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

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