UCLA Islamic Law Expert Threatened

Khaled Abou El Fadl tells the Los Angeles Times that false information about him and threats, relayed earlier this month by a local newspaper, amount to a 'solicitation of murder.' He also recounts a close call in April.

UCLA Professor of Law Khaled Abou El Fadl, an expert in Islamic legal thinking and a well-known critic of what he calls its "puritanical" branch, is taking the latest death threats against him seriously, according to an article in the Aug. 27 edition of the Los Angeles Times. Abou El Fadl says that the Anaheim-based newspaper Al Watan and other Arabic-language media this month have circulated a report "that Iranian extremists had declared it permissible to spill his blood," according to the Times. The report also grossly misrepresented his view of the 33-day conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, he says, and fabricated a role for him in its prolongation.

Abou El Fadl spoke at UCLA in November on his book The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (2005).

Corrected: An earlier version of this note incorrectly stated that Al Watan, the Anaheim-based newspaper, was published in Saudi Arabia.

Published: Monday, August 28, 2006

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UCLA Islamic Law Expert Threatened

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Khaled Abou El Fadl tells the Los Angeles Times that false information about him and threats, relayed earlier this month by a local newspaper, amount to a 'solicitation of murder.' He also recounts a close call in April.