CAIRO, April 12 (AFP) - An outspoken Egyptian feminist writer faces a lawsuit for "scorning" Islam with her criticism of the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the veil and inheritance rights, her family said Thursday.
Lawyer Nabih al-Wahsh filed the suit on Monday with the state prosecutor, accusing Nawal al-Saadawi of having "denied the precepts of religion and scorned" Islam in an interview published on March 6, the family said.
The prosecutor will look at the lawsuit and decide what measures to take.
Saadawi conducts high-profile campaigns against female circumcision and what she denounces as a misogynistic society, never hesitating to lash out at public figures and respected conventions.
In her interview with the independent weekly Al-Midane, Saadawi took aim at the pilgrimage, the wearing of the veil, male inheritance rights awarded by the Koran as well as other issues.
"The pilgrimage is a vestige of paganism" because it amounts to turning around the Kaaba, a cube of stones built by Abraham to worship God, she wrote.
The hajj pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the five pillars of Islam which every Muslim of sufficient means and health must carry out at least once in his life.
Saadawi also said "the Koran mentions no obligation to wear the hijab," the headscarf worn by many Muslim women.
She also says women and men should have equal rights in inheritance, despite the rule in the Koran that awards men twice as much as women.
"Our media serve to reduce Egyptians to ignorance, because an ignorant people is easy to lead, hit, exploit and govern by a dictatorship," she concluded in the article.
The mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Nasr Farid Wassel, wrote a rebuttal in the same edition, saying Saadawi "rejected the teachings of religion, straying from the circle of Islam."
But he did not ask for her to stand trial.
"We do not need to pursue the author for her perverse and aberrant thoughts, because it is clear her goal is to contradict to gain attention," he said.
Married to the Marxist intellectual Sherif Hetata, Saadawi, who is around 60 years old, was imprisoned under the late president Anwar Sadat for her leftist political writings.