Despite the multiple challenges, they do not give up. And as one of them said to me, ‘each conflict we experience enriches us and highlights our shortcomings and weaknesses. It pushes us at the same time to think, to improve and to try and surpass ourselves.’
True warriors … .
They are continuously searching for a sense of well-being despite other people’s stares, each day a little more aggressive.
Nonetheless, it is sometimes other people’s stares which have led them to question themselves and to rework their spirituality in order, in fact, to better themselves ... .
They dream of living their Islam peacefully. They dream of a serene and free spirituality … .
But every aspect of their daily life amounts to facing a growing animosity against their spiritual identity. They have learned to live with their Islam, as one learns to live with an intractable and profound chronic illness.
A recurring pain following almost daily politico-media indictments. They dream of reformism, of renewal, of remaking the world. Their world.
But the observation of a fossilized traditionalism is obvious in their surroundings and at the heart of a community which is desperately seeking itself.
The debate is passionate, frenetic. But it is also of a high intellectual calibre, because the demands are legitimate and the critiques merited, in the face of the archaic daily lives of Muslims … . They do not want to live Islam merely with their hearts, but also with their minds.
Passionate, they clearly are, but beyond this impassioned Islam which they experience with their heart, their quest for spirituality is also a quest for meaning and recognition.
It is what enables them to get through often very complex social situations with a lot of realism and discernment … .
Their work on the ground is impressive but remains insufficient in their eyes and as one reminded me: ‘Beyond a new Muslim intellectual theorising, which has already begun, it is its implementation on the ground which is imperatively required right now!’
Their motto? An unwavering commitment to their faith, their identity, but also to their French citizenship which they wish to experience fully … without caveats and particularly without political blackmail! Conscious that the debate concerning the veil, women and Islam is merely a political-media strategy which seeks above all else to instrumentalize them in order to better stigmatize them.
They have moved beyond the stage of an identity crisis which means one feels torn between two apparently irreconcilable cultures.
Through their faith, they have already reconciled the two and wish moreover to define their own culture, diverse, fertile, open to all universal values.
How many challenges to overcome and paths to cross!? How many situations of self-denial, of struggles, of humiliations, of psychological barriers to confront, to undergo, to live through … . ?
Will they have the courage to go through with it? The courage to not succumb to this nagging temptation to renounce, to resign, to abandon everything, like so many others.
Will they be allowed to accomplish their project: to live their Islam in harmony with a rights-based citizenship? Or will they be discouraged, pushed to their wits end and made hostages of an ideological confrontation of which the central implication is a covert racism.
I wish through these lines to express my admiration to them for their work … . for their resistance, their struggle which somewhere along the lines is also my own. My sincere emotion at having known them, my desire to see them continue their activism … . In particular, I want to tell them to hold on.
If things change in Islam today, it is also thanks to this substantive work, to this spirit of renewal, thanks to all these struggles … . In Islamic or Western lands, it is the same breath of spirituality, of freedom and of hope, which stirs hearts and minds … .
To these French Muslim women, I dedicate this book.
To these resistance figures in the shadows whom I met that certain spring in 2004 and who inspired me to undertake this re-reading which, I hope with much humility, will help them, however little, in their struggle … .
To Zhor, Hanan, Malika, Nourhen, Khadija, Aloise, Naila, but also Amira, the Tunisian princess, Fatema, Aicha and all the others, whose names I do not recall but whose memories are indelibly engraved in my memory.
May God love you all.
I wish to thank all those who read the more or less developed versions of my book and who enriched me through their previous advice, among them the members of the re-reading group in Rabat as well as all the members of the ‘Presénce Musulmane Canada’. Thank you for your assistance, your sincerity and your encouragement … .
I would like to thank in particular Mr Ahmed El Abbadi, Secretary General of the League of Ulema in Morocco, for taking the time to re-read this manuscript, to share his observations with me and his invaluable suggestions. I would like to thank him also for this kindness, his generosity and especially for his esteem and trust. Coming from a man known for his probity and intellectual integrity, I am touched and honoured.
I wouldn’t know how to find the words for she who insisted on reading through page by page, to correct the innumerable errors, to question me, criticize me, thoroughly and conscientiously: Wafaa El Alami … . thanks for your patience, your affection and your friendship.
To my brothers and sisters, with affection and tenderness … . a particular mark of tenderness towards my little sister Zina. May God protect you and ensure you never weaken again in the face of injustice.
To my spiritual mother, Mrs Lamrabet Afif Fatéma. Thanks for teaching me so much … .
What kind of liberation are we speaking of?
For a long time, the question of the status of Muslim women has been taken hostage between two extreme interpretations: a very rigid conservative Islamic approach and a Western, Islamophobic and ethnocentric approach.
These two conceptions are of course at odds, but they share the same stumbling block: a dead-end. It is virtually impossible to conceive of even the hint of a debate to clarify certain points, given how blinded partisans from each perspective are by their respective certainties.
The Muslim woman, the victim of choice during centuries of stagnation and decadence, continues today to survive in a social system which perpetuates, of course to different degrees, oppression in the name of religion. This statement is rarely acknowledged in Muslim lands where often the other is incriminated for seeking to undermine, or even corrupt an entire social fabric of moral values, of which women are the main guarantor.
‘Islam gave women all their rights … It honours women … It has protected them …’. This is the favourite discourse of many Muslims, often very sincere, but whose arguments remain nevertheless very weak. A recurring discourse, constantly on the defensive, which is losing traction with time and which, for lack of convincing, is more revealing of a profound and manifest state of disarray.
We note in fact a patent anachronism between these two discourses and the lived reality which aims towards and claims to be respectful of Islamic values and in which the worst discriminations against women are justified … From honour crimes to forced marriages,