Ahmed Naji, 31, is an Egyptian novelist and journalist born in Mansoura in 1985. He is the author of three books, Rogers (2007), Seven Lessons Learned from Ahmed Makky (2009), and The Use of Life (2014), as well as numerous blogs and other articles. He is also a journalist for Akhbar al-Adab, a state-funded literary magazine and frequently contributes to other newspapers and websites including Al-Modon and Al-Masry Al-Youm. He has been a vocal critic of official corruption under the rule of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
In August 2014, Akhbar al-Adab published an excerpt from his third book, The Use of Life, which had been previously approved by Egypt’s censorship authority. In the excerpt, the narrator smokes hashish, drinks alcohol with his friends, and enjoys a sexual relationship with a woman. Hani Saleh Tawfik, a 65-year-old Egyptian man, filed a case against Naji, alleging that reading the excerpt had caused him to experience heart palpitations, sickness, and a drop in blood pressure.
Prosecutors argued that Naji’s use of “vulgar” phrases and sexually explicit scenes constituted a “disease” destroying Egyptian social values. Naji and his lawyer argued that the words used in his novel were widely used in common conversation in Cairo and also in classical Arabic literature. Naji also said that the prosecutor was treating his fictional novel as if it were fact, threatening to add charges against Naji for “dealing with hashish” because the novel’s excerpt described drug usage. In December 2015, a lower court acquitted Naji. The prosecution appealed the case in February 2016 to a higher court, which found Naji guilty and sentenced him to two years in prison—the maximum sentence for the charges he faced. The editor-in-chief of Akhbar al-Adab, Tarek al-Taher, was also fined approximately $1,250 for publishing the excerpt.
The Egyptian Constitution, drafted in 2014, explicitly guarantees freedom of artistic and literary creation, freedom of thought and opinion, and freedom of the press. Article 67 forbids the jailing of artists and writers for publishing their work. However, Article 178 of the Penal Code, under which Naji was sentenced, criminalizes content that violates public morals. Naji’s lawyers submitted a motion to the Prosecutor-General arguing that the sentence against Naji should not be implemented since it violates the Egyptian Constitution, which was finally accepted in December 2016. His legal team has also appealed the verdict, and has asked that the case be retried altogether.
The crackdown on artists and writers in Egypt has intensified since President Sisi took power in 2014, including new restrictions on the press, arrests of writers, journalists, and activists, shuttering of theaters and art galleries, and violent suppression of peaceful dissent and public demonstrations. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, as of December 1, 2016, Egypt ranks third in the world in its number of jailed journalists, behind only Turkey and China.
Egypt’s literary and political communities have expressed widespread support for Naji. Seven members of the committee that wrote the Egyptian Constitution published a statement in February 2016 condemning Naji’s sentencing as unconstitutional, arguing that the conviction contravenes Article 67 of the Constitution. Over 500 Egyptian writers and artists also signed a statement in February 2016 in solidarity with Naji, criticizing the government’s “multi-armed attack on a number of writers and journalists because of their opinions” and the “terrible and terrifying path taken by the regime.”
Ahmed Naji 