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| Neither whores nor submissives |
| 2005-08-05 |
| I do not know well the "Ni putes ni soumises" (I know very little overall), but I have the impression it is less a grassroots movement than a satelite of the french socialist party, like some more (sos racisme) or less (stop la violence) successful predecessors. IMHO one of their biggest flaws is that they don't explicitely acknowledge the weight of traditional islam, nor do they always denounce the "homeboy/yob" culture (as seen in one of their leaders defending the "Sniper" rap band and its declaration of war to France and anti-white prejudice), they seem more stepped into sociological explanations. Still, it is quite good to have positive forces on that cultural battlefield, but I doubt they're ultimately much representative of anything. Young Muslim women in the working class suburbs of France have two choices: slut or servant. Fadela Amara is trying to offer them a third option: respect. By Rebecca Hillauer Fadela Amara has a mission. One sees it in the intensity of her eyes and feels it in the passion of her speech. A good two years ago, the daughter of an Algerian immigrant family in Paris, she founded the organisation "Ni putes ni soumises". This is also the title of her book, which won the "Prix du Livre Politique" of the French national assembly last year. In the book, Fadela Amara tells in a simple and direct style the story of her fight against the growing violence and social disintegration in France's suburbs. Reading Amara's book, one understands quickly the gravity of the situation. On October 4, 2002 in Vitry-sur-Seine, a satellite town of Paris, 18 year old Sohane Benziane, the daughter of Kabyle immigrants, was burned alive. The perpetrators were two men her age of North African descent. They lured the girl, who refused to submit to the "norms of the neighbourhood", into a cellar. While one kept watch outside, the other poured gas over Sohane and set her on fire with a lighter. This horrible deed was a catalyst for Fadela Amara. A few days later, she along with 2000 other men and women took part in a silent march. Then she organised gatherings at which girls and women could speak openly about violence in their districts. In February 2003 she initiated a "March of Women from the Suburbs". It went through a total of 23 cities and drew the nation's attention to the particular repression of the "girls of the city". Today "Ni putes ni soumises" has more than 6000 members and 60 local committees. The organisation encourages young women and men in the suburbs to act against ghettoisation and the suppression of women, and to support equal opportunity and rights. Fadela Amara wants to break the law of silence which has masked the violence of the suburbs, mafia-style. The petite woman with the narrow face and the little pig-tail grew up in a suburban housing development in Clermont-Ferrand, a working class city in the South. "We thought at the time that the French republic was going to give us immigrant children a chance as well." Freedom, equality, fraternity – France's founding principles – are still seminal terms for the 40 year old. Like many daughters of immigrant parents, she didn't enjoy equal rights as she grew up in the 1980s either, but the common commitment to anti-racism movement brought the sexes closer together. The number of forced marriages decreased and the number of female Muslim students increased. Since the economic crisis of the 1990s, however, the clocks have started ticking backwards again. Fathers in immigrant families don't only lose their jobs when they're unemployed. They lose their authority in the family. This position is then occupied by their eldest sons who, although they may not be able to find legal employment, can provide for the family through their work in "parallel economies": car theft and drug dealing. With the authority they inherit, they are able to impose their conservative notions of religion and morality onto their social surroundings. Their spiritual nourishment comes from the Islamic fundamentalists, whose influence in the suburbs continues to rise. For girls in the neighbourhood the message is: take on traditional female roles, dress chastely, don't go out and most importantly, remain a virgin until you marry. This unwritten law doesn't only apply to Muslim girls. The north African young men, although they constitute a minority, command the non-Islamic populations in the suburbs as well: African immigrants and lower class French. In her book, Fadela Amara describes precisely what effect this moral pressure has on the girls. And how much courage they need to stand up to their moral guard dogs by wearing make-up, for example, or a skirt. In the suburbs, both represent an act of rebellion. Many girls dress intentionally unattractively or wear a veil, for fear of reprisals. "The veil symbolises submission to male dominance," Fadela Amara explains. For this reason, she supports Chirac's hard line of banning the veil in schools. The veil says "I am not available" and should, in principle, buy the women some peace. But what results is a confirmation of the fatal alternative presented in the provocative name "Ni putes ni soumises"; either a woman gives in to her traditional role, or she is considered a whore and fair game. A common punishment for girls who rebel, in the worst case, is the so-called "tournante" – gang rape. Samira Bellil was the first to describe this phenomena in her book "Dans l'enfer des tournantes" (in gang-rape hell). She had been the victim of three gang rapes before she found the courage, after psychotherapeutic treatment, to tell her story. Samira Bellil was also patron of "Ni putes ni soumises" until she died last year at 31 of stomach