Grace Like A Shadow by Islam Samhan (October 30, 2008)

by Suzan Abrams

Here at last is the forbidden book cover for Grace Like A Shadow, a controversial poetry collection composed and published by 27 year old newspaper journalist and Jordanian poet, Islam Samhan in Amman.

The banned book was handed to me as a gift by Islam Samhan and his boss, Hada Sarhan. I haven't come across this book jacket design anywhere on the web up to the present time, so just remember you saw it here first.

Despite its earlier resounding success, the book's contents have been damned by the country's top religious mufti who reviled at the few romantic liners mixed with Koranic imagery and sections which used words like gods which Samhan said referred harmlessly to Greek mythology.

Grace Like A Shadow has now been officially banned in Jordan.

Samhan who denied that he could be anything close to what the mufti had labelled him; an enemy of the State will stand trial next Thursday in Amman. In the meantime, the Jordanian media and other sympathic supporters must stay tight-lipped about the case.

Islam Samhan had earlier been imprisoned for just over two weeks before being released.
However, the poet has now gone into hiding in another town with the aid of friends after constant death threats, hate mail and Arabic blogs written by extremists and attacking him voraciously in the Arabic language, threatened to engulf the core of his existence.

Reference: One of my earlier entries over here.