Brief History (not including Palestine and Israel - see below)
The contemporary of punishment, penitentiaries, and mass incarceration in the Middle East is variegated. Systems of criminal justice often combine Islamic law with secular, and are still heavily influenced by colonial legacies of religious and racial segregation and their use for the control of political dissidence. Israel has the largest prison population rate in the Middle East (326 per 100,000 of population), followed by Tunisia (263), United Arab Emirates (238) and Iran (222). The UAE is significant in that 92 per cent of prisoners of its prisoners are foreign, and presumably migrant labourers.
The earliest forms of confinement in the Middle East can be found in ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia. These were often rudimentary and lacked the organized structure of modern penitentiary systems. The Ottoman Empire, which spanned large parts of the Middle East between the 1400s and 1900s, had a network of prisons known as "kasr" or "dar as-siyahah" (house of detention). These facilities served as places of confinement for criminals, debtors, political dissidents, and individuals awaiting trial or punishment. Ottoman prisons varied in conditions and treatment of prisoners, with some notorious for their harshness and overcrowding. It is important to note that these were not intended to be places of long term detention as we might think of penitentiaries now, but places of holding, until trial, execution, or some other kind of punishment was made, like financial restitution.
In the modern era, European colonial powers, such as the British and French, played a pivotal role in introducing modern concepts of imprisonment and corrections to the region during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The first European style penitentiary was the Lambese Prison in Algeria, built in 1852 by the French colonial government. Originally a military prison, the French soon began to use it to house ‘common’ prisoners. Its enormous size allowed for racial segregation of European and ‘native’ Algerian prisoners (native in this case code for muslim and Algeria-born). This segregation was not exclusively physical; Algerian muslims were subject to a different legal code than the French, one which allowed them to be held for months without trial. The prison is still in use today, now known as Tazoult, and still huge, with a population over 28,000. In Egypt, the British colonial administration implemented reforms in the late 19th century that included the establishment of new prisons with separate cells and improved sanitation, reflecting ideas emerging from Western penology. These efforts aimed to centralize control, enhance discipline, and align with emerging international standards of prison management. They also introduced long-term imprisonment as a mode of punishment, and resulted in much higher numbers imprisoned and the development of an increasing and expansive network of prisons, which various Egyptian governments have since used to punish political dissidents.
The post-colonial period witnessed the consolidation and expansion of modern penitentiary systems across the Middle East, often influenced by global trends in criminal justice and corrections. Countries like Iran underwent reforms in the mid-20th century, including the establishment of new prisons and the adoption of modern legal frameworks to regulate incarceration and rehabilitation practices. The Iranian prison system, influenced by both traditional Islamic principles and modern penal codes, evolved into a complex network of facilities for various types of offenders and detainees. In spite of a rhetoric and often practice of postcolonial liberation that would undo many of the colonial legacies of European powers in the region, prisons and penitentiaries have continued to increase in numbers and to be the point of first resort in response to social problems, whether economic, political, or both.
The Arab Spring uprisings starting in 2010 brought renewed attention to issues of justice, accountability, and prison reform in several Middle Eastern countries. Protests and advocacy efforts have called for greater transparency, accountability, and respect for human rights within the criminal justice and corrections systems. At the same time, the response from many governments to those uprisings has resulted in large numbers of people incarcerated and their torture by government agents. Governments have faced pressure to address these concerns and improve conditions in prisons, although progress has varied significantly from one country to another.
Policing and Prisons in the Middle East by ISBN: 0231701764Publication Date: 2010-10-29The emergence of the modern nation-state in the Middle East has also produced a concentration in coercive power. The region now harbors numerous mukhabarat states that extensively police and incarcerate its citizens, engage in widespread torture, and implement spectacular punishments. This volume is the first to systematically examine these practices within modern Middle East states, unraveling the complex operations of state power and the unforeseen consequences of popular politics. The study identifies the colonial origins and post-independence genesis of policing and incarceration among a variety of states and links the centrality of criminalization to dissident politics. It also maps the micropractices of policing and incarceration and sketches the ambiguous boundaries between the police and the military.
