Kuwaiti academic gets one year for disparaging Quran
KUWAIT: A leading liberal academic has been handed a one-year suspended
jail term by Kuwait's appeals court for writing an article deemed offensive to
the holy Quran, he said yesterday. Ahmad Al-Baghdadi, a university political
science professor and columnist, was convicted of "disparaging the Quran" for
criticising plans by the Ministry of Education to increase the number of Islamic
education lessons in schools. The court, which passed its verdict on Saturday,
told Al-Baghdadi to pay KD 2,000 to suspend the jail term and ordered him to
keep good conduct for three years. In an article he wrote in his daily column in
Al-Siyassah newspaper last June, Al-Baghdadi said he sent his son to a private
foreign school to escape the "backwardness" of public education and because he
thought "learning music is more important than learning the holy Quran." "The
sentence is a harsh one. I only expressed my opinion. I did not degrade the
Quran," Al-Baghdadi, 54, said. He said he would pay the bail and later challenge
the sentence in the court of cassation, the country's supreme court. Al-Siyassah
editor Ahmad al-Jarallah was also fined $170 for allowing the publication of the
article. The two were acquitted by the criminal court a few months ago because
it considered the criticism as part of freedom of expression. The case was filed
by three Islamist activists on the grounds that the article contained an
accusation that Islamic education in Kuwait teaches students to be terrorists
and hate women and non-Muslims. The appeals court said in its verdict that the
article "linked between learning Islam and the Quran and terrorism and
backwardness." Baghdadi was sentenced for one month in prison in October 1999
for offending Islam in a 1996 article in which he claimed the Prophet Mohammad
(pbuh) failed in at least part of his mission. But he was pardoned by the Amir
after serving 13 days. "It's painful and bitter to receive such sentences. I
will start seeking political asylum in any country," Al-Baghdadi said.
Good on ya mate for speaking up. Clearly the quality (or lack of it) of the Ministry of Education's syllabus for Islamic studies is a problem. In fact, from all accounts it's totally crap! Why else would a reputable foreign curriculum school's Islamic education teachers actually clamour for resources they can use to teach children, outside of the Ministry's enforced syllabus. And then there is the way the Ministry of MisEducation enforces a syllabus that attempts to teach classical Arabic to children that are learning Arabic as a second (or third or fourth) language. I'm all for my children learning Arabic. I welcome it in fact. What a shame that most ex-pat children are turned off Arabic because there is no recognition of how a language can & should be taught.
And isn't that a nice touch, giving the paper's editor a slap on the wrist for publishing someone's opinion. Freedom of the press? Forget it if it can be alleged that you've disparaged the Quran.
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