title: checkmating obama
text: search zineb el rhazoui charlie hebdo survivor discusses why the world needs to destroy islamic fascism undeterred by fatwas and death threats the author has released an incendiary and thoughtful new book bound to provoke debate october   
  reprinted from nytimescom 
  
  she leads a clandestine existence on the move and under hour guard as frances most protected woman yet zineb el rhazoui the charlie hebdo journalist who happened to be in casablanca on january  last year the day terrorists avenging the prophet massacred nine people at the satirical magazine in paris believes she has a duty to defy islamists desperate to silence her 
  shaken but undeterred by the fatwas and relentless precise death threats issued via social media to kill the bitch since she helped produce the publications first survivors issue following the attack  and spoke about it in arabic for the arab press  the moroccanfrench writer refuses to assume an anonymous identity fleeing paris or abandoning her human rights activism and her unforgiving critiques of the religion she grew up with are also out of the question 
  i dont have the right to renounce my struggle or to give up my freedom says the reporter and sociologist of religion in an interview with women in the world during a recent trip to new york as part of french president francois hollandes delegation when he received the appeal of conscience foundations world statesman award for  if the french state protects me it is not little individual me what is being protected is my freedom to be irreverent and freedom of expression so i should exercise this even more because i enjoy this protection 
  its totally crazy i have done nothing against the law and have nothing to hide yet i live with security while those who threaten us are free el rhazoui declares with an air of shock and anger that underscores the arbitrariness and brutality visited on a yearold woman condemned to living on the run and mostly in the shadows and if you call them by their names you are islamophobic and racist i am racist i can teach them a few things about arab culture i can show them how to discover its richness and the diversity of their culture i believe this culture deserves universality because you can be arab muslim and a free thinker 
  resisting terror 
  sweeping in to the offices of women in the world in manhattan accompanied by bodyguards the worldrenowned journalist is living proof of her pledge to keep living her life beyond its limits as a key way of resisting terror elegant and beautiful with her long wavy hair flowing freely and in an impeccably tailored black dress el rhazoui is reminiscent of s cinemas cerebral heroines  her eloquence and composure only occasionally betraying the trauma of the past  months each time we speak about the aftermath of the massacre at her magazine and how she is coping personally her voice quavers but when the subject comes back to her fight for reform in islamic civilization she is fearless 
  in this spirit el rhazoui obliged to spend most of her time in hiding like salman rushdie after his  publication of the satanic verses  has taken the highrisk option of publishing an explosive new book about islam 
  detruire le fascisme islamique  destroy islamic fascism  being released in france this week takes the battle of ideas directly to the ideologicallydriven zealots who inspired the assassins of her dear friend charb stephane charbonnier late editor of charlie hebdo who preferred to die standing than to live on my knees 
  obtained exclusively by women in the world the book dedicated to muslim atheists is an unapologetic strike against the strict application of islam by imitating the first salafists or pious ancestors the prophet mohammed and his companions whose violent exploits are contained in bellicose texts from a barbaric thcentury bedouin tribal context exhibited codes of behavior el rhazoui insists have no place in the modern world and can be directly connected to terrorism the most abject crimes of islamic state are but a stcentury remake of what the first muslims accomplished under the guidance of the prophet she writes noting that sexual and domestic slavery the massacre of nonmuslims notably jews pedophilia pillage polygamy and summary executions were all adopted from preislamic societies the book is also the journalists way of carrying on the legacy of her dead comrades who reveled in their right to mock established religion and fanatics everywhere  with islam no exception to their traditional french anticlerical ridicule  through satire and caricature 
  formerly the magazines religion writer el rhazoui is in the throes of joining the exodus of staff breaking from the magazine under its new management flush with cash from international donations the fundamentally altered publication she disappointedly explained  will probably never again draw the prophet  out of fear of more reprisals 
  and those who think that only a handful of madmen are capable of killing for a cartoon of mohammed forget that everywhere that islam reigns as the religion of the state caricatures and cartoons in the press are repressed el rhazouis book dedicated to muslim atheists is an unapologetic strike against the strict application of islam religion of peace and love 
  we need to admit that islamism today is applied islam el rhazoui  who describes herself as an atheist of muslim culture writes responding to politicians religious figures islamophobia opponents and media commentators who claim after every jihadist attack that real islam has nothing to do with such terror 
  when we apply islam to the letter it gives islamism and when we apply islamism to the letter it gives terrorism so we need to stop saying islam is a religion of peace and love what is a moderate islamist an islamist who doesnt kill 
  the essaylength book is in the grand french polemical tradition of emile zola whose jaccuse denounced the antisemitism of the french state and establishment during the dreyfus affair on the eve of the th century el rhazoui who holds moroccan and french citizenship takes aim at a very stcentury phenomenon what she abhors as the intellectual fraud of islamophobia which pretends to be about antiracism but in her reckoning is used as a weapon to silence all critics of islam and the ideas behind it as automatically hostile towards all muslims epitomized by the french collective against islamophobia ccif this deliberate strategy vilifies as islamophobic voices such as el rhazouis who dare question the religion the ccif and fellow travelers define only through the prism of their own fundamentalism 