The Incarcerated Modern by ISBN: 9781503637634Publication Date: 2024-02-06Iran's prison system is a foundational institution of Iranian political modernity. The Incarcerated Modern traces the transformation of Iran from a decentralized empire with few imprisoned persons at the turn of the twentieth century into a modern nation-state with over a quarter million prisoners today. In policing the line between "bad criminal" and "good citizen," the carceral system has shaped and reshaped Iranian understandings of citizenship, freedom, and political belonging. Golnar Nikpour explores the interplay between the concrete space of the Iranian prison and the role of prisons in producing new public cultures and political languages in Iran. From prison writings of 1920s leftist prisoners and communiqués of 1950s militant Islamists, to paintings of 1970s revolutionary guerrillas and mapping projects organized by contemporary dissident prisoners, carceral confinement has shaped modern Iranian political movements. Today, mass incarceration is a global phenomenon. The Incarcerated Modern connects Iranian history to transnational carceral histories to illuminate the shared architectures, economies, and techniques of modern punishment.
Tortured Confessions by ISBN: 0520922905Publication Date: 2023-04-28The role of torture in recent Iranian politics is the subject of Ervand Abrahamian's important and disturbing book. Although Iran officially banned torture in the early twentieth century, Abrahamian provides documentation of its use under the Shahs and of the widespread utilization of torture and public confession under the Islamic Republican governments. His study is based on an extensive body of material, including Amnesty International reports, prison literature, and victims' accounts that together give the book a chilling immediacy. According to human rights organizations, Iran has been at the forefront of countries using systematic physical torture in recent years, especially for political prisoners. Is the government's goal to ensure social discipline? To obtain information? Neither seem likely, because torture is kept secret and victims are brutalized until something other than information is obtained: a public confession and ideological recantation. For the victim, whose honor, reputation, and self-respect are destroyed, the act is a form of suicide. In Iran a subject's "voluntary confession" reaches a huge audience via television. The accessibility of television and use of videotape have made such confessions a primary propaganda tool, says Abrahamian, and because torture is hidden from the public, the victim's confession appears to be self-motivated, increasing its value to the authorities. Abrahamian compares Iran's public recantations to campaigns in Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, and the religious inquisitions of early modern Europe, citing the eerie resemblance in format, language, and imagery. Designed to win the hearts and minds of the masses, such public confessions--now enhanced by technology--continue as a means to legitimize those in power and to demonize "the enemy."
Prison in Iran by ISBN: 9783030571689Publication Date: 2020-11-07This book offers a unique look into prisons in Iran and the lives of the prisoners and their families. It provides an overview of the history of Iranian prisons, depicts the sub-culture in contemporary Iranian prisons, and highlights the forms that gender discrimination takes behind the prison walls. The book draws on the voices of 90 men and women who have been imprisoned in Iran, interviewed in 2012 and 2017 across various parts of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It presents a different approach to the one proposed by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish because the author argues that Iran never experienced "the age of sobriety in punishment" and "a slackening of the hold on the body". Whilst penal severity in Iran has reduced, its scope has now extended beyond prisoners to their families, regardless of their age and gender. In Iran, penalties still target the body but now also affect the bodies of the entire prisoner's family. It is not just prisoners who suffer from the lack of food, clothes, spaces for sleeping, health services, legal services, safety, and threats of physical violence and abuse but also their families. The book highlights the costs of mothers' incarceration for their children. It argues that as long as punishment remains the dominant discourse of the penal system, the minds and bodies of anyone related to incarcerated offenders will remain under tremendous strain. This unique book explores the nature of these systems in a deeply under-covered nation to expand understandings of prisons in the non-Western world.
Life on Drugs in Iran by ISBN: 9780815637738Publication Date: 2022-10-04When they initiated a war on drugs in 1979, Iran developed a reputation as having some of the world's harshest drug penalties and as an opponent of efforts to reform global drug policy. As mass incarceration failed to stem the growth of drug use, Iran shifted its policies in 1990 to introduce treatment regimens that focus on rehabilitation. While most Muslim countries and some Western states still do not espouse welfare-oriented measures, Iran has established several harm-reduction centers nationwide through the welfare system for those who use substances. In doing so, Iran moved from labeling drug users as criminals to patients. In Life on Drugs in Iran, Anaraki moves beyond these labels to explore the lived experience of those who use and have used illicit substances and the challenges they face as a result of the state's shifting policies. Gaining remarkable access to a community that has largely been ignored by researchers, Anaraki chronicles the lives of current and former substance users in prisons, treatment centers, and NGOs. In each setting, individuals are criminalized, medicalized, and marginalized as the system attempts to ?normalize? them without addressing the root cause of the problem. Drawing upon first-hand accounts, Anaraki's groundbreaking study takes an essential step in humanizing people with substance abuse issues in Iran.
