Abu Dhabi - Yousef had earlier taken 19 people to court accusing them of publicly insulting and slandering him on Twitter.
Published: Mon 23 Mar 2020, 6:10 PM
Updated: Mon 23 Mar 2020, 8:18 PM
Waseem Yousef, a well-known Islamic preacher and TV personality in the UAE who is accused of spreading hatred and racism in society, has appointed a lawyer to represent him in court.
Earlier, he had contended that he would defend the case on his own.
Yousef is on trial at Abu Dhabi Criminal Court on charges of publishing information to promote programmes and ideas that spread hatred and racism in the society and harm national unity and social peace.
Prosecutors demanded that he should be punished in accordance with Articles 1, 24, and 41 of the cybercrime law. At a previous hearing, the civil attorney submitted to the court, requests from several attorneys wanting to defend the preacher. But Yousef, who denied the charges when he appeared in court, told the judge that he wanted to defend his case himself.
But during the latest hearing, he retracted on his previous contention not to be represented by a lawyer and instead came with a lawyer to defend him in his trial.
His lawyer questioned complainants on whether they had followed some of Yousef's programmes he presented on TV and on social media.
The lawyer also requested them to clarify the basis on which they described his client's posts on Twitter to be spreading hatred and racism in the society and harming national unity and social peace.
"My client's comments on the authority of Sahih Al Bukhari, one of the six major collections of the sayings and actions of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), were only intended to elevate the position of the holy Quran from any other book," argued the lawyer.
In their responses, the plaintiffs said the defendant's tweets caused divisions among the community and discord as they challenged the noble prophetic traditions (Hadith) and the values of the society.
Citing one of Yousef's tweets, prosecutors said he said there was a group of people in the society similar to Daesh but they didn't have weapons and that if they possessed arms, "they would be more powerful than Daesh. They have the same ideology."
The preacher earlier told the court that some of the words he used on Twitter were referred to Daesh and the Muslim Brotherhood because of their terror and radical activities and weren't intended for the people of the UAE.
Yousef had earlier taken 19 citizens and residents to court accusing them of publicly insulting and slandering him on Twitter. The preacher claimed that he was bullied on social media by the defendants since June 2019.
The alleged insults followed the comments Yousef made about Sahih Al Bukhari, which was complied by Imam Mohammad Al Bukhari.
The preacher had claimed not everything in Imam Al Bukhari's book should be relied as the "ultimate truth". This prompted criticism on social media. The verdict in the trial of the group has not yet been issued.
Yousef's trial was adjourned to a future date.
ismail@khaleejtimes.com
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