An Algerian Author Fights Back Against a Fatwa

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/05/books/an-algerian-author-fights-back-against-a-fatwa.html

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PARIS — There are elements of the absurd about the plight of Kamel Daoud, an Algerian writer whose debut novel reaped glowing international reviews, literary honors and then, suddenly, demands for his public execution.

His book, “Meursault, Counter-Investigation,” is a retelling of Albert Camus’s classic “The Stranger,” from an Algerian perspective. Within its 160 pages, Mr. Daoud (pronounced DOW-ood) gives voice to the brother of the nameless Arab murder victim who is shot five times on a beach in Algiers by the antihero, Meursault.

Camus’s 1942 novel, an exploration of the absurd and the meaningless of life, greatly influenced Mr. Daoud, who is now dealing with his own farcical reality: a Facebook fatwa issued by a Salafist imam from Algeria.

No one has been arrested in connection with the death threat that surfaced on Dec. 16 on a Facebook page that is now blocked. But the threat has provoked a liturgical debate in Algeria about whether an unschooled imam is qualified to issue a fatwa. Still unclear is whether the threat stems from Mr. Daoud’s outspoken television appearances abroad or his novel’s character, who rebukes a neighborhood imam. Or perhaps both.

“I still have no protection,” said Mr. Daoud, 44, who has canceled three speaking engagements in Algeria and retreated to the neighborhood of housing towers where he lives in Oran, the second-largest city in Algeria, on the northwest Mediterranean coast. “This is a strategy for pushing me into exile and to shape public opinion with old ghosts of the 1990s and memories of the civil war here. It scares people.”

Mr. Daoud’s novel fell two votes shy in November of winning the Goncourt Prize, France’s top literary honor for French-language fiction, when it was published there in 2014. That led to a flurry of French television appearances for Mr. Daoud, who discussed Islam on Dec. 12, observing that “religion is a vital question in the Arab world” and that “we need to reflect on this to move forward.”

Soon after, the threat was issued by Abdelfatah Hamadache, a radical Islamist preacher in Algeria, who leads an obscure Salafist group, the Islamic Awakening Front. Labeling Mr. Daoud an apostate and “an enemy of religion,” he called on the Algerian state to impose a public execution of Mr. Daoud for the “war he is leading against God and the prophet.”

Mr. Daoud filed a criminal complaint against the imam, who became more nuanced, telling the Algerian TSA news service, “I did not say I was going to kill him, and I have not called on Muslims to do so.”

In a telephone interview from his home, Mr. Daoud said he was accustomed to insults and criticism, particularly since he tackles delicate political issues like government corruption in his regular columns for Le Quotidien d’Oran, a newspaper. But he said that this was the first death threat directed against him and that he suspected hidden political forces were manipulating the imam for their own ends.

He is awaiting the outcome of the complaint he has filed against the imam. In the meantime, the Algerian minister of religious affairs publicly condemned the death threat as a “dangerous blunder,” but also singled out Mr. Daoud, chiding him for “being exploited by an international Zionist lobby hostile to Islam and Algeria.”

That was a reference to the open letters of support and petitions from intellectuals and artists in France defending Mr. Daoud, including the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. There have also been demonstrations in support of Mr. Daoud in Algeria, along with a petition demanding government protection against threats.

Some Algerian artists fear that the government’s tepid response is part of a new tactic to increase political pressure if they step out of line. The human rights organization Algeria-Watch has raised questions about past ties between the radical imam and secret police intelligence organizations dating to the 1990s.

“You know there is an issue when a government allows some of its citizens to be openly threatened with death by others and does nothing,” said Lyes Salem, a filmmaker. His latest movie, “The Man From Oran” — a critical look at postwar Algeria through the lives of two friends — was the target of a fatwa in October from a television preacher who urged viewers to enlist lawyers to challenge the “satanic film.”

Mr. Daoud’s editor, Sofiane Hadjadj, said the book provoked no controversy when it was first published in Algeria in 2013. But with the writer’s rising visibility in other countries, Muslim extremists took notice. In particular, he said, critics are focusing on the book’s end, which is a direct twist on Camus’s work.

In Camus’s last chapter, the antihero is awaiting execution and rails against a prison chaplain who wants him to accept his understanding of God. In Mr. Daoud’s retelling, the elderly brother of the Arab murder victim scolds a neighborhood imam for wasting his time in a discussion of God.

Lost in the current debate is that Mr. Daoud developed his idea because he wanted to bring life to the nameless Arab character in Camus’s work.

And readers have responded; Mr. Daoud’s publisher in Algeria, Barzakh Editions, ran out of stock and is printing more. Rights have sold in 13 countries, including China and Turkey. In the United States, Other Press plans to publish it next fall. Judith Gurewich, the publisher of Other Press, said that she considered the book a tragic novel — a cross between a “political manifesto and a love story.”

Mr. Daoud said the idea for the novel, which he describes as a dialogue with Camus, took form more than four years ago after a French reporter came to Algeria to write about Camus’s legacy and interviewed him.

“I have a column three days a week, and I am always looking for ideas,” said Mr. Daoud, who started reimagining the murder victim as Moussa, and his surviving brother, Haroun. In his 70s, the brother buttonholes an expat at the Titanic bar to recount his version of the “second most important character” in the crime, “who has no name, no face, no words.”

The son of a policeman, Mr. Daoud grew up speaking Arabic, but said he learned French around age 9, largely by studying on his own at the home of his grandparents. The experience mirrors the key character in his book who describes how “you drink a language, you speak it and one day it takes possession of you.”

Mr. Daoud said that Camus was a major influence on him when he was young. “I was very religious when I was young, and his philosophy helped to liberate me,” Mr. Daoud said. “When I was a Muslim, all the world was explained to me. With Camus, I learned the sense that life depends on me and my acts. I learned I was responsible for my life.”

The book is dedicated to his two children, and Mr. Daoud said he hopes that he has taught them a lesson in how to battle for freedom. For now, he has no idea what he can do for protection, but he insists: “I will not leave. My life is here, and my family is here. I won’t be exiled.”