Who is Toujan al Faisal

Toujan al-Faisal was the first woman elected to the Jordanian Parliament, where she served from 1993 to 1997. She had recently announced that she would be running again for a Parliamentary seat in the upcoming national elections later this year. She is well-known for her vocal pursuit of domestic and women's rights reforms in Jordan.

In 1989, an apostasy case against Toujan al-Faisal, journalist and parliamentary candidate, was heard in the first instance shari`a Court of south Amman. Jordan has no apostasy law but the petitioners sought that she should be declared an apostate, and divorced from her husband. Al-Faisal was standing in the elections at the time; the court eventually ruled no jurisdiction and on appeal in 1990 the shari`a court of appeal, which had agreed to hear the section of the petition relating to divorce on the grounds of alleged apostasy, found that there was no evidence of apostasy and dismissed the case.