Torture and the Twilight of Empire by ISBN: 9780691131351Publication Date: 2007-12-23Torture and the Twilight of Empire looks at the intimate relationship between torture and colonial domination through a close examination of the French army's coercive tactics during the Algerian war from 1954 to 1962. By tracing the psychological, cultural, and political meanings of torture at the end of the French empire, Marnia Lazreg also sheds new light on the United States and its recourse to torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. This book is nothing less than an anatomy of torture--its methods, justifications, functions, and consequences. Drawing extensively from archives, confessions by former torturers, interviews with former soldiers, and war diaries, as well as writings by Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others, Lazreg argues that occupying nations justify their systematic use of torture as a regrettable but necessary means of saving Western civilization from those who challenge their rule. She shows how torture was central to guerre révolutionnaire, a French theory of modern warfare that called for total war against the subject population and which informed a pacification strategy founded on brutal psychological techniques borrowed from totalitarian movements. Lazreg seeks to understand torture's impact on the Algerian population--especially women--and also on the French troops who became their torturers. She explores the roles Christianity and Islam played in rationalizing these acts, and the ways in which torture became not only routine but even acceptable. Written by a preeminent historical sociologist, Torture and the Twilight of Empire holds particularly disturbing lessons for us today as we carry out the War on Terror.
The Security Archipelago by ISBN: 0822353849Publication Date: 2013-07-12In The Security Archipelago, Paul Amar provides an alternative historical and theoretical framing of the refashioning of free-market states and the rise of humanitarian security regimes in the Global South by examining the pivotal, trendsetting cases of Brazil and Egypt. Addressing gaps in the study of neoliberalism and biopolitics, Amar describes how coercive security operations and cultural rescue campaigns confronting waves of resistance have appropriated progressive, antimarket discourses around morality, sexuality, and labor. The products of these struggles--including powerful new police practices, religious politics, sexuality identifications, and gender normativities--have traveled across an archipelago, a metaphorical island chain of what the global security industry calls "hot spots." Homing in on Cairo and Rio de Janeiro, Amar reveals the innovative resistances and unexpected alliances that have coalesced in new polities emerging from the Arab Spring and South America's Pink Tide. These have generated a shared modern governance model that he terms the "human-security state."
Outside In by ISBN: 1860646980Publication Date: 2002-07-26See specifically Rudolph Peters' chapter, 'Prisons and marginalisation in Nineteenth Century Egypt.'
Non-conformism differs, of course, from culture to culture and across historical periods. This major survey of the marginal in the Middle East represents the first in-depth study of the phenomenon, focusing principally on the 19th and 20th centuries and across all aspects of what might be considered the fringes of society from modern Tunis to Ottoman Istanbul. As such, it provides a vital contribution to the massive literature inspired by the Annales school and Eric Hobsbawm's work on 'history from below', while also offering a fascinating and entirely new perspective on Middle Eastern society in the Modern period.
Starve and Immolate by ISBN: 0231538111Publication Date: 2014-09-23Starve and Immolate tells the story of leftist political prisoners in Turkey who waged a deadly struggle against the introduction of high security prisons by forging their lives into weapons. Through an innovative approach that weaves together contemporary and critical political theory with political ethnography, Starve and Immolate analyzes the death fast struggle as an exemplary but not exceptional instance of self-destructive practices that should be understood as a consequence of, retort to, and refusal of the increasingly biopolitical forms of sovereign power deployed as a response to terrorism around the globe. The Turkish state’s pursuit of high security prisons based on cellular confinement, which would reconfigure traditional wards allowing political prisoners to live a communism in practice, led to a protracted movement in which dozens of political prisoners starved and immolated themselves. Banu Bargu chronicles the experiences, rituals, values, beliefs, ideological self-representations, and contentions of these protesters against the history of Turkish democracy and the treatment of dissent in a country where prisons have become sites of political confrontation. Bargu connects the increasing turn to self-destructive practices with the revamping of Turkish state sovereignty through a process of biopolitical securitization against terrorism. A critical response to Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, Starve and Immolate centers on new forms of struggle that arise from the asymmetric antagonism between the state and its contestants in the contemporary prison. Bargu ultimately positions the weaponization of life as an emergent repertoire of political action, a bleak, violent, and ambivalent form of insurgent politics that seeks to wrench the power of life and death away from the modern state on corporeal grounds and increasingly theologized forms. Drawing attention to the existential commitment, sacrificial morality, and militant martyrdom that transforms these struggles into a complex amalgam of resistance, Bargu advances a critical-theoretical interpretation of human weapons that explores the global ramifications of their practices of resistance, as well as their possibilities and limitations.
