The Power of Female Activism
Kuwaiti-born Activist, Lawyer, International Economic Law Professor, Poet, and Tech Entrepreneur Fatima Matar
I met Fatima Matar at a Literary Cleveland memoir writing class in a biting February deep freeze. Sitting in our hard plastic teal chairs in a drafty Coventry Elementary School classroom at our flip-up blonde veneer desks, we shared life stories reading aloud from printed Word docs. I had never met anyone from Kuwait before, and never met an activist who had to leave everything behind after sharing her ideas and story. I knew that Kuwait was a tiny country in the Persian Gulf, nestled between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. I remembered the vivid images of the ‘90s Iraqi invasion when oil wells were dramatically set ablaze as the UN and US drove the Iraqi armed forces out of Kuwait. Fatima shared her past life in the Middle East – a world and culture that seemed cloaked in mystery and male-dominated oppression. Hearing her stories, I knew I would never be the same after becoming friends. I loved her warmth, openness, fierceness, and rebellious optimism.
“I stand at the chain-link fence; my fingers curl around the cold, diamond-shaped wire. On the other side of this detention center is America, the land of freedom, hope, and opportunity. I look up. It is early January 2019…
A tremendous sense of freedom, knowing no boundaries, accepting no border, no country, no fence, or law. I am overcome with emotion; this is what it’s like to be free. My thirteen-year-old daughter and I shouldn’t be here.” - Fatima Matar
Piercing and intense, Fatima’s words were equal parts blunt and breathtaking. I was immediately drawn to her commanding presence, slicing clarity, and powerful intellect. Inspired and honestly kind of intimidated, I was also drawn to Fatima’s creative fearlessness, sense of urgency, zest for living, truthtelling and social justice. Fatima was clearly a multi-talented force who moved boldly through the world – an outspoken, gifted, Kuwaiti-born lawyer, bi-lingual poet, London economics law professor, and women’s rights advocate defiantly pushing back on her society’s stifling social-political Arab-Islamic traditions to live a more modern life on her own terms.
“Why did Fatima leave Kuwait with her young daughter with only a handful of suitcases? What was it like leaving the deserts of Kuwait to move to the Ohio Great Lakes of all places?”
Fatima’s sign (in Arabic) - Book Ban 1:
"No to Censorship. No to Banning Books, You Will Not Chain Our Minds"
Leaving behind her Middle Eastern family, heritage, and identity for a new beginning of her own choosing and making, I sensed that Fatima left Kuwait to forge her own independence – for a life that felt more reflective of who she was becoming and who she had always been. I admired Fatima for bringing her daughter to our all-adult memoir writing class, too. Fatima and Jori shared their immigration story through a fascinating first and second generation split screen lens – blurring cultural, Middle Eastern female norms as they captured their parallel experiences navigating entry checkpoints to the States. I later found out that Fatima led several protests in late 2018 in response to the Kuwaiti government’s decision to suddenly ban 5,000 (Yes, 5,000!) books on philosophy, law, religion, and education.
Fatima would also tell me nonchalantly that she was tried and prosecuted several times for calling the Sheik of Kuwait corrupt. “Wait, what?!” I exclaimed in one of our many Zoom calls, marveling in awe as she shared protest photos holding signs and yellow balloons demanding freedom of speech and education in both Arabic and English. I would later find out that Fatima’s Twitter account was abruptly taken down after her protest hashtags started trending, deemed dangerously blasphemous by the Kuwaiti government, fearing she was influencing her young students. After tweeting and reading became a crime, Fatima was forced to flee her Kuwaiti homeland, seeking political and religious asylum in December of 2018.
Kuwaiti Parliament - Book Bans 3 & 4
“I was called in for questioning by the authorities and was accused of blasphemy — when I asked God for equal gender rights in a Twitter post, they claimed that I was insulting Islam and inciting immorality — and misuse of a cell phone. Because I could get a year in prison for each of those charges…”
“It was during the Arab Spring. I had posted on Twitter that the Kuwaiti Emir was corrupt. The charges against me were defamation and spreading rumors with the intention of undermining state security, both felonies…”
“There were several people from the press, and a few social media trolls who wanted to be the first to tweet about this — the first Kuwaiti woman to be tried and imprisoned for posting a politically controversial tweet. The fact that I was a law lecturer added to the irony and made it more newsworthy. All I kept thinking was, what would happen to my seven-year-old daughter if I were to be put in jail?” – Fatma Matar
Fatima told me that women’s equality didn’t exist in Kuwait. As an international economic law professor at Kuwait University, she couldn’t teach and edit out the tenets of democracy, women’s rights, religious freedom, and equality to maintain the traditionally conservative Arab-Islamic status quo, even if speaking these truths endangered her life and her daughter’s. I imagined Fatima dropping everything, fleeing Kuwait and the stifling male-dominant culture saturated with unspoken corruption after these protest pictures were taken. Like two heroines blazing their own path, having only each other as guides, shields, and safety nets, I learned so much from Fatima and Jori’s courageous activism, truthtelling, and brave journey seeking a different life.
