process into a "legal nightmare for him and his wife." While he was eventually promoted, he was sued by conservative Muslims and a Court of Appeals declared him an apostate and divorced him from his wife. This was followed by calls for his death and exile to Europe where he obtained the position of Visiting Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Leiden University. (see below) In Europe he held the Ibn Rushd Chair of Humanism and Islam at the University for Humanistics, Utrecht, Netherlands, while still supervising MA and PhD students at the University of Leiden as well. He also participated in a research project on Jewish and Islamic Hermeneutics as Cultural Critique in the Working Group on Islam and modernity at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin). In 2005, he received the Ibn Rushd Prize for Freedom of Thought, Berlin. His wife returned several times to Egypt for discussion on MA and PhD theses at the French department at Cairo University. Dr. Abu Zayd also returned several times to Egypt after 1995, but mostly to visit family. Death During a visit in Indonesia he was infected by an unknown virus, and was hospitalized in Cairo. He died at a Cairo hospital on July 5, 2010 at the age of 66. He was buried in his birthplace, on the same day. Nasr Abu Zayd case Zayd's academic work on the Qur'an led to a lawsuit against him by conservative Muslim scholars. The subsequent hisbah trial led to him being declared an apostate (murtadd) by an Egyptian court. Since under Sharia law it is not permissible for a Muslim woman to be married to a non-Muslim man, the court also declared he could not remain married to his wife—Cairo University French Literature professor Dr. Ibtihal Younis. This decision, in effect, forced him out of his homeland. Rejection of promotion The Nasr Abu Zayd case began when he was refused a promotion for the post of full professor. In May 1992, Dr. Abu Zayd presented his academic publications to the Standing Committee of Academic Tenure and Promotion for advancement. Among his thirteen works in Arabic and other languages were Imam Shāfi'ī and the Founding of Medieval Ideology and The Critique of Religious Discourse. The committee presented three reports, two were in favor of the promotion of Dr. Abu Zayd. But the third one, written by Abdel-Sabour Shahin,