"When I write, I’m no longer a polite little girl" (LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP via Getty Images)
Ever since my childhood, I’ve been afraid of them. I was five years old and they had the face of Iranian ayatollahs. I was 15 and they raged through neighbouring Algeria. I remember, on television, their faces eaten up by bushy beards, their cheeks hollowed out by the exhaustion of guerrilla life, their crazed looks. At the time of the Algerian Civil War, some of my family took refuge in Morocco, where I lived. They fled, leaving everything behind: their work, their friends, their dreams. They told us about fake roadblocks, throat-cutting, intimidation. I was 15, and I shook with fright.
These fanatics were the night-time ogres of my childhood, the threat that never stopped growing, one that came closer and closer, became more and more visible. During the Nineties, on Moroccan campuses, the Islamists took power. The battle of ideas was being lost. On the news, we got used to that now-familiar word: “attack”. In Paris, Luxor, Algiers. In my family, we didn’t underestimate them. We knew that the more educated among them were ready to do anything to defend their vision of the world. My parents implored me to be prudent — me, who didn’t know how to shut my mouth and who played at being the rebel adolescent. No one asked me to stand my ground, to defy them. On the contrary: I was told that you had to fear them — bend the knee, keep a low profile, shut up. How do you answer parents who love you and warn you: “Don’t take risks, don’t provoke them, stay safe from their violence”?
I was 15, I was living in Rabat, and I learned to keep quiet and accept. You accepted that you had to hide when eating during Ramadan, to be afraid that somebody might smell food on you. You accepted that you had to roll up empty wine bottles in opaque bags and drive a few miles to throw them in the dustbin. You accepted that you had to listen in silence to the furious speech of a professor of religion who claimed that Jews and Christians could never go to Paradise, and you wept inside for all those you loved who weren’t Muslims, and so were exiled from Paradise. You accepted being insulted by a customs officer in Casablanca because in your suitcase, in the middle of the New Year holidays, there were things he’d identified as Christmas presents. You accepted being treated as a slut and a sinner on the beach where you’d played as a child, because now your body was an offence to God.
You accepted, and you lived both in fear and in shame. The shame of our cowardice, of the denials that fed and grew on it. The shame of not being able better to defend the Islam of my grandfather, who is in Paradise with his Christian wife. “A thousand little stings of self-reproach that add up not to remorse but to a vague unease.”* That’s what you felt. You felt ugly and small. For reassurance, you said to yourself that it’s we who have right on our side, that we know the frontiers of Good and Evil, of reason and barbarism, and it doesn’t really matter if you don’t dare defend them at the top of your voice. We have to save our skin. Our limp, feeble, losers’ skin — but our skin all the same.
There was one moment when I didn’t feel afraid. One moment when I felt brave. It was enough for me to close my office door, open up my computer — it was enough for me to start to write, and the fear vanished. That was why I became a writer. To purge my nightmares, to calm my terrors. When I write, I feel capable of anything. I’m no longer a polite little girl, a virtuous woman. I’m not trying to please or to seduce. I’m not afraid of provoking anger or scandal. For me fiction is the terrain of total freedom, the place where you can give expression to ambiguity, fuzziness, uncertainty, where you can contradict yourself and voice bad thoughts.
Tomorrow, at my work table, will I feel as free as before? Tomorrow, taking the stage for a discussion, will I be thinking of Salman and will I fear being attacked myself? Today, a lot of Muslim writers are afraid, and censoring themselves. I don’t judge them; I understand them, and I too think of my family and children. But fear and shame have to switch sides. We have to speak more loudly, become more persuasive, become the voices of Enlightenment, the voices of liberty and dignity. As writers, it’s the only way to be: stifle fear as soon as it appears; have faith in the intelligence of readers; be insolent and irreverent. Write, write, write. Do not submit; do not get down on your knees.
The writer highlights how we have adopted the life of the cringe and apology in the face of assertive Islam. The spirit of Richard Coer de Lyon and the Knights Templars has long gone.
Threats from Muslim Clerics and other fanatics should be treated as the crimes they are not overlooked in case we upset their co-religionists. I have Muslim friends and have nothing against Islam as such but we should not allow religious bullies to prevail.
You say you have nothing against Islam and have Muslim friends?
Can’t you see that Islam is incompatible with Western Democracy and human rights?
Lets stop pretending that people commiting violent acts in name of Islam are somehow not Muslim.
They are driven to commit their vile crimes by their religion.
The first stage of recognizing the problems with mass immigration of these savages to the West is understanding that.
