Waleed AlـTabtabaie

Waleed Al-Tabatabaie (Arabic: وليد الطباطبائي) is a member of the Kuwaiti National Assembly, who represents the third district. Born on 4 April 1964, Al-Tabtabaie obtained a PhD in Islamic studies from Al-Azhar and was an assistant professor at Kuwait University before being elected to the National Assembly in 1996. Al-Tabtabaie affiliated with the Islamist deputies.

Al-Tabtabaie is politically conservative. He has taken conservative stands on several issues pertaining to freedom of speech, freedom of media, and Westernization.

In February 2008, Al-Tabtabaie called for the Kuwaiti government to boycott Denmark in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

In September 2008, Al-Tabtabaie said he wanted the government to block YouTube to prevent the dissemination of videos that were blasphemous or pornographic.

Al-Tabtabaie has spoken out against the Guantanamo Bay detention center. In 2004 he called for U.S. President George W. Bush to "uncover what is going on inside Guantanamo," allow family visits to the hundreds of Muslim detainees there, and allow an independent investigation of detention conditions.

On May 23, 2004, Al-Tabtabaie pressured the Islamic Affairs department to issue a fatwa banning "un-Islamic" concerts with women singers, such as the show Star Academy. Star Academy is based on a hit French TV show of the same name in which male and female teenagers from different Arab countries live together before competing in a talent contest. On May 6, a Star Academy concert was held in Kuwait, despite demonstrations by hundreds of Islamists. Al-Tabtabaie further threatened to grill Kuwait's information minister over the matter.

In May 2005, Al-Tabtabaie helped create a constitutional roadblock that effectively killed a measure that would have allowed women to participate in city council elections. The new law which would re-grant Kuwaiti women the right to vote was initially by the National Assembly on April 19, but in accordance with the Kuwaiti constitution it faced a second vote for ratification on May 2. But Parliament ended in deadlock on May 2 when 11 members abstained and 29 voted for it, leaving the legislation just shy of the 11 votes needed. Al-Tabtabai argued, "We have no problem with women voting, but we do have a problem with women standing for elections. Islam dictates that the head of the nation must be a man, and we are technically the head of the nation here." Efforts to resume voting on the measure on May 3 failed when opponents argued that it had already been rejected and that any new vote would therefore be unconstitutional. In a surprise move, the prime minister, Sheik Sabah al-Jaber al-Sabah, shelved the issue for two more weeks. On May 17, 2005 the Kuwaiti parliament re-grant women full political rights.

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