Randa Abdel-Fattah row: Literal irony of woke writers block as authors, board members quit Adelaide Festival
Her cancellation from the Adelaide Festival has created a stir, but Randa Abdel-Fattah has previously campaigned to prevent two other authors from touring Australia.
Anti-Israel academic Randa Abdel-Fattah campaigned to stop Somali-born ex-Muslim writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali from touring Australia along with a Jewish American writer Thomas Friedman in the years before she was uninvited from Adelaide Writers’ Week.
The Macquarie University sociologist’s cancellation has sparked turmoil at South Australia’s premier, State government-funded literary event with Adelaide Festival Corporation chair Tracey Whiting on Sunday resigning, along with board members Donny Walford, Nicholas Linke and Daniela Ritorto, a former SBS journalist who is married to Adelaide-based Federal Health Minister Mark Butler.
“Recent decisions were bound by certain undertakings and my resignation enables the Adelaide Festival, as an organisation, to refresh its leadership and its approach to these circumstances,” Ms Whiting said on LinkedIn.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The resignations occurred after 47 writers last week announced they would pull out of the festival, with some left-wing writers citing the issue of free speech, given the organisers wanted to be “culturally sensitive” following the December 14 Bondi massacre at a Jewish Hanukkah event.
“Following the Adelaide Festival Board’s decision on Thursday 8 January and the significant community response, Adelaide Writers’ Week and Adelaide Festival are navigating a complex and unprecedented moment and will share further updates as soon as we are able,” Adelaide Festival Corporation executive director Julian Hobba said on Monday.
Dr Abdel-Fattah last week described her cancellation on X as “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship”. But in 2017, she sought to censor Ms Hirsi Ali, an ex-Muslim activist against Islamism and female genital mutilation, by stopping her from touring Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland.
She put her name on a petition headlined: “Ayaan Hirsi Ali does not speak for us; Muslim women unite to oppose Hirsi Ali visit.”
“To conflate hate speech with free speech undermines both the intelligence of our community and the efforts we have made to maintain the respect and dignity in an environment of such hostility,” the petition said.
“Hirsi Ali’s sheer presence in Australia undermines both intra and inter-community efforts toward social cohesion and in providing platforms for Muslim women to champion their own causes.”
Ms Hirsi Ali’s visit was ultimately cancelled on security grounds. The former Dutch MP feared for safety given that film director Theo van Gogh, who collaborated with her on her short film Submission, was murdered in 2004 by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Moroccan-Dutch Islamist serving a life sentence.
Resources Minister Madeleine King said Dr Abdel-Fattah should never have been invited to the writers’ festival.
“I’ve seen the comments that the author in question made, and to be frank, in my own opinion, I’m surprised she ever got an invite to the Adelaide writers’ festival,” Ms King told the ABC on Monday.
Dr Abdel-Fattah has long been using her social media platform to call for the elimination of Israel.
On October 9, 2023, she mocked moves to remember the 1200 victims of the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel.
“They can light up their colonial buildings. But we know that popular global support is with Palestine and that the genocidal state of Israel has only the ruling elites by its side,” she said on X.
Six months later, on April 10, 2024, she said: “May we see next Eid in a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas noted that in 2024, Dr Abdel-Fattah had lobbied Adelaide Writers’ Week director Louise Adler, a Jewish critic of Israel, to cancel the appearance of Jewish American commentator and author Thomas Friedman, whose column in The New York Times was titled “Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom”.
“In the beginning of 2024, Louise Adler, the director of Writers’ Week and the board received correspondence from Dr Abdel-Fattah herself calling on the cancellation of a pro-Israeli speaker,” Mr Malinauskas told the ABC on Friday.
“Call it what you like, after the correspondence from Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, they removed a pro-Jewish Israeli speaker. Fast forward two years and I think it’s reasonable for the board to apply the same principle.”
The writers who have withdrawn from Adelaide Writers Week have cited the free speech argument.
“Authoritarianism is rising all around us. It thrives on controlling & squashing & censoring ideas it does not like,” Jane Caro, a former Gruen panelist on the ABC, told her Facebook followers.
Australia Institute political analyst Amy Remeikis, a former Guardian journalist, also cried censorship to justify her withdrawal.
“Australia’s power institutions make a habit of clumsily decreeing who can and can not have a voice, and it never matters how often it misfires — it’s not supposed to be rational or fair or even make sense,” she said in a Crikey opinion piece.
