Statement on the Dismissal of Mohamedou Ould Slahi as Curator of the African Book Festival

Statement on the Dismissal of Mohamedou Ould Slahi as Curator of the African Book Festival

Statement on the Dismissal of Mohamedou Ould Slahi as Curator of the African Book Festival

By : Jadaliyya Reports

22 March 2023

As scholars from different academic disciplines working in the field of African Studies and adjacent fields, the decision of the conveners of the African Book Festival in Berlin to rescind the invitation of Mohamedou Ould Slahi as curator of this year’s event leaves us stunned.

The escalation of the public debate that led to this decision was triggered by none other than the purportedly leftist taz, which published an article under the title “Once with al-Qa’ida, now a curator” on January 22, 2023. Elsewhere, the headline later morphed into “former jihadist,” “ex-terrorist,” “Israel hater,” and even “jihadist.”

The authors of these pieces do not even attempt to contextualize Ould Slahi’s time with the Mujahidun in Afghanistan more than 30 years ago, when he was in his early twenties. They are apparently content with scoring cheap points with an already anti-Islamic audience by invoking his purported identity as jihadist. When Ould Slahi – at the time a student of electrical engineering in Germany – joined a training camp in Afghanistan in 1990, the Mujahidun were encouraged by the US and other Western powers. They were not considered terrorists, but freedom fighters who even received active support from the CIA because they fought the “communist” puppet regime that remained in power in Kabul after the end of Soviet occupation in 1989. In early 1992 Ould Slahi returned to Germany and renounced his allegiance to al-Qa’ida, which, by the way, was only a loose association of Mujahidun and not yet a formal organization operating under this name. Osama bin Laden lived in Saudi Arabia at the time and did not maintain close connections in Afghanistan. Ould Slahi remained in Germany until 1999, when he moved to Canada and later to Mauritania.

The deliberate choice to label Ould Slahi as jihadist is the more striking as there are many other and more befitting epithets that could have been used to describe him. Abducted from his Mauritanian home in Nouakchott in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, he was taken to Jordan, Afghanistan, and eventually to Guantánamo in 2002. He was probably the most tortured prisoner in Guantánamo and remained in captivity even after an American judge ordered his release in March 2010, because the circumstancial evidence submitted by the US government could not support a successful criminal prosecution. Back in 2015, when Ould Slahi was still in Guantánamo, the Israeli Haaretz newspaper published a review of his Guantánamo Diary, describing him as “the very model of an anti-fundamentalist.” After his release in 2016, Ould Slahi’s ordeal became the subject of the well-received film The Mauritanian, and he continued his career as a human rights activist and writer, publishing the internationally acclaimed novel The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga in 2021.

In the light of the above, the obsession of the German press and certain political circles with Ould Slahi’s distant jihadist past is anachronistic. It is the more regrettable that the conveners hastily bowed to the mounting pressure. They even tried to convince Ould Slahi to hand in his resignation, to avoid appearing as the party that ended the cooperation. Rather than developing a coherent strategy to defend their choice of Ould Slahi as curator, the conveners rescinded their invitation on March 14, 2023, thus betraying a person who trusted them by accepting their offer to curate the festival back in November 2022. Instead of taking responsibility and showing solidarity, the priority of the conveners was to “prevent the festival from being affected by the ongoing discussion,” and to “place literature and not individuals at the centre of the festival as usual” – as if it were possible to separate the authors from their works.

Ould Slahi has certainly seen worse than his current character assassination in Germany. As the latest assault on BIPoC cultural and intellectual spaces in Germany, his case underscores the need for all those working in these spaces to take stances that are more courageous and to oppose attempts to question their resistance to all forms of discrimination, as if the fight against racism, anti-Muslim racism, and antisemitism were mutually exclusive.

Signatories: 

  1. Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Seesemann, Chair of Islamic Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  2. Prof. Dr. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  3. Prof. Dr. Susan Arndt, Professor of English Studies and Anglophone Literatures, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  4. Dr. Christine Vogt-William, Director, Gender & Diversity Office, Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  5. Btihal Remli, Artist, Cologne, Germany

  6. Prof. Dr. Britta Frede, Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  7. Dr. Bakheit M. Nur, Social Anthropologist, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  8. Prof. Dr. Stefan Ouma, Professor for Economic Geography, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  9. Prof. Dr. Maureen Maisha Auma, Visiting Professor for Intersectional Diversity Studies, Technical University of Berlin, Germany

  10. Prof. Dr. Richard Rottenburg, Professor of Science and Technology Studies, WiSER, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

  11. Prof. Dr. Jens Hanssen, Director of the Orient Institute, Beirut, Lebanon

  12. Prof. Dr. Thomas Bierschenk, Institute for Anthropologie und African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany

