French Magazine Cover Sparks Debate: Five Women Highlighted as Anti-Islamism Activists

Zineb El Rhazoui, former journalist of Charlie Hebdo, the "most threatened and most protected woman in France who left Morocco in 2011 to take refuge in France"; Najwa El Haïté, "future lawyer, elected in the commune of Évry-Courcouronnes and author of a thesis on secularism"; Fatiha Agag-Boudjahlet, professor of history and geography and essayist, author of Le Grand Détournement and Combattre le voilement (Éditions du cerf); Dana Manouchechi, a young woman "of Iranian origin whose family fled, in 1985, the Islamic revolution to take refuge in Norway", a country in which the young woman has been fighting against "Islamic obscurantism" for a long time; and finally Jeannette Bougrab, jurist, essayist and politician who presented herself as Charb’s companion, mentioned in the magazine’s article, but not posing on the cover.

Several people believe that the magazine’s cover would thus be in the process of praising the female examples of emancipation, to be followed in France, for whom the only slogan that counts is the Republic and its values above all else, a slogan applauded by the defenders of secular France, deeply republican and defender of all freedoms.

"Do we have to look like these women to reassure France"? Towards a definition of the good and the bad Arab?, others wonder. "We could not better illustrate the fact that the possibilities of public representation of racialized social groups depend greatly on their active collaboration with the racist order... This may be the only true meritocracy, after all," a netizen added on Twitter.