cancer. (Here an obituary from the Guardian.) Bellil's book and Amara's activites have woken up politicians. In various cities, emergency hotlines and hostels have been set up for women and girls forced to flee their neighbourhoods. In police stations, specialised workers are being trained to deal with "migrants' problems". But Fadela Amara believes that these measures address only the symptoms of the grievances; to eliminate the roots of the problem, steps have to be taken against mass unemployment and the ghettoising of the suburbs. But the author does not hold political forces responsible. In her book, she is very critical of the way many immigrants bring up their children. "In Muslim immigrant families, the sons are treated like kings. They are not just preferred over the girls, they are spoilt and coddled." The crux is that when these young men encounter resistance beyond the family for the first time - when they don't get into university or college, for example - they react helplessly and destructively. They compensate for their fury and inferiority complexes with machismo and violence against those who are socially and physically weaker – girls in particular. "In the suburbs, sexual education takes place through porn videos – how can these boys not have a twisted image of women?" Amara asks. She demands better sexual education in schools. The boys should learn values: how to deal with the opposite sex respectfully. To this purpose, Amara published a "How to respect" guide that's designed to fit into a trouser pocket. Her colleagues take these into the schools and discuss with students their notions of marriage, virginity, forced marriage, circumcision, tenderness and love. Amara emphasises that this is the difference between those who talk about cultural relativism and her organisation, which is aimed at achieving universal human rights. "An exaggerated tolerance of supposed cultural differences which results in the maintenance of archaic traditions - that's just not acceptable." Fadela Amara: "Ni putes ni soumises". La Decouverte, Paris 2004. 168 pg., 6 Euros. Samira Bellil: "Dans l'enfer des tournantes". Gallimard, Paris 2003. 280 pg., 3,50 Euros. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #5 Thanks for posting that article. I've read it before, but it's good to be reminded that there are indeed Muslims who have learnt positive lessons from living in the West. There are our mythical moderate Muslims: they want the freedom to just be regular members of society, who happen to be of the Muslim faith. It is odd, and a reflection of the male-primacy society they want to escape, that only females seem to be joining this movement. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-08-05 18:27 |
| #4 And here we go again with the bleeding heart explanation: unemployment. The problem is not unemployment but culture. The truth is that the North African culture makes for a boy who is usually an abyssal student (from the mouth of maths teacher: in her class most 12 years old weren't able to deal with proportionality problems) and this because in their culture the male child is a spoiled brat: if his sister, even older sister, is using/eating something and he takes it from kim he is not punished. It is not even clear his mother has authority upon him. He is also told that he is superior to the kaffirs. But our spoiled brat who at 12, was still unable to master proportionality grows to an unemployable adult. Unemployable due to ignorance but also unemployable because he doesn't recognize authority from kaffirs. Worse, he sees his sisters perform better than him at school (1) and on the job market and tghen he reacts with violence. The error is not having broken this culture: previous generations were teached that we were all French with Gaul ancestors, even when the kid was from Polish origin or had a black skin. But then the multicultis came telling that this were perfectly valid cultures (so it was OK to keep it) , that the police should not go into their suburbs and that Crusades were a great crime and Jihad a reaction against it (2). That is how you ensure a generation will not integrate: you integrate when you think this will improve your status not when you think you will degrade to kaffir status. (1) Despite the handicap of Islam. We are told that the first years four-five years are crucial in the development of intellect, these are "the mother years" and Islam tries hard to produce stupid and ignorant mothers (2) It is not a fiction. The Bibliotheque Natiionale de France (the equivalent of the Library of Congress) prepared a dossier for kids where they asked to show that a Jihad was reaction to the Crusades. Preventive reaction I suppose. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-08-05 10:26 |
| #3 JFM....translation request ???? |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-08-05 09:55 |
| #2 Cultural relativism is just another name for bmlatanat racism who allows rich white men to ask for Brown living in poverty and terror while rich white women ask for Coloured women suffering genital mutilation. Of course all of them, the coloured that is, as far as possible of the Chosen Ones (the white progressives). |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-08-05 09:51 |
| #1 The ghettoisation of french suburbs comes from the msulim community recoiling away from mainstream life. The french did not put them in a ghetto, they put them in a suburb that they made a ghetto by being obnoxious enough to drive out all other non-muslims in the area. As for the unemployment thing, 10% is standard throughout france, so live with it. And as for the gangrape thing, I just don't know what to say, sounds very muslim to me. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-08-05 08:59 |