  13. Prof. Dr. Marc Boeckler, Professor for Economic Geography and Globalisation Research, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

  14. Prof. Dr. Christine Hanke, Chair of Digital and Audiovisual Media, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  15. Prof. Dr. Ulrike Bergermann, Professor of Media Studies, HBK Braunschweig, Germany

  16. Prof. Dr. Martin Doevenspeck, Professor of Political Geography, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  17. Dr. Andreas Wetter, African Linguistics, Berlin, Germany

  18. Prof. Dr. Andrea Behrends, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  19. Dr. Benjamin Schütze, Political Science, Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute, Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg, Germany

  20. Prof. Dr. Cyrus Samimi, Professor of Climatology, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  21. Dr. Doris Löhr, African Linguistics, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  22. Dr. Franzisca Zanker, Political Science, Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute, Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg, Germany

  23. Dr. Stefan Schmid, Academic Coordinator of the Center for Interdisciplinary African Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany

  24. Dr. Franz Kogelmann, Islamic Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  25. Prof. Dr. Meike Piepenbring, Faculty of Biosciences, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany

  26. Dr. Nadine Sieveking, Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Leipzig, Germany

  27. Dr. Anke Schürer-Ries, Data Curator, Exzellenzcluster Africa Multiple, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  28. Prof. Dr. Georg Klute, Anthropology, University of Bayreuth, Germany

  29. PD Dr. Andrea Reikat, Institute for Social Anthropology, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

  30. Prof. Dr. Nadja Germann, Professor of Philosophy, Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg, Germany

  31. Prof. Rémi A. Tchokothe, Professor of Comparative Literature with a Focus on African Literatures, University of Vienna, Austria

  32. Prof. Dr. Aram Ziai, Professor für Entwicklungspolitik und Postkoloniale Studien, Universität Kassel

  33. Prof. Dr. Thoko Kaime, Chair of African Legal Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany.

  34. James Kleinfeld, Journalist, Al Jazeera Investigative Unit

  35. Amna AlSinani, project manager, Oman

  36. Nina Martin, Co-Founder, Deputy Director & Head of Socio-Culture of Oyoun (Berlin, Germany)

  37. Louna Sbou, CEO & Artistic Director of Oyoun (Berlin, Germany)

  38. Hanno Hauenstein, Journalist, Berliner Zeitung

  39. Professor Maria Hartwig, Department of Psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA

  40. Professor Gail Helt, former CIA analyst; Security and Intelligence Studies Program, King University, USA

  41. Professor Stephen Soldz, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis & Coalition for an Ethical Psychology

  42. Steven Reisner, PhD. Coalition for an Ethical Psychology

  43. Prof. Alexandra Moore, Human Rights Institute, Binghamton University, USA

  44. Dr. Jerome Tubiana, MSF-Doctors Without Borders adviser and author of award winning graphic novel Guantanamo Kid (Carlsen)

  45. Ed Charles, Webmaster El Mundo no Puede Esperar World Can't Wait Spanish website

  46. Khandan Lolaki-Noble , Guantanamo Network, UK

  47. Scott Noble - UK

  48. Dr. Sonja Hegasy, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin

  49. Professor Elizabeth Swanson, Arts and Humanities, Babson College, USA

  50. Bernard Sullivan, UK Human Rights activist.

  51. Nancy Hollander, attorney for Mohamedou Ould Slahi 

  52. Larry Siems, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University

  53. Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files (Pluto Press)

  54. Sarah Fartuun Heinze, Artist & Author & Arts Educator & Asthetic Researcher 

  55. Dr. Bhakti Shringarpure, Associate Professor (English & WGSS), University of Connecticut 

  56. Dr. Meg Arenberg, Postdoctoral Associate (Dept of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures), Rutgers University- New Brunswick 

  57. Michael Bronner, journalist/screenwriter/producer (The Mauritanian; United 93)

  58. Jeanne-Marie Jackson-Awotwi, Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins University

  59. Professor Esther Whitfield, Departments of Comparative Literature and Hispanic Sudies, Brown University

  60. Don E. Walicek, Professor,English and Linguistics, University of Puerto Rico - Río Piedras

  61. Dr. Farah El-Sharif, Associate Director, Stanford Islamic Studies Program

  62. Dr Kurt Beck, Prof em Anthropology, Uni Bayreuth

  63. Dr.Robert Launay, Professor of Anthropology, Northwestern University

  64. Dr. Adeline Masquelier, Professor of Anthropology, Tulane University

  65. Dr. Jeanette Jouili, Department of Religion, Syracuse University

  66. Dr. Mark Dike DeLancey, Professor and Chair, Department of History of Art and Architecture, DePaul University

  67. Professor E Ann McDougall, Department of History, Classics and Religion, University of Alberta, Canada

  68. Dr. Mohamed Shahid Mathee, Department of Religion Studies, University of Johannesburg 

  69. Abdullahi Shehu Onisabi, School of Languages, Kaduna State College of Education, Gidan - Waya, Kafanchahan, Kaduna State, Nigeria. 

