whether women apostates should be killed or
imprisoned and beaten. Both men and women con-
victed of apostasy lose their property rights and
must be divorced from their Muslim spouses.
Few if any of the individuals accused of apostasy
in recent times considered themselves to be apos-
tates. Indeed many took pains to state their adher-
ence to Islam, which should invalidate the apostasy
suits. The legality of apostasy charges is also
unclear since most Muslim states do not have a law
of apostasy. Law codes are typically based on sev-
eral sources: British or French colonial law, Sharì≠a,
customary law, and in some cases, tribal law. Most
Muslim states have retained Sharì≠a law only per-
taining to marriage, divorce, child custody, and
inheritance. Governments from North Africa to
Southeast Asia, however, in response to pressure
from religious conservatives, have been trying to
strengthen Sharì≠a law. At the same time these gov-
ernments have been facing pressure from interna-
tional and local advocates of Muslim women’s
human rights for the liberalization of Sharì≠a based
personal status laws. The apostasy suits against
Tùjàn al-Fayßal and Nawàl al-Sa≠dàwì, because
they resulted in extensive international attention
and legal and political reforms, will serve to illus-
trate this clash of legal and social standards.
In 1989, Tùjàn al-Fayßal, the Jordanian talk-
show host, was among twelve women who ran for
parliament. As an opening salvo to her campaign,
al-Fayßal published an article entitled “Yushti-
mùnanàwa-nantakhibùhum,” (They curse us and
we elect them) in al-Ra±y, a government-owned
newspaper. In her article, she ridiculed the Islamists
who subscribed to a well-known ™adìth that
“woman by nature is deficient in intellect and reli-
gion” and who believed that “women were pre-
dictable and guided by their emotions, legal minors
who need a male guardian to run their affairs.”She
sarcastically remarked that since the Islamists
believe that “women are limited by their reproduc-
tive functions the best women must be those who
are not mothers.” She complained that they sugar-
coat their views on women’s deficiencies by prais-
ing women’s femininity and decency, but when
women demand their freedom and equal rights they
accuse them of wanting to “abandon tradition.”
Three weeks after the publication of this article,
she received a subpoena to appear at the south
Amman Islamic court on Tuesday, 17 October- The two plaintiffs were an assistant mufti
and a private in Jordan’s armed forces. The charge
was apostasy from Islam. Jordan, however, had no
apostasy law and several Islamic courts refused to
accept the case. Finally, the Islamic court in Wih-
8 apostasy
dat, south Amman, agreed to hear it. The plaintiffs’
lawyer accused al-Fayßal of apostasy, heresy, and
ridiculing the Qur±àn, the ™adìth, and the Sharì≠a.
He added, “Men of religion had tried to warn her
of the danger of her words and had asked her to
write an article asking for forgiveness and express-
ing her repentance, but that she had persisted in her
infidelity.” He asked the court “to declare her an
apostate, to divorce her from her husband, to refuse
her repentance, to ban her articles, to prevent the
media from dealing with her, and to grant permission
to spill her blood.” The two plaintiffs then signed a
document, submitted it to the court and their wakìl
had a copy presented to al-Fayßal’s lawyer.
The charge that al-Fayßal had called for four hus-
bands per woman caused a sensation. At various
election rallies she had asked, “If men can have four
wives why not women four husbands?” The fact
that she repeatedly insisted that she was trying to
point out that men should not have four wives any
more than women should have four husbands made
no difference to her accusers. In her response to the
charges, she responded, “I am a Muslim and I say
that God is one and Mu™ammad is the Prophet of
God. So they have no ground for their case in Islam,
because only God can judge if a person is sincere.”
She said they attacked her because she drew on
Islamic laws to defend women’s rights and had
threatened them in their own domain. In Jordan,
women’s rights are embodied in the laws of per-
sonal status governing marriage, divorce, child cus-
tody, alimony, and inheritance, which are weighted
against women, but, as al-Fayßal pointed out,
Article 6:22–23 of the 1946 Jordanian constitution,
grants women “political, economic, and social
equality.” In addition, Jordan signed the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which
reaffirms the equality of men and women. The per-
sonal status laws therefore contradict the constitu-
tion and the UDHR. Al-Fayßal effectively made the
case against her a violation of her constitutional
and human rights.
In the elections, all twelve women candidates lost
while the Islamists and their allies made substantial
gains in parliament. The day after the election, the
judge ruled that the Islamic court did not have the
competence to decide al-Fayßal’s case. The plain-
tiffs, however, did not give up. In January 1990, al-
Fayßal received another summons. A court of
appeal had agreed to hear the part of the case con-
cerning divorce from her husband because of her
alleged apostasy, which it said was within its com-
petence. This time al-Fayßal went to court sup-
ported by a large and vocal crowd of local and
international activists and by prior arrangement,