Fatima’s sign (in Arabic) - Book Ban 5:
"Release All the Banned Books"
I would get chills as my blood turned to liquid ice, my hands trembling as I tried to process Fatima’s stark words sprawling on the page as she described brutal honor killings where young Kuwaiti women would be kidnapped, disappearing into the night, vanishing in the desert darkness and ancient sand without a trace. It was haunting, heartbreaking, and raw – I would often have to stop reading to gain my composure and wipe away my tears, taking a moment of silence to honor the young women, Fatima’s friends, who were taken so abruptly against their will. No funeral. No explanation. No grieving. No questioning. No names in the news to deliberately downplay and disguise the murder. Some of the victims’ friends would search for them, being told that their missing girlfriends were mysteriously married off and now living with new husbands in Saudi Arabia. With no way of contacting them. No way of seeing them. No way of honoring their life or understanding and avenging their suspicious, violent death.
Hearing Fatima share how the victim’s friends would plead and confront the remaining male family members – fathers, uncles, boyfriends, husbands, exes, younger and older brothers – many of whom were the very ones who committed, plotted, and concealed the murders. Killed for wearing the wrong thing, loving the wrong person, avoiding unwanted advances, or leaving an abusive situation to save themselves or their children from a similar fate, Fatima explained the suffocating oppression and terrifying patriarchy pushing Kuwaiti women to the brink. Relentless emotional and physical intimidation to restrict and restrain every move or word, where a man’s honor rests in the purity (virtue) and absolute control of his daughter, sister, wife, and mother.
Jori outside the Ministry of Information during Book Ban 2:
"Freedom for Books, Freedom for Our Minds, Freedom of Thought"
“When I think of how unfree I was for most of my life, the reality of my lack of freedom chokes me.
I was constantly monitored and criticized as a girl in my family home by my strict parents; abusive, harsh, and unforgiving, they enjoyed reminding me that there are limits for a girl in conservative Kuwaiti culture.
Home was never a safe space for me to express myself freely...I fled the control of my family and the control of my husband, but there was a larger prison, society.” – Fatima Matar
With a lack of domestic violence laws and absence of women shelters, many Kuwaiti women stay locked in a generational cycle of dependence, abuse, and submission, internalizing misplaced shame and blame. With no laws criminalizing domestic violence, and no hotlines where Kuwaiti girls and women could seek help, many women fear calling the authorities to report violence because they live with their multi-generational abusers. With nowhere to turn, the battered women are forced to continue living with her violent father, brother, husband, and sometimes sons. The victim fears that reporting her abuse will backfire, subjecting her to even more danger at the hands of her male “guardians” who are culturally deemed to have the right to “discipline” and use force with any daughter, sister, wife, and mother.
According to Fatima, when a Kuwaiti woman seeks intervention from the police, she is advised to be a “better” daughter, sister, or wife. If she reports violence and abuse, police try to “solve” the issue by convincing victims to not report the incident to maintain her family’s reputation, dismissing her invisible abuse. It was heartbreaking to read and hear Fatima’s words. It made it even more remarkable knowing she left Kuwait as a single mom, against all odds, betting on herself and her daughter to create a new life in an America that was less welcoming than ever.
Below, some of Fatima’s gripping writing from our memoir class:
Sedna, goddess of the Inuit is betrayed by her father. Angered that she refused every suitor and married a dog, he takes her to sea in a canoe, and throws her overboard to drown her. As Sedna clutches to the side of the canoe, he cuts off her fingers drowning her. Her dismembered fingers become seals, walruses, and whales. Sedna becomes goddess of the sea. She is murdered by the man whose duty it is to protect her.
Legend has it that human sacrifices were made to Sedna. When boats are capsized and riches of the sea are withheld from fishermen, the locals believed it is Sedna’s wrath. The only way to placate her is to dive down and comb her long dark hair. Only when Sedna is pacified does she release the fish and refrain from drowning fishing boats.
Sedna was a victim, but she transformed her victimhood into power and strength. She’s a goddess of the sea. Why do women only become goddesses after they are murdered? Why is our heroism only after death in the after-life?
Sometimes our stories are linked with others, the stories and unspoken truths of those who can no longer tell their own. The stories and legacies we leave behind are generational, reading like modern mythology or searing tragedy. I am deeply grateful to Fatima for her powerful words, courage, conviction, and relentless pursuit of justice – putting her life and her daughter’s life and safety on the line. I am deeply humbled and honored to share her story and those of the women who lost their lives in the desert. Meeting Fatima and Jori reminds me that our stories and truths live on. That freedom – to speak our minds, to tell our stories, to live our lives as our own – is a privilege and danger for those born as girls and women in many parts of the world. Abolish Article 153 was launched in 2014 by fearless, justice-seeking Kuwaiti female activists like Fatima, offering a way forward for the next generation. By sharing Fatima’s story, I hope you can cherish and view the everyday freedoms we have in a new light, as we look back on these heroic women whose names and stories we will never truly know – but will always remember and honor.