Crown Prince Quashes Jail Term of Saudi Writer
Raid Qusti, Arab News

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.

Well, the case I highlighted yesterday in noting that the Saudi media was going critical on the religious establishment has been resolved.

The writer won’t be jailed or flogged, but he has to give up writing for the Saudi media.

So what is this? Is it a compromise, with each party getting something it wanted? Is it copping-out by not coming to a clean, one-side-wins conclusion?

Either or both, is my appraisal.

But there is certainly one big loser here. The Saudi religious “establishment” has been told clearly that they will not be permitted to use the courts to strong-arm decisions that they cannot win on the merits of their arguments. They are not immune to criticism. That’s a pretty big win for reform, even if it costs one person his avocation as a part-time opinion-writer.