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Saudi Lawyer Takes On Religious Court System
In his Riyadh office, human rights lawyer Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem, right, talks to a man whose mother and sister are suing the country's religious police. "If we win this case," he said, "it will prove that nobody is above the rule of law."
(By Faiza Saleh Ambah -- The Washington Post)
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His vocal and public defense of his clients, open attacks on the judiciary and regular newspaper columns condemning religious extremism have made him hugely unpopular with many Saudis.
To them, Lahem is part of a Western onslaught against their Islamic values. Conservatives believe that all laws should be derived from God-given sharia, and not man-made international agreements, including the human rights treaties that Lahem endorses.
His detractors have accused him of being an apostate, an infidel and a "lawyer of homosexuals" because of his defense of Quwai'i. But what could most undercut Lahem's effectiveness is the charge that he seeks to extricate Islam from the legal system, something few people in this conservative country, birthplace of Islam and home to its two holiest shrines, would accept.
Asked whether he advocates a separation of religion and state, Lahem does not answer directly. "I believe, first and foremost, in human rights and rule of law," he said. "That should be above all else."
Sharia is "not always" compatible with human rights, he finally said. "Some rulings, like lashes, violate international conventions."
But what makes him such a formidable foe in the courtroom is his own strong background in sharia.
Until the late 1990s, Lahem -- who holds a degree in sharia -- was an Arabic teacher and an activist with the conservative Islamic Sahwa movement. Like most Sahwa adherents, he wore a long traditional white robe and let his beard grow long and scruffy, considered signs of piety.
His mind-set was similar to that of the austere Wahhabi judges he now battles in court, he explained with a wry smile.
Teaching in the isolated city of Hafr al-Batin, about 250 miles northeast of the deeply conservative Qassim region where he was born and far from his closed Sahwa circle, he discovered different Muslim thinkers, such as the Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. It was the first time that Lahem, then in his mid-20s, had read anything outside the official Wahhabi version of Islam taught in school.
His transformation took an even sharper turn when he enrolled in law school in Riyadh. Unlike his strict religious education, his legal studies required ordered, logical thinking, not learning by rote. Students could also argue and discuss concepts with their professors, something impossible in the rigid hierarchy of sharia school.
"From the first class, I fell in love with the law," Lahem said, extracting a Marlboro from a front pocket and lighting it. "I started learning to depend on my mind, not just on ideas I'd been spoon-fed. It was wonderful. I felt as if I had found something I'd been looking for for years."