A security court has convicted a novelist of blasphemy and sentenced him to eight years in prison, the first time this century an Egyptian author has been jailed for his writing.
The court ordered similar terms Thursday for the publisher-distributor of Alaa Hamid's "The Distance in a Man's Mind" and the owner of the press where the book was printed.Published in May 1990, "The Distance in a Man's Mind" comprises dream sequences in which the main character meets prophets of the Koran, Islam's holy book, in comic situations. Many of the prophets are revered by Christians, Jews and Muslims.
The blasphemy charges grew out of a report by the Islamic Research Group of Al-Azhar, Cairo's Muslim educational complex considered the intellectual seat of Islam. The group banned the book and recommended that Hamid be tried on charges that his alleged ridicule of the prophets was heretical and blasphemous.
The case recalled the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1989 death sentence on British author Salman Rushdie, whose book "The Satanic Verses" is considered offensive to Islam.
"This is a shocking sentence," said lawyer Ali el-Shalakany, who was not directly involved in Hamid's case. "It's based on a law that . . . has never been used before."
Hamid's case has drawn the attention of International PEN, the London-based writers' group that concerns itself with legal abuse of colleagues.