Author on the Run
The New York Times (via) reports that Mariwan Halabjayi who, until a few months ago, was an obscure Kurdish writer is now a famous fugitive who moves from house to house, not daring to go near the windows for fear that assassins will catch sight of him.
He says he has been receiving death threats by phone since January, when his new book on sex and Islam touched off angry street demonstrations in several Kurdish cities in Iraq. He says his ordeal is proof that even here in Kurdistan, the most secular and peaceful part of Iraq, there is no escape from militant Islam.
After the protests started, the book was discussed on editorial pages and television and radio talk shows, with some clerics angrily calling for the author to be punished. The regional government’s minister for endowments and religion, Muhammad Gaznay, publicly denounced it. Halabjayi says the Kurdistan Islamic Group, one of the region’s main Islamist parties, threatened him with death for insulting Islam.
It is his 14th book, and the latest of several that criticize Islam, he said. But the earlier critiques of Islam were published under pseudonyms. This time he used his own name on the cover, and in passages about sex he used vulgar language, including slang terms for the male and female genitalia.
The book, Halabjayi said, argues that “women have no rights in Islam” and condemns polygamy and other practices allowed under many interpretations of the Koran. It also portrays the religion generally as a formula for terrorism and extremism. Halabjayi said he had been raised as a Muslim but no longer considered himself one.
His new book was published in November. It went through two editions of 1,000 copies each with only minor protests from religious figures. In January there were street demonstrations in Iraqi Kurdistan against the Danish cartoons, and the protesters denounced Halabjayi’s book too. Halabjayi grants that the criticism helped sell the book, which quickly went through two more editions.
It was then that the threats began, he said, mostly anonymous phone calls. At the same time, a group of Muslim clerics presented a petition to a court in Sulaimaniya asking that Iraq’s blasphemy laws be invoked against the author. A judge opened an investigation and ordered Halabjayi to appear at a hearing.
So far Halabjayi has refused to do so. He says he does not trust the Iraqi legal system to judge him fairly.
Thursday 13 Apr 2006 | Paul | Iraq
