Bahraini Response to al-Qaradawi's Sectarian Accusation

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Bahraini Response to al-Qaradawi's Sectarian Accusation

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The below letter in Arabic was issued in the name of "The People of Bahrain" on 20 March 2011. It responds to Shaykh Yusef al-Qaradawi`s accusation that the uprising in Bahrain was a Shi`a sectarian movement targeting Sunnis. While the letter criticiszes and counters al-Qaradawi`s portrayl of the uprising as a sectarian one, it invites him to oversee the formation and implementation of an independent committee to "meet with all groups in order to discover the truth." For more on the Bahraini uprising, see Jadaliyya`s "Let`s Talk About Sect," "Distortions of Dialogue," and "When Petro-Dictators Unite: The Bahraini Opposition`s Struggle to Survive."]

 

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

من شعب البحرين إلى الشيخ القرضاوي
السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاتة

تحية طيبة وبعد...


إستنادا إلى خطابك الأخير بخصوص ثورة البحرين، والتي وصفت فيها بأنها ثورة طائفية بامتياز... نحن ومن هذا المنطلق نود أن نوجه لك عتابا يتلخص في النقاط التالية... راجين من الله أن يوفقنا ويوفقكم إلى ما فيه صلاح هذه الأمة.


أولا: نستغرب إصدارك حكما مسبقا من دون أن تستمع للطرف الآخر وهذا يخالف أبسط القواعد الدينية، فهل جلست أو سمعت للطرف الآخر؟وهل أن ما بنيته من حكم مسبق ينطلق من قاعدة شرعية أو دينية أو قانونية؟


و نستغرب أيضا توصيفك للثورة البحرينية بأنها ثورة من كل الشيعة ضد كل السنة، ونحن نخشى من استدراجك للتحريض المذهبي والطائفي، وجعلك طرف في صراع لست ملما بتفاصيله بينما ينبغي أن تكون أكبر من ذلك.


ثانيا: إن شعب البحرين لطالما اعتبرك طرفا من الأطراف المعتدلة، فلم يسيء لك في يوم من الأيام بل أعطاك رمزية وثقلاً كبيراً في الثورات المصرية والتونسية والليبية واليمنية، وقدر لك الدفاع عن حقوق الإنسان، وتزكيتك لتلك الثورات، ثم توصيفك للثورة في البحرين بالطائفية !


مع أن الشعوب انطلقت في جميع البلدان من منطلق واحد وهو فساد الأنظمة السياسية بعيدا عن الدوافع الدينية والمذهبية وربما حتى السياسية، والعامل المشترك في جميع هذه الثورات هو تطلع الناس لواقع إنساني يضمن لهم الحياة الحرّة والكريمة، وهو ما تفتقده الشعوب العربية الثائرة.


ثالثا: وبغض النظر عن كون المتظاهرين سنة أو شيعة أو غير مسلمين حتى، أليس لهم حقوق وأليسوا بشرا!


رابعا: كلامك لم يكن كلاما خاصا بل كان كلاما عاما وأتيت فيه بمعلومات مغلوطة وساهمت في التجييش والتعبئة من خلال الحديث عن استيلاء الشيعة على مساجد السنّة والإعتداء عليهم، فهل لديك أدلة كي تصدر هذا الكلام أم أنه مجرد افتراضات وإذا توضحت الحقيقة فهل أنت مستعد للتراجع والإعتذار وقول الحقيقة؟


خامسا: في نهاية حديثك قلت أنه ليس لديك معلومات واضحة عن الوضع وهو يتناقض مع ما أصدرت من أحكام عن الناس في البحرين.


سادسا: بصفتك رجل بارز ندعوك للإنصاف ونقترح عليك تشكيل لجنة محايدة تشرف عليها أنت شخصيا بحيث تلتقي كل الفرقاء للإطلاع على الحقيقة.


سابعا: نحن نتفهم الظروف التي تنطلق منها، ولكن معرفتنا بموقعكم في العالم الإسلامي وما لكم من تأثير جعلنا مصدومين من تسرعكم في إصدار أحكام لا تستند إلى أدلة تجانب العقل والحكمة...هذا ونرفق لكم مجموعة من الأفلام والمعلومات، راجين من الله العزيز القدير إعانتكم على تقصي الحقائق ونصرة المظلومين...


شعب البحرين الأبي
2011-03-20

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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