  the notion of islamophobia doesnt even exist in muslim countries the author points out because outside the west criticism of the religion or mohammed is officially categorized as blasphemy 
  unable to pass blasphemy laws in europe groups like the ccif employ a dangerous semantic confusion she said on the ccif site it is written islamophobia is not an opinion it is an offense 
  this is very dangerous because it has even entered the dictionary as hostility towards islam and muslims yet criticism of an idea of islam or of a religion cannot be characterized as an offense or a crime i was born and lived under the islam of morocco and live in france and i have the right criticize religion and this dictatorship of islamophobia that says i have no right to criticize if we criticize christianity it doesnt mean we are christianophobes or racist towards the christian race 
  the widespread pressure to selfcensor is severe el rhazoui says 
  you can no longer speak about islam without saying its a religion of peace and love but when you open any book in islam what do you find violence blood oppression of women and hate for other religions 
  of course you can find this in other religions however we are talking about something written many centuries ago during a barbaric time for humanity as long as we dont talk about this and keep repeating that islam is a religion of peace and love many people will continue to believe the koran is a constitution and that rather than being a book written  centuries ago reflecting a particular context it is a legal constitution to apply today 
  zineb el rhazoui feels she is carrying on the legacy of her dead charlie hebdo comrades 
  after completing high school in morocco el rhazoui studied languages and the sociology of religion obtaining a masters degree from pariss prestigious social science graduate school ehess in her twenties she returned to the country of her birth to work as a journalist at le journal hebdomadaire becoming a campaigner for secular liberties such as the right to break the fast and even snack in public during the month of ramadan this act of nonviolent resistance earned her her first fatwa ahead of her involvement in the movement supporting the arab spring in  the wave of personal attacks and threats that came after her collective protest against ramadan rules prompted her to leave morocco again for france where she began to report for charlie hebdo bringing her memories of having vomited up compulsory religious classes in a country where being muslim is not a choice unless youre jewish or christian 
  extreme personality cult 
  socalled islamic fascism seen in its most extreme form in groups like isis shares characteristics in common with all extremeright fascisms el rhazoui argues because it combines an intense personality cult around mohammed as the incarnation of the nation it also employs widespread systems of suspicion and denunciation exemplified by sartorial branding  for example burkinis or niqabs  that allow for immediate identification and targeting of nonadherents there are also familiar fascist tropes of repressive sexism against women and homosexuals armed militias adoption of a flag and a strategy that confers the benign status of muslim women to heavily veiled adherents in the west and characterizes them disingenuously as victimized objects of exclusion 
  the literary corpus of islam is so stuffed with damning accounts it would be difficult to cleanse it without altering the fundamentals of dogma el rhazoui writes 
  if the terrorists of daesh isis behead those they judge to be miscreants that is because they draw on their legislation in the texts like the th surah of the koran alanfal verse  remember what your lord revealed to the angels  i am with you so support those who have believed i will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve you can strike them above the neck and strike off every fingertip 
  you can be arab muslim and a free thinker 
  drawing on her personal experience and scholarly knowledge of islams core arabic texts the politics of the postarab spring middle east and the wellspring of reformism and dissidence embraced within the multifaceted islamic civilization el rhazouis book is an impassioned response to all the extremists who want to see her and her fellow opponents of politicoreligious repression dead 
  the greatest racism is el rhazoui argues the racism of the islamist ideology that forbids marriage with people who are not muslims and that rejects women that is the definition of racism and fascism and we must say it the writer adds 
  today islam in the world only has a role as a civilization a civilization is defined by many things and not uniquely by religion  but also by its geographical heritage its artistic culinary and sartorial traditions and by literature 
  the muslim religion has its place in the modern world if it submits itself fully to the laws that rule humanity today universal principles of equality between men and women sexual and individual freedom and equality for all no matter your creed or religion until islam has admitted this and accepted that the freedom of men and women is superior to it islam will not be acceptable 
  islamophobia whiners 
  destroy islamic fascism aims to puncture the hypocrisy and fauxintellectual fakery the authors word of islamophobia whiners and other collaborationists from across the political spectrum  particularly the hard left cryptoislamist antiracists on a quest for a new muslim proletariat certain feminists cultural relativists and socalled moderate imams all these willing accomplices do is distort the noble cause of fighting racism to give undeserved legitimacy to an ideology that at its most extreme results in the horrors of islamic state the author says but also makes the lives of millions of muslims living in islamic countries downright miserable 
  what do these islamophobia whiners say to the millions of individuals who live in islamic theocracies and dream of liberty el rhazoui concludes in her book who speaks about the nightmare of a woman who decides to cross the streets of algiers casablanca or cairo in a skirt those who would like to drink a glass of alcohol in countries where you have to flout the law to do it  about homosexuals pariahs of muslim societies who often only have the choice of death prison or exile who speaks about this youth born muslim but dreaming of a normal life these teens attacked for having had a romance 
  
  
  the summer furore over burkini bans in france agitated