Empires and Colonial Incarceration in the Twentieth Century (NOT YET AVAILABLE AT EMORY, ONLY A PLACEHOLDER) by ISBN: 9781003173441Publication Date: 2021-09-26This book engages with a controversial issue, namely the establishment of penal colonies and concentration camps in imperial spaces, which have informed ongoing debates on the repressive practices of colonial rule and popular resistance against it. The contributors offer a reassessment of the history of politically motivated incarceration based upon a multi-disciplinary perspective in a global, imperial setting during the twentieth century. The introduction and seven chapters engage with comparative and transnational perspectives on political persecution, forced confinement and colonial rule in British, French, German, Belgian and Portuguese dominions in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America. Addressing political incarceration's global imperial dimensions, they focus upon the organisation, strategies, narratives and practices associated with political internment in Africa (Angola, Tanzania, Rhodesia, South Africa), Latin America (French Guyana) and the Pacific region (New Caledonia). Penal legislation, policies of convict transport and political imprisonment, resettlement, prison regimes, resistance and liberation struggles, counter insurgency, prisoner agency, and prisons as cultural spaces and of memory are discussed here for different time periods from the mid-1800s to the late twentieth century. The chapters build upon the ongoing debate on political incarceration in the empire and the remarkable dynamic scientific research witnessed over the last decades. As a result, they provide novel insights into the nature of legal systems, colonial discourse, memory, racial segregation and persecution, prisoners' narratives of practices of punishment and incarceration, and human rights abuses in imperial spaces. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. The editors have also written an original conclusion to the present volume.
Colonial and Post-Colonial Incarceration by ISBN: 1281298182Publication Date: 2010-02-03The first study to deal extensively and comparatively with capture, imprisonment and punishment in colonial and postcolonial cultures. Offering textual as well as historical analysis, each chapter focuses on a specific national or regional arena. Each also provides foundational insight into the social, economic and cultural conditions prevalent in colonial societies. Chapters, written by a wide range of international specialists, include coverage of the early modern to the contemporary period as well as coverage of cultural arenas from Europe to Asia, Australia, northern and southern Africa and North America.
Palestine/Israel
The histories of Palestine and Israel, of prisons in the Middle East, and of the global penitentiary, cannot be written without attention to Israel's large, confusing, and segregated system of prisons and punishment. Modern analyses of Israel's occupation of Palestine and its approach to Palestinians emphasize not only the use of the prison as a tool for punishing dissidents and controlling the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza, but also the "carceral regime" that defines much of life for Palestinians in those areas. According to Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, "Israel’s military occupation has morphed the entire occupied Palestinian territory into an open-air prison, where Palestinians are constantly confined, surveilled and disciplined."
British Colonial Influence
As eslewhere, this modern regime has roots in colonial antecedents. The British Mandate in Palestine (1920-1948) had a profound impact on the development of modern penitentiary systems in the region. During this period, the British established several prisons and detention centers, primarily to maintain control and suppress resistance movements.
The British Mandate authorities implemented various legal and administrative measures related to imprisonment, including the enactment of emergency regulations allowing for detention without trial. This period saw the emergence of organized Palestinian resistance against British rule, leading to the imprisonment of activists involved in nationalist movements, as well as paradoxically the imprisonment of many early Zionist leaders who the British found to be moving too quickly. Some of this legal framework still exists today, and the Israeli government and military use it to hold and try Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
Establishment of the State of Israel: 1948
After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, many of the British-era prisons and detention centers came under Israeli control. The Israeli authorities inherited and expanded upon the British practices of detention and incarceration, particularly concerning Palestinians involved in anti-Israeli activities or deemed security threats.
