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Eurovision Star Bilal Hassani’s Mother Reveals Son’s Battle Against Racism and Homophobia
Friday 4 February 2022, by
The singer of Moroccan origin Bilal Hassani, who represented France at the Eurovision in 2019 and participated in Danse avec les stars, broadcast on TF1, continues to face a violent wave of cyber-harassment due to his sexual orientation. A daily struggle that he faces with the help of his mother Amina Frühauf, author of the book "Being a Mother, Taha, Bilal and Me", published by Éditions Michel Lafon.
In this book, Amina Frühauf recounts how she helped Bilal and his brother Taha to build a shell against the acts of harassment they have been victims of during their childhood. A difficult but worthwhile fight, says the mother. She recounts Bilal Hassani’s exclusion from his middle school, a consequence of racism and homophobia at school. He was accused of having kissed a boy.
"His dismissal, I experienced it very badly, it was a great moment of loneliness. Parents went to see the principal and did not want Bilal, a homosexual, to remain in the same establishment as their children. It was a terrible injustice and we had to explain to Bilal that he could not finish his school year because of his sexual orientation," reports Huffpost.
Taha, Bilal’s brother, has had his share of racist insults. "They make fun of his sheep’s hair or his skin color." Faced with so many difficulties, she decided to create an atmosphere within the home that allowed her sons to express themselves, to confide easily on the harassment, the bullying they are victims of. She also says she planned the education of her children even before having them. She also decided to transform a coffee table into a "table of knowledge", on which all kinds of magazines were offered to the children. "There were no cultural judgments or discriminations: everyone was free to choose their magazines and Bilal read a lot of these magazines," she points out.
"Being a Mother, Taha, Bilal and Me" also mentioned the cyberbullying that Bilal suffered in the days leading up to Eurovision 2019. "When we saw this wave of cyberbullying, the solution we found at the time was to remove his accounts so that they were managed by a community manager. I was advised not to read the messages on Youtube or Twitter, but I looked anyway. There were even calls for murder. It was an unheard of violence."
By publishing her book, Amina Frühauf hopes to help parents who, like her, have children whose sexual orientation is a source of various problems. "I can’t change society all by myself, but if I bring two children into the world and manage to pass on the basic principles of the right to difference and tolerance, then I will have contributed to building a better society."