  70. Shamil Jeppie, Depart of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town

  71. Jessica Adams, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras

  72. Dr. Ariela Marcus-Sells, Department of Religious Studies, Elon University, North Carolina, United States of America

  73. Wahbie Long, Professor of Psychology, University of Cape Town

  74. Dr. Dikko Muhammad, Umaru Musa Yar’adua University, Katsina, Nigeria

  75. Professor Alamin Mazrui, Rutgers University, USA

  76. Professor Julia Roth, American Studies with a focus in Gender Studies, Bielefeld University, Germany 

  77. Professor Knut S. Vikør, Professor of History, University of Bergen, Norway

  78. Professor Muhammadu Mustapha Gwadabe, Professor of Political History, Department of History, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria.

  79. Professor Aliya Adamu Ahmad, Professor of Literary History, Department of Nigerian Languages, Sokoto State University, Sokoto, Nigeria.

  80. Prof. Dr. em. Sabine Broeck, Universität Bremen

  81. Professor Cheikh Anta Babou, Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

  82. Professor Scott S. Reese, Professor of History, Northern Arizona University

  83. Dr. Diana Murtaugh Coleman, Assistant Teaching Professor of Religion, Northern Arizona University

  84. Dr. Marco Cabrera Geserick, Assistant Professor of Comparative Cultural Studies, Northern Arizona University.

  85. Professor Ibrahim Malumfashi Kaduna State University Kaduna, Nigeria, Professor Ousseina Alidou, Dept of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature, Rutgers University 

  86. Charles E. Butterworth, Emeritus Professor, Department of Government & Politics, University of Maryland

  87. Dr. Emin Poljarevic, Associate Professor, Theology Department, Uppsala University.

  88. PD Dr. Dietrich Reetz, Associate Professor (Privatdozent) Political Science, Free University Berlin

  89. na'eem jeenah, Executive Director, Afro-Middle East Centre, South Africa

  90. Dr Abdourahmane Seck, Université Gaston Berger, Saint-Louis, Sénégal 

  91. Prof. Dr. Schirin Amir-Moazami Professor of Islam in Europe,  Institute of Islamic Studies,  Freie Universität Berlin,  Germany

  92. Prof. Assoc. Andrea Brigaglia, Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies, University of Napoli L'Orientale, Italy

  93. Dr. Nermeen Mouftah, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies, Butler University

  94. Mohammad Fadel, Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

  95. Mark Drury, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University

  96. Dagmar A. Riedel, PhD, Columbia University

  97. Nathaniel Mathews, Assistant Professor, SUNY-Binghamton

  98. A. Naomi Paik, Associate Professor, Departments of Criminology, Law, & Justice and Global Asian Studies, University of Illinois, Chicago

  99. Insa Nolte, Professor of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

  100. Marissa J. Moorman, Professor of African Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

  101. Daniela Waldburger, Senior Lecturer, Dep. African Studies, University of Vienna

  102. Dr. Helga Dickow, Political Science, Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institut, Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg, Germany

  103. Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature, Aarhus University, Denmark

  104. Dr. Jasmin Zine, Professor, Religion & Culture /Sociology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada.

  105. Dr. Lotte Pelckmans, Associate Professor, Centre for Advanced Migration Studies, Copenhagen University.

  106. Elise Swain, Photo Editor, The Intercept

  107. Patricia Abraham, Assistant Librarian, Africana Library, Africana Studies Research Center, Cornell University.

  108. Sean Jacobs, Associate Professor, International Affairs, The New School. (Founder-Editor, Africa Is a Country)

  109. Cecelia Lynch, Professor, Political Science, University of California, Irvine (Co-Editor, CIHA blog, www.cihablog.com) 

  110. Arielle Stambler, PhD Candidate, University of California, Los Angeles

  111. Stefan Jonsson, Professor, Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society, REMESO, Linköping University

  112. Nicole Haring, MA, Center for Inter-American Studies, University of Graz, Austria

  113. Dr. Vincent Iacopino, former Medical Director, Physicians for Human Rights; Adjunct Professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota Medical School; Senior Research Fellow, Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley. 

  114. Dylan Valley, MA, Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town.

  115. Joseph Slaughter, Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University

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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