Palestinian authorities confiscated all copies of a writer's new novel, and issued a warrant for his arrest, after discovering the book included discussion of religious extremism and homosexuality.

Abbad Yahya, 29, says he learned about the warrant while visiting Qatar, where is now stranded for fear of being arrested if he returns to the West Bank.

“I don’t know what to do. If I go back, I will be arrested," Yahya told the AP. "[But] I can’t stay far from my home and family.

His novel, Crime in Ramallah, follows three young Palestinian men who work in a bar where a young woman is murdered. One of the three, who is gay, is interrogated by police, who beat and humiliate him. Tired of persecution, the character ends up moving to France in search of acceptance.

Another of the protagonists is ostracized by his family for selling alcohol, and eventually turns into a Muslim extremist. The third, the boyfriend of the murdered woman, witnessed the killing but froze up, unsure whether to chase the killer or try to save his dying girlfriend.

Yahya says the book symbolizes the Palestinian struggle for liberation, which has been paralyzed in the half-century since Israeli occupation began. Crime in Ramallah lampoons Palestinian leaders, portrayed as ineffectual, and includes some explicit sexual language and a scene of masturbation.

“Like all societies in the region, our society is seeing the growth of fanaticism and extremism and is reproducing social conservativism,” he explains. “These trends appear in the society in a mixture of religious and national slogans.”

Ehab Bsaiso, Palestine's culture minister, has called for the ban and arrest warrant to be canceled, but some Palestinian intellectuals are joining in the attacks. Adel Osta, a literature professor at An-Najah National University in Nablus, accused Yahya of "crossing the red lines of Palestinian society.”

“The novel presented a bad image of the Palestinian Authority, and it uses unfamiliar sexual words which drove the Palestinian Authority to ban it.”

Murad Sudani, leader of the Palestinian Writers Union, insists "the job of the writer in our occupied country is to raise the hope and enlighten people—not to break the national and religious symbols. My freedom as a writer ends when the freedom of the country begins.”

He called Ramallah a “silly novel that violates the national and religious values of our society."

Yahya has received death threats since news of the ban broke. One Facebook user posted posted that he “should be killed or arrested, or deported.”

The book's distributor, Fuad Akleek, said he was arrested at a bookshop “in a very humiliating way,” even though there is no permit required to publish or distribute books in the West Bank.

“It is not a crime to distribute a book,” said Akleek. “The one who judges a novel and author is the reader.”