From beneath a veil, a Saudi woman is setting her conservative Arab homeland alight.

Hissa Hilal is already challenging convention by being at once a journalist and a wife and mother of four children.

But it is her blistering poetry – recited while dressed in a traditional head-to-toe abaya cloak and broadcast on traditional Arabic television – that is really defiant.

Using a traditional verse form native to the Arab Peninsula’s nomadic tribes, she writes critically about the country’s hard-line Muslim clerics, calling them: “vicious in voice, barbaric, angry and blind”.

…”What made me so angry is seeing the Arab society becoming more and more kept to itself, not like before – loving and caring and sharing and open and welcoming everyone,” she told the BBC’s World Service.

“Now, even if you want to be simple and nice with others, people are asking themselves whether it is haram [forbidden] to say hello to strangers,” she said, adding: “I blame those who have led the people, and directed them this way.”

Hissa Hilal’s words are delivered from beneath a spotlight and televised across the Arab world from the capital of UAE, Abu Dhabi, on a reality television programme called The Million Poets, where contestants compete to be the best poet.

If she wins, she will take home a prize of $1.3m (£870,000) in cash.

Go to BBC.

Her recitation on the show brings cheers, death threats

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – It was a startling voice of protest at a startling venue. Covered head-to-toe in black, a Saudi woman lashed out at hard-line Muslim clerics’ harsh religious edicts in verse on live TV at a popular Arabic version of “American Idol.”

Well, not quite “American Idol”: Contestants compete not in singing but in traditional Arabic poetry. Over the past episodes, poets sitting on an elaborate stage before a live audience have recited odes to the beauty of Bedouin life and the glories of their rulers or mourning the gap between rich and poor.

Then last week, Hissa Hilal, only her eyes visible through her black veil, delivered a blistering poem against Muslim preachers “who sit in the position of power” but are “frightening” people with their fatwas, or religious edicts, and “preying like a wolf” on those seeking peace.

Her poem got loud cheers from the audience and won her a place in the competition’s finals, to be aired on Wednesday.

It also brought her death threats, posted on several Islamic militant Web sites.

‘It’s a way to express myself’
Hilal shrugs off the controversy.

“My poetry has always been provocative,” she told The Associated Press in an interview. “It’s a way to express myself and give voice to Arab women, silenced by those who have hijacked our culture and our religion.”

Her poem was seen as a response to Sheik Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak, a prominent cleric in Saudi Arabia who recently issued a fatwa saying those who call for the mingling of men and women should be considered infidels, punishable by death.

But more broadly, it was seen as addressing any of many hard-line clerics in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the region who hold a wide influence through television programs, university positions or Web sites.

“Killing a human being is so easy for them, it is always an option,” she told the AP.

Poetry holds a prominent place in Arab culture, and some poets in the Middle East have a fan base akin to those of rock stars.

Hilal’s 15-verse poem was in a form known as Nabati, native to nomadic tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. She criticized extremism that she told AP is “creeping into our society” through fatwas.

“I have seen evil in the eyes of fatwas, at a time when the permitted is being twisted into the forbidden,” she said in the poem. She called such edicts “a monster that emerged from its hiding place” whenever “the veil is lifted from the face of truth.”

She described hard-line clerics as “vicious in voice, barbaric, angry and blind, wearing death as a robe cinched with a belt,” in an apparent reference to suicide bombers’ explosives belts.

The three judges gave her the highest marks for her performance, praising her for addressing a controversial topic. That, plus voting from the 2,000 people in the audience and text messages from viewers, put her through to the final round.

“My message to those who hear me is love, compassion and peace,” Hilal said. “We all have to share a small planet and we need to learn how to live together.” Go to MSNBC.

Title: Fagih Khogeleh (Cute Supreme Leader)

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A poem dedicated to the people of Iran.

A five year old boy tells the ancient Persian tale of Arash E Kamangir (Arash the Archer), Set in context of the Iranian uprising against the fascist government and the fraudulent 2009 elections.

“A Classroom empty of you” an incredible poem by Hilda Sedighi.

A moving performance.