"These contradictions infuriate the young widowed hairdresser from Blida. “They say adultery is haram, then they kidnap girls and they are raped by fifty men. How can you talk about religion after this?” I ask her how one can fight fundamentalist violence. She insists she does not want her words used to justify military intervention in Algeria, as occurred in Iraq. Terrorism is an Algerian problem that has to be resisted by Algerians, she says. The widowed hairdresser believes that everything comes from the people. In Algeria, people turned against terrorism: “They became aware.”
........ If anyone is confused about what Muslim fundamentalism can mean in the lives of Muslims, the members of Djazairouna, many of whom are deeply religious themselves, can set them straight with stories of their Algeria.
- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here. (Algerian)
"There should be a word in English for égorger (to cut the throat). It is the word for the 1990s in Algeria."
- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here:
Untold Stories from The Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism
"Much of the fundamentalist leadership is middle or even upper class. It is with a distinct agenda that their movements sometimes offer social services where governments fail to do so. They distribute headscarves along with health care and fatwas with the food. Like the Christian fundamentalists, they offer charity, not change in the economic status quo. They usually justify the protection of private property against measures like land reform.
According to an Algerian fundamentalist fatwa from the 1970s, prayer performed on nationalized land would not be accepted by God. In fact, Muslim fundamentalists often seek to defeat the movements most likely to be able to tackle social injustice— social democrats, the humanist Left, trade unions, human rights advocates, women’s rights defenders. These fundamentalists spend more time talking about who gets to the next life than about who gets what in this one. “I have never heard them pronounce on structural adjustment and what Islam would say about it. Not once,” Codou Bop fumes in Senegal."
(Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here)
"The problem, of course, is not unique to the Maghreb. In West Africa, northern Mali became Al Qaedastan in 2012, with ruling jihadist groups like Ansar Dine (Protectors of the Faith) destroying centuries-old Muslim holy sites in Timbuktu yet provoking nowhere near the global Muslim outrage as Terry Jones’s pathetic attempts at Qur’an burning. The young militants reportedly screamed, “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) while descending on the remains of Sufi saints. In October 2012, reports surfaced at the United Nations that Islamist groups were “compiling lists of unmarried mothers,” suggesting that these women were at risk of stoning or flogging. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, herself of Muslim heritage, denounced the actions of Ansar Dine as possible war crimes. 9 A Malian academic calls his country the “testing ground” of Al Qaeda’s strategy for the region. 10 Until French, African, and Malian troops intervened in January 2013, Afghan, Pakistani, and Algerian jihadis reportedly flocked to this safe haven while the international community watched. Meanwhile, unarmed sectors of the local populace protested regularly, receiving little international attention."
(Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories From The Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism. Karima Bennoune)
"Criticizing Muslim fundamentalists is mistakenly equated with support for the actions of Western governments that claim to be their opponents. This is just wrong, and it entirely overlooks the fact that not everything is about the West." (Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories From The Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism. Karima Bennoune)
"They sing and dance and write and joke and bare their heads and speak their minds and claim equality and the right to be themselves when all these things are forbidden by fundamentalists, sometimes on pain of death."
(You Fatwa Does Not Apply Here : Untold Stories From The Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism. Karima Bennoune)
She has an Algerian father, and I believe a western mother...... Her father was a university professor threathened with death.
"I hope that readers will come along on my trip, and view the landscape through my eyes. My perspective— that of a secular person of Muslim heritage concerned with both rising fundamentalism and increasing discrimination against Muslims— is rarely heard in the West..... For me, the clashes within civilizations, like those between fundamentalists and their opponents everywhere, are much more defining today. Nevertheless, writing about Muslim fundamentalism in this era for an American audience feels like dancing on a minefield."
(Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories From The Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism. Karima Bennoune)
