The center, which was headed by a woman, Dr. Raoufa Hasan, held a conference in mid-September that hosted representatives from 41 countries, including leading secularists from the Muslim world. The conference had to be held in utter secrecy in the Sheraton in Sanaa out of fear of public reprisal.

Muslim scholars said some of the speeches in the conference "attacked God and openly called for extra-marital sexual relations."

Fearing the backlash, the University of Sanaa shut down the center and opened another one, the Women's Studies Center, headed by a man, Dr. Hussein Aryani. His deputy is a Muslim scholar specialized in the Hadith's of the Prophet (PBUH), Dr. Hasan Ahdal. The new center will only give a diploma, not a Bachelor's degree.

The protests had reached the level of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ordered an investigative committee to look into the former center headed by Dr. Raoufa Hasan. The committee, which was made up of parliamentarians, the Ministry of Education, the University of Sanaa and the Theologian's Society of Yemen, found that the center's curricula "violated Islamic Sharia, the Yemenite constitution and the values of our Arab and Islamic culture."

Holland had paid an undisclosed but reportedly large sum of money to fund the previous center. Fearing for her life, Dr. Raoufa Hasan fled Yemen for Holland a few weeks ago. She was not available for comment. The Dutch government said she had been granted a "five-year academic scholarship." Holland already houses another expatriate Yemenite feminist, Dr. Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid.

The September conference had featured Moroccan researcher Abdul Samad Dialmi, who gave a paper attacking the Islamic doctrine of, "no judgment calls where there is an explicit text." He said the "outdated" conditions that Muslim scholars enforce on those allowed to make judgment calls in Sharia must be reconsidered, and argued that the Qur'an is vague and not explicit on anything.

Muslim scholars were enraged by other parts of his paper as well, saying he called for a "sexual revolution" in the Arab world and had dismissed the family system as a "bourgeoisie institution."

Diamli had boasted during the speech that he had divorced and left his Moroccan Muslim wife and moved to Paris where he "observes and practices sexual freedom."