CAF Letter to Saudi Arabia: Protesting the Arrest of Dr. Hatoon al-Fass

CAF Letter to Saudi Arabia: Protesting the Arrest of Dr. Hatoon al-Fass

CAF Letter to Saudi Arabia: Protesting the Arrest of Dr. Hatoon al-Fass

By : Committee on Academic Freedom (MESA)

[The following letter was published on 3 July 2018 by the Middle East Studies' Association's Committee on Academic Freedom.]

His Majesty King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
King of Saudi Arabia and Custodian of the two Holy Mosques
Fax: (via Ministry of the Interior) +966 11 403 3125
info@moi.gov.sa 

His Royal Highness Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud
Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia
Fax: (via Ministry of the Interior) +966 11 403 3125
info@moi.gov.sa

His Royal Highness Prince Abdulaziz Bin Saud Bin Naif Bin Abdulaziz
Minister of Interior, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Fax: + 966 11 401 1111 / + 966 11 401 1944 / + 966 11 403 1125
info@moi.gov.sa

H.E. Waleed bin Mohammad Al Samaani
Minister of Justice, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Fax: + 966 11 405 7777
info@moj.gov.sa

Your Majesty, Your Highnesses, Your Excellency:

We write to you on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to express our deep concern regarding the recent arrest of the world-renowned Saudi professor, scholar and women’s rights activist, Dr. Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi. Despite a paucity of details on the precise circumstances, reports suggest she was detained in Riyadh sometime between 21 June and 24 June, coinciding with the lifting of the ban on women’s driving in Saudi Arabia.  At this juncture, when the Saudi monarchy and Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman present an image of themselves as engaged in a process of enlightened reforms, we call upon you to release Dr. al-Fassi from detention and allow her to continue her important work and contributions to both scholarship and society.  

MESA was founded in 1966 to support 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 2500 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.

Dr. al-Fassi is Associate Professor of Women’s History at King Saud University in Riyadh where she has been a faculty member since 1992. She is the author of the monograph, Women in Pre-Islamic Arabia: Nabataea (2007) and several articles on the status of women in the Arabian Peninsula, ancient and contemporary. A highly-respected historian of international stature, she is invited regularly to present her research at conferences and universities throughout the world. Furthermore, in 2008, she was inducted into the prestigious “Ordre des Palmes Académiques” - a French order of knighthood for distinguished academics and figures in the world of education and culture. Alongside her scholarship, Dr. al-Fassi writes a widely-read column on contemporary social affairs for al-Riyadh newspaper. As social commentator, she is recognized  for her astute observations, principled positions and judicious analyses.

Dr. al-Fassi is, in addition, a prominent advocate for women’s rights. In Saudi Arabia, she has been actively engaged in the “Baladi” women’s rights campaign, initiatives to allow and encourage women’s full participation in municipal elections, as well as efforts to lift the ban on women driving. In her capacity as a women’s rights activist, Dr. al-Fassi enjoys an enormous and devoted following, not only in the Gulf region, but throughout the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in Asia, Europe and North America. With her wisdom, commitment, courage and compassion, she is, indeed, one of the best known and most respected of Middle Eastern women scholars and rights advocates.

In the weeks leading up to the much-anticipated lifting on the ban on women driving on 24 June, Saudi authorities detained, without charge, about sixteen advocates for women’s rights. While there are suggestions in the press that the authorities suspect some of dealings with “foreign entities,” we note that the timing of this crackdown and the related unsubstantiated claims against detainees tarnish the image of the kingdom and its leadership. We echo the sentiment expressed in the joint statement by United Nations Human Rights Experts, released on 27 June 2018: “Saudi Arabia has won acclaim for its modernization under Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, including the ending of the ban on women driving, but these arrests portray a contradictory stance in policy regarding women’s rights.”

We strongly encourage the Saudi government, in this important historical moment when the whole world is watching, to follow through on its much-publicized reforms and immediately release Dr. Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi and other women’s rights activists who remain in detention. We are confident that Dr. al-Fassi has been hopeful about the direction of change in her home country. We urge you to free her without delay and allow her to continue her most valuable work as teacher, mentor, scholar and advocate.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Judith E. Tucker
MESA President
Professor, Georgetown University

Amy W. Newhall
MESA Executive Director

cc: 

HE Prince Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
c/o Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Washington, DC
Fax: 202-944-5983

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