A Cairo court today threw out a petition by an Islamist lawyer who sought to forcibly divorce outspoken feminist Mrs Nawal el-Saadawi from her Muslim husband on the grounds that she had abandoned her Islamic faith.
The court ruled, as expected, that no individual could petition a court to forcibly divorce another person. It said such cases must be raised by a state prosecutor.
"My husband and I are very happy. But we feel the case should have been rejected by the court from the very beginning," Mrs Saadawi said.
Lawyer Mr Nabih al-Wahsh had claimed 70-year-old Mrs Saadawi had shown she was no longer a Muslim in a newspaper interview earlier this year, which he argued meant she should not be allowed to remain married to her Muslim husband.
In the interview, Mrs Saadawi said the rituals in the Muslim haj pilgrimage had pre-Islamic origins. She also called for sexual equality in Muslim inheritance laws.
Mrs Saadawi's lawyers had told the court earlier this month that the newspaper quoted her out of context.
The court verdict, which cannot be appealed, rejected Mr Wahsh's request for the constitutional court to review the procedures, known as hisba, for raising such cases.
The Islamic concept of hisbaallows any Muslim to sue another for beliefs which are thought to harm society.
Mrs Saadawi, who did not attend the court session, said afterwards she would campaign for hisba to be removed entirely from the statute books in religiously conservative Egypt.
The government restricted its use to state prosecutors after a court forcibly divorced academic Mr Nasr Abu Zeid from his wife in 1996 in a case raised by Islamist lawyers. The couple fled to the Netherlands so they could stay together.
"We will continue to argue for abolishing the hisba law. There may be people who are less powerful than us who can't fight back," Mrs Saadawi said.