(RNS) Try as she might, Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein just can’t stay incarcerated.
Hussein, 43, walked out of a Khartoum prison Tuesday (Sept. 8) after serving one night of a 30-day sentence after she refused to pay $200 fine imposed by an Islamic court for wearing pants in public, a violation of government decency laws.
“I am not happy. I told all my friends and family not to pay the fine, but I have been freed,” Hussein told reporters outside the jail. A journalists’ union paid the fine.
Hussein and 12 other women were arrested by Sudan’s public order police in July for wearing trousers at a Khartoum reception hall. Most of the women accepted the punishment of 10 lashes and a $100 fine. But Hussein, who worked with the United Nations at the time of her arrest, said the government statutes, derived from Islamic law, were in fact un-Islamic, and vowed to fight the charges.
By challenging the law, Hussein risked a harsher punishment of 40 lashes, but when she learned that her status as an employee of an international organization gave her immunity from prosecution, she resigned.
The case caused international outrage and sparked demonstrations in Khartoum, where protesters supporting Hussein clashed with police.
The government’s decision not to whip Hussein and only fine her was seen by some observers as a victory for Muslims challenging the Khartoum government’s harsh interpretations of Sharia, or Islamic law, which has been in place there since the 1980s.
“It’s a victory for reformers,” said Abdullahi An-Na’im, an Islamic law expert from Sudan who teaches at Emory University Law School. “She succeeded in getting the government to back down.”
Sudan’s embassy in Washington did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Hauwa Ibrahim, a Sharia lawyer from Nigeria who has overturned death penalties against accused adulterers in the Sharia courts of her country, said Hussein was right to challenge the fine. “Accepting to pay the fine is accepting guilt,” said Ibrahim, who is currently a research scholar at Harvard Law School. “She was dressed Islamically. Trousers are modest.”
