KUWAIT CITY, 23 November 2004 — Kuwait has asked public prosecutors to investigate the publishers and distributors of an illegal magazine run by a Muslim Shiite group after it printed statements against a wife of the Prophet Muhammad.
Information Minister Mohammed Abulhassan told the state news agency KUNA that he took action against Al-Menbar magazine for attempting to spread “unrest in society and threatening national unity.”
The magazine, published from Lebanon by an extremist Shiite group called “Servants of Al-Mahdi”, printed comments deemed offensive and degrading to Aisha, one of the Prophet’s wives.
Al-Siyassah newspaper reported yesterday that security forces raided the group’s offices in Kuwait on Sunday night and arrested a number of Iranian nationals suspected of illegally printing and distributing the magazine.
Al-Menbar has no license to print or distribute in Kuwait but it was being sold at bookshops run by Shiites.
“We will strike with an iron fist at all those who threaten national unity in Kuwait, without discriminating between Shiites and Sunnis,” the daily quoted Interior Minister Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah as saying.
Kuwait’s criminal court in May sentenced Shiite activist Yasser Al-Habeeb in absentia to 10 years in jail for insulting Islam’s first two caliphs in an audiotape distributed in the emirate.
Habeeb, 21, was arrested in November last year and freed in February as part of an annual pardon by the emir, but he was ordered rearrested after discovery that his release had been a legal error.
He has been in hiding ever since.
Kuwaiti Shiites, who form about one-third of the indigenous population of some 950,000, have been emboldened by events in neighboring Iraq.
They have their own lower and appeals courts and were promised a supreme court to rule on the sect’s personal status matters related to marriage, divorce, endowment and others, based on the Shiite interpretation of Islam.
Kuwaiti Shiites have five MPs in the 50-member Parliament, down from six in the previous chamber, and only one minister in the 16-member Cabinet.
In another development, Kuwaiti lawmakers yesterday rejected a proposal to probe why state-run television screened a documentary praising the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Acting on a false alarm, Kuwait television interrupted regular programming on Nov. 9 to announce Arafat’s death and then screened a documentary that hailed the veteran Palestinian leader as freedom fighter.
Lawmakers infuriated at the broadcast later called for the resignation of Information Minister Mohammad Abulhassan.
