid American mobilization on Islamic lands.”

The fatwa called the writer and editors of the article “apostates” and “infidels,” among the strongest pejoratives that can be leveled at a Muslim.

Sex is a sensitive subject in Arab society; in some countries, the punishments for illicit sexual liaisons include flogging, stoning and death.

“Sex, Islam and politics, these are the three taboo subjects in Arab society,” said Nidal Mansour, executive director of the Amman-based Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists, the only Jordanian organization to offer support to the three defendants.

It is politics for which most journalists here have gone to prison. And with that in mind, Nasser Qamash, Al Hilal’s editor in chief, carefully checked every political article for paragraphs or even phrases that might be read as subversive.

“He didn’t think of this as anything other than a cultural article to put on a local page, so he didn’t read it,” said Nashwa Qamash, his wife, who sat quiet and pale outside the courtroom.

His fellow defendants are Managing Editor Roman Haddad and writer Muhanad Mbaidhin.

The article describes Aisha, one of the prophet’s several wives. It claims that Muhammad married her when she was a child and began to have sex with her when she was 8 or 9, “gaining the sexual potency of 40 men.”

Aisha claimed that Muhammad had divine revelations in which the word of God was conveyed by the angel Gabriel when she was in bed with him, the article says.

Aisha’s observations seem to have come down primarily as legend, and the article mentions several writers who have described her story. There is little more to the piece, although it also discusses Aisha’s relationship with Muhammad’s other wives.

Most striking is how much the words mattered to people here.

“The freedom of the press is not yet stable.... The government doesn’t entirely believe in it, and society doesn’t yet believe in freedom of expression,” said Mansour, of the center for media freedom.

“Those who have pushed the government to detain these journalists are the parties of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he added. “And those who gave them the authority to speak is the society who says: ‘Oh, they are right. These journalists have harmed the prophet.’ Yet 90% of people hadn’t read the article.”

Notably, even intellectuals, while saying readily that the three journalists should not have been jailed, are quick to say that the article was unnecessary.

“In the current situation, it’s not important to know about the sexual activities of Muhammad and his wife,” said George Haddad, an analyst on religious issues and a columnist for Al Dustur, a major newspaper here.

Salibi, of the Royal Institute, agrees. “Why should you make the community angry -- it’s irrelevant to modern society.”

But Salibi tried to put the incident in historical perspective.

“In the West, at one time you could not insult Jesus or Paul or denigrate the Gospels,” he noted. “Then, in time, Western society became so secularized that doing this became possible because social loyalties to religion diminished.”