I have followed the debate concerning For Bread Alone, by Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri, which was removed from the curriculum at the American University in Cairo, supposedly for the explicit sexual scenes it contains. I believe that a work of art must be evaluated according to artistic criteria alone, not according to moral or social principles. If a work of art appears to us as immoral, this is no doubt because of the seriousness and truthfulness that art demands, not because its author seeks to incite deviant behaviour.
Literature is literature, and nothing else.
This is why I disagree with Professor Galal Amin in his attack on For Bread Alone. Such honesty in itself is eminently moral. Writers who admit to everything show courage, not depravity. It is absolutely inadmissible that a book or a painting be banned because it is supposedly base. If we were to start condemning works on moral grounds, we would be unable to stop.