Letter Concerning Indictment of Dr. Emad Shahin

Letter Concerning Indictment of Dr. Emad Shahin

Letter Concerning Indictment of Dr. Emad Shahin

By : Committee on Academic Freedom (MESA)

[The following letter was issued by theCommittee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA).]

February 4, 2014

Adel Abd al-Hameed
Minister of Justice
Lazoghly Square, Ministry of Justice
Cairo
Arab Republic of Egypt

by fax: 20 2 795 8103
by e-mail: mjustice@moj.gov.eg


Your Excellency,

I write to you on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) in strong protest of the indictment of Dr. Emad Shahin on charges of espionage and subversion. The members of our committee know Dr. Shahin to be a person of the utmost integrity and an Egyptian patriot who would never harm his home country. We understand that his indictment is scheduled to undergo review on February 16. We call upon you to intervene personally to order an earlier review—and one that results in the dismissal of the indictment.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 3,000 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.

Earlier this month Dr. Shahin was informed that the State Security Prosecutor had named him as a person involved in the “grand spy case,” the prosecution of deposed President Muhammad Mursi and other senior members of the Society of Muslim Brothers. The specific charges include: espionage, leading an illegal organization, providing a banned organization with information and financial support, calling for the suspension of the constitution, preventing state institutions and authorities from performing their functions, harming national unity and social harmony, and calling for a change of government by force. The implication of these charges is that Dr. Shahin is himself a member of the Muslim Brothers.

These charges are completely unfounded. Dr. Shahin is not now nor has he ever been a member of the Muslim Brothers. He has not provided that group with any support.

Dr. Shahin is a distinguished political scientist with an impressive scholarly and pedagogical record. He has taught at the university level in both the United States and Egypt, most recently as professor of public policy at the American University in Cairo. The esteem in which his colleagues hold him is evident in his appointment to numerous professional service positions, such as the editorship of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics.

Dr. Shahin is well known in both Egypt and the United States as a critic of the authoritarian policies and practices of the Egyptian state. He has been a consistent voice for democracy, pluralism and the rule of law throughout the political tumult in Egypt since January 2011. A further distortion of the truth by the State Security Prosecutor is that Dr. Shahin was “at large” at the time of the indictment. In fact, he was readily available to the authorities at both his workplace and his residence. He never received a subpoena or any indication that the authorities wished to speak with him. Dr. Shahin has nothing to hide.

We agree, therefore, with Dr. Shahin when he surmises that his “true offense” is that he has been vocal in his criticism of “the course of political events in Egypt since last summer.” We are deeply concerned that his indictment signals a decision on the part of the Egyptian state to hound all of its political opponents—regardless of partisan or ideological affiliation—and thereby suppress political dissent.

Such a decision would be a severe violation of the rights of Egyptian citizens, as laid out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Egypt is a state party. The government of Egypt is responsible for upholding the rights of all of its citizens, including those who disagree with particular decisions made by the authorities. Indeed, Article 65 of the constitution passed by referendum in mid-January protects freedom of thought and opinion, including expression of opinion through speech. And Article 93 pledges that the state will honor its commitments under international human rights treaties ratified by Egypt.

We urge you to rescind the indictment of Dr. Emad Shahin immediately and affirm that the government of Egypt respects the right of Egyptian citizens to free speech, whether on university campuses or elsewhere. We await the honor of your reply.

Sincerely,

Nathan Brown
President 

cc:       

  • Dr. Hazem Elbeblawy, Prime Minister (fax: 20 2 795 8048 or 20 2 795 8016)
  • Dr. Hossam Eissa, Minister of Higher Education (fax: 20 2 794 1005)
  • Maj. Gen. Mohamed Mostafa, Minister of Interior Affairs (fax: 20 2 796 0682)
  • Dr. Lisa Anderson, President, American University in Cairo (fax: 20 2 279 57565)

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412