The Israeli penitentiary system evolved to include a network of prisons, detention camps, and interrogation centers. Notable facilities such as Ofer Prison, located near Ramallah in the West Bank, became synonymous with the detention of Palestinian prisoners, including political activists, militants, and individuals suspected of involvement in resistance activities. For more on the evolution of this network and its relation to Israeli border regimes, see A History of Confinement in Palestine: The Prison Web.
Contemporary
In the present day, the detention of Palestinians and Israelis occurs under two distinct legal frameworks: military courts in the occupied territories and civilian courts within Israel. This duality creates complexities and disparities in terms of legal rights, procedures, and outcomes for Palestinian detainees.
a. Military Courts: In the occupied territories, Israel operates military courts under military law. These courts handle cases involving Palestinians accused of security-related offenses, such as alleged involvement in militant activities, stone-throwing, or membership in banned organizations. Critics argue that the military court system lacks adequate due process protections, with high conviction rates and limited rights for defendants. They are held in different prisons than their civilian counterparts. According to the Israeli Information Center on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, "In administrative detention, a person is held without trial without having committed an offense, on the grounds that he or she plans to break the law in the future. As this measure is supposed to be preventive, it has no time limit. The person is detained without legal proceedings, by order of the regional military commander, based on classified evidence that is not revealed to them."
b. Civilian Courts: Inside Israel, Palestinian citizens and residents are subject to the jurisdiction of civilian courts. While these courts adhere to Israeli civil law, disparities exist in the treatment of Palestinian defendants compared to Israeli citizens. Palestinians often face discrimination, harsh sentencing, and limited access to legal resources within the civilian court system.
Palestinian prisoners, whether detained under military or civilian jurisdiction, face a range of challenges and concerns regarding their rights and treatment. These include allegations of torture, solitary confinement, inadequate healthcare, and restrictions on family visits. Human rights organizations and advocacy groups have documented these issues and called for reforms to ensure fair trials, humane treatment, and respect for prisoners' rights.
Black liberation movements in the United States, and related prison abolitionist movements and writers, often interpret the surveillance, militarization and occupation of Palestine, along with what they see as a form of racial apartheid, through Black experiences in the United States and elsewhere. A key text in this latter analysis is Angela Davis' Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2015), as well as George Jackson's writings and later interpretation of them by the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee (after Jackson was killed in prison during an escape attempt, an anthology of Palestinian poetry was found in his cell, Enemy of the Sun (1970)).
A History of Confinement in Palestine: the Prison Web by ISBN: 9783031087080Publication Date: 2022-08-30This book deals with the contemporary history of the imprisonment of Palestinians in Israeli prisons since 1967, and, since the 2000s, in Palestinian facilities. The prison experience is widely shared in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It endurably marks personal and collective stories. Since the Occupation of the Palestinian Territories in 1967, mass incarceration has spun a prison web, a kind of suspended detention. Approximately, 40 percent of the male population has been to prison. It shows how the judicial and prison practices applied to Palestinian residents of the OPT are major fractal devices of control contributing to the management of Israeli borders, and shape a specific bordering system based on a mobility regime: such borders are mobile, networked, and endless. This history of confinement is that of the prison web, and of the in-between political, social, and personal spaces people weave between Inside and Outside prison. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, oral and written sources, archives, and extensive institutional documentation, this political anthropology book deals with carceral citizenships and subjectivities. Over time, imprisonment has had profound effects on personal experiences: on masculinities, femininities, gender relations, parentality, and intimacy. Woven like a web, this story is built around places, moments, people, and their testimonies.
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by ISBN: 9781608465651Publication Date: 2016-01-25In this collection of essays, interviews, and speeches, the renowned activist examines today's issues--from Black Lives Matter to prison abolition and more. Activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis has been a tireless fighter against oppression for decades. Now, the iconic author of Women, Race, and Class offers her latest insights into the struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today's struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine. Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build a movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that "freedom is a constant struggle." This edition of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle includes a foreword by Dr. Cornel West and an introduction by Frank Barat.
Ghost Hunting by Publication Date: 2017In order to confront the ghosts that haunt him, Palestinian director Raed Andoni assembles an eclectic group of ex-prisoners to build a replicate of Al-Moskobiya, Israel's main interrogation center, where he was himself jailed at age 18. From fragmentary memory, day after day, they give shape to the interrogation center they all experienced, and re-enact its stories. As the walls of the cells rise, the tongues and the emotions loosen.
Stolen Youth by ISBN: 1849644802Publication Date: 2004-01-01First in-depth account of how Israel imprisons Palestinian children, which is part of an overall strategy of political domination.
Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine by ISBN: 1136930965Publication Date: 2010-12-13Surveillance is always a means to an end, whether that end is influence, management or entitlement. This book examines the several layers of surveillance that control the Palestinian population in Israel and the Occupied Territories, showing how they operate, how well they work, how they are augmented, and how in the end their chief purpose is population control. Showing how what might be regarded as exceptional elsewhere is here regarded as the norm, the book looks not only at the political economy of surveillance and its technological and military dimensions, but also at the ordinary ways that Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories are affected in their everyday lives. Written in a clear and accessible style by experts in the field, this book will have large appeal for academic faculty as well as graduate and senior undergraduate students in sociology, political science, international relations, surveillance studies and Middle East studies.
Courting Conflict: the Israeli military court system in the West Bank and Gaza by ISBN: 0520241932Publication Date: 2005-01-31Israel's military court system, a centerpiece of Israel's apparatus of control in the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, has prosecuted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. This authoritative book provides a rare look at an institution that lies both figuratively and literally at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lisa Hajjar has conducted in-depth interviews with dozens of Israelis and Palestinians--including judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, defendants, and translators--about their experiences and practices to explain how this system functions, and how its functioning has affected the conflict. Her lucid, richly detailed, and theoretically sophisticated study highlights the array of problems and debates that characterize Israel's military courts as it asks how the law is deployed to protect and further the interests of the Israeli state and how it has been used to articulate and defend the rights of Palestinians living under occupation.
Aḥkām al-asrá fī sujūn al-iḥtilāl al-Isrā’īlī : dirāsah fiqhīyah muqāranah by Publication Date: 2012"منذ سنة 1967 تعرض أكثر من 700 ألف فلسطيني للاعتقال في سجون الاحتلال الإسرائيلي و هم بحاجة لمعرفة الأحكام الشرعية الخاصة بهم في مختلف المسائل التي يتعرض حياتهم داخل الأسر. هذا الكتاب في أصله رسالة ماجستير تسلط الضوء على فقه العبادات للأسرى في سجون الاحتلال الإسرائيلي من طهارة وصلاة و صيام وزكاة وحج و على فقه الأحوال الشخصية من أحكام الزواج و الطلاق و الميراث و الوصية وكذلك الأحكام المتعلقة بالأسير نفسه كالإضراب عن الطعام ثم تبين واجب الأمة تجاه الأسرى بفدائهم وتحريرهم و العناية بعائلاتهم وغير ذلك."
Since 1967, more than 700,000 Palestinians have been detained in Israeli occupation prisons, and they need to know their legal rulings on the various issues that affect their lives in captivity. This book is essentially a master’s thesis that sheds light on the jurisprudence of worship for prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons, based on purity.” And prayer, fasting, zakat, Hajj, and the jurisprudence of personal status, including the provisions of marriage, divorce, inheritance, and wills, as well as the provisions related to the prisoner himself, such as the hunger strike. Then, the nation’s duty towards the prisoners is explained by ransoming them, liberating them, taking care of their families, and so on.
Time in the Shadows by ISBN: 0804783977Publication Date: 2012-11-01Time in the Shadows examines the counterinsurgencies of our time, tracing their ancestry, to offer a critical reading of the mechanisms by which today's counterinsurgents--foremost the United States and Israel--reproduce illiberal regimes of domination while noisily declaring their liberal intent to liberate and improve. Detention and confinement-of both combatants and large groups of civilians-have become fixtures of asymmetric wars over the course of the last century. Counterinsurgency theoreticians and practitioners explain this dizzying rise of detention camps, internment centers, and enclavisation by arguing that such actions ""protect"" populations. In this book, Laleh Khalili counters these arguments, telling the story of how this proliferation of concentration camps, strategic hamlets, ""security walls,"" and offshore prisons has come to be.
