Egyptian group wants to censor Arabic classic

An Egyptian employee puts copies of "One Thousand and One Nights," known in English as "Arabian Nights," on a shelf at a bookstore in Cairo.

Reporting from Cairo —

Let the ancient temptress beware, censors with sharp pens beckon.

Arab writers and poets through the centuries have spiced their tales with explicit language and carnal desire. Even during the height of the Islamic Empire, when Sharia law dictated virtue across the Middle East, storytellers revealed a fondness for the unholy.

But nowadays fundamentalist Muslims are campaigning to "purify" one of the great works of Arabic literature, the "One Thousand and One Nights."

"The book contains profanities that cannot be acceptable in Egyptian society," said lawyer Ayman Abdel-Hakim, venting his disgust at one of the "Nights" poems in which a woman challenges Muslim men to fulfill her insatiable sexual urges. "We understand that this kind of literature is acceptable in the West, but here we have a different culture and different religion."

Hakeem is a member of Lawyers Without Shackles, a group determined to delete salacious passages from contemporary literature and cherished classics. Its campaign against the masterpiece, also known in English as "The Arabian Nights," is part of a religious conservatism that has been growing in Egypt since the mid-1990s.

Note how this yet another example of Jihadists adopting the language of Liberality to put across their own message.

The name "Lawyers Without Shackles" is reminiscent of the Liberal physicians organization, "Doctors Without Borders".