Freedom of expression in Egypt was dealt its second blow in as many months on Saturday, when novelist Mr Saheddin Mohsen went on trial for blasphemy.
Prosecutors charged the 43year-old novelist from the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria with promoting "extremist ideas to denigrate the Islamic religion, provoke strife and damage national unity" in his novel Shivers Of Enlightenment. If found guilty he could face up to seven years in jail.
The book describes the Koran as full of contradictions and blames Islam for backwardness in Muslim countries, none of which goes down well with Egypt's religiously conservative masses.
An apparently unrepentant Mr Mohsen has confessed to being an atheist and on Sunday was broadcast by the Qatari-based Jezira television network calling for the establishment of a league of atheists in Egypt.
The trial comes as tempers in Cairo remain frayed from a row last month over a Syrian novel which was deemed blasphemous by the religious powers-that-be.
The case, provoked by an Islamist opposition newspaper, led to violent riots by religious students in the capital. Opposition to the publication was not confined to students or cynical newspaper editors. Dr Muhammed Tantawi, the head of Al-Azhar university, Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning, threw his weight behind the charges and said that the book should not have been printed.
Using the incident as an excuse, the government in a move that says little for its own respect for free speech suspended the opposition newspaper, which, coincidentally, had long been a thorn in its side.
Two employees of the Ministry of Culture who had supervised the reprinting of the novel were charged with abusing their position and could face up to five years in jail. Their case has been adopted as a cause celebre by hundreds of Egyptian writers and intellectuals.
By contrast, Mr Mohsen's trial has received scant attention in Cairo. Although he was arrested last April few had even heard of his novel, much less its author, who has written three other books but is outside the often cliquey Cairo intellectual establishment.
His avowedly atheistic stance is seen as provocative, even among secular intellectuals, and far from supporting their colleague, many appear to see his case as a deliberate attempt to drum up publicity.
"I'm totally against someone being put on trial for their writing but the book appears to be deliberately obnoxious," said Mr Hisham Kassem, a member of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) and publisher of an English-language weekly that has been the frequent target of censors. "Some people want to become victims for their own publicity," he added.
Even if he is not popular with his peers, Mr Mohsen, who was given a court-appointed defence lawyer after initially trying to defend himself, is adamant that his case is about freedom of expression. "I have an opinion and I expressed my opinion in these books," he told the court on Saturday.
The head of the EOHR, Mr Hafez Abu Saada, agrees: "I may not agree with his writing but he did not ask to be put in court and I respect him and his right to free speech," he said.
The trial, being monitored by the EOHR, resumes on Saturday.