Even forgetting terrorism, Muslims are burden on Western society in financial terms as Douglas Murray clearly outlines in his book “Slow Death of Europe”
Every one of your words rings true, particularly “They are driven to commit their vile crimes by their religion”. Somewhere within their holy texts, savagery is not only permitted but encouraged. Only when such tracts are thoroughly revised and the entire creed reformed so as to be more compatible with the modern world will the monstrous behaviour, referred to in this fine essay, cease. Ali A. Rizvi in his excellent book, “The Atheist Muslim – A Journey from Religion to Reason” suggests a possible way forward. But nobody should hold their breath.
Ultimately, the way in which Islamists express themselves reeks of fear.
If you’re not afraid of being challenged, you don’t seek to silence those who challenge you.
If you’re not afraid of the power of women, you don’t chastise and seek to cover them from head to foot. Nor do you cite your god as being offended, who created you (if you believe your god did create you – he did so and offended himself?)
Leila, you may have quaked as a young girl, and the aftermath may still live with you, but you are strong and in their actions against those who choose freedom – which they fear most of all – they demonstrate for all the world to see how weak they are. Their pretence at strength is laughable – their lurid machismo the stuff of comedy to those of us in the west who see through these things.
Of course, as a collective they represent a mortal threat, but not as much as those in the West who seek to undermine our values such as freedom of expression from within. We all need to stay strong, and push back against these threats. It’s not just you Leila – your fight is our fight too.
Leila is a fabulous writer who writes searingly about the human condition, sex and conflicted identity. She is also prepared to stand against the islamofascists and their apologists in contrast to the celebrated ethnic authors who write about nothing and who care only about their own careers. Read her book Adele. You won’t be disappointed.
I will. Lullaby was excellent.
Good article. Of course, it’s not just the fanatics the author refers to. Their intolerance finds a ready echo in the intolerance of the woke. True, the wokesters are unlikely to kill you for disagreeing with them – but they would like to see you lose your job and or be jailed for disagreeing with them. They all exist on the same spectrum of intolerance; and that’s what makes the current cultural trend in the West so dangerous – while barely realising it, todays’ Western wokesters are de facto aligning them selves with the forces of intolerance.
The truth.
>True, the wokesters are unlikely to kill you for disagreeing with them
Not yet.
The real question is does the West wait until these maniacs have access to nuclear weapons before engaging them in the coming existential struggle? Do doctors wait until the cancer is partially or fully metastasized before dealing with it? Do gardeners only pull weeds from the ground up successfully? Do we wait until fossil fuels are completely eliminated from society, which will completely devastate many of their countries and send millions more into abject poverty.
Or do we continue to roll over, kneel, cower and feebly work towards “nation building” or even allowing places, like Iran, to have nuclear weapons, then deal with it?
“Si vis pacem, para bellum”.
Oui, je vais écrire aujourd’hui!
Bravo
I bought The Satanic Verses a few days ago, and have been reading it ostentatiously in my local library.
Excellent, and I’m quite sure you’re well prepared should some fool decide to object to your choice of reading material!
This is us,and we are you. Xx
Leïla Slimani is a great writer, and person as this article shows.
Just one thing though, because it seems important to really understand the point of her article: she writes in the present tense in the 5th paragraph, in French: “There IS one moment when I DON’T feel afraid. One moment when I FEEL brave. It IS enough for me to close my office door, open up my computer — it IS enough for me to start to write, and the fear VANISHES”. Hence her advice to writers in the final lines.
We must remember that the frightening are frightened. A confident and courageous person does not try to shut up others for fear of what they might say or do. They are scared of tomorrow, so hide in yesterday and want you to do the same. They don’t have the courage to face their fears and quell them but instead project them onto others in their insanity. They try to suppress others by attacking those who might open their mouths and blaspheme by saying those words they fear or carrying out those acts that equally frighten the ‘life’ out of them.
I must not fear. Fear is the little death, the mind killer that brings obliteration. I will face my fear. It will let it pass over and through me and when it is gone, only I will remain (Frank Herbert, author of Dune)
She sounds a bit “islamophobic” (sic)…
She knows a lot more about Islam than the people who throw that word around.
And?
And you sound a bit apologist..
I applaud her courage. When I wrote my own novel The War for Islam, I wondered if a non-Muslim like me, a religious studies professor, could be targeted. Or even worse, be labeled an Islamophobe by my colleagues. For too long Islamist fanatics hav been killing, burning, and bombing in an extravagant display of well-coordinated force designed to terrorize humanity out of its “godless slumber.” Their goal is global conquest, not peace. Like Leila before her bold conversion, peace-loving Muslims fear for their lives if they dare to criticize. If only large numbers dared to follow Leila’s example.
A ridiculous propaganda term designed to protect Islam from any criticism by secular societies — but you might be using it in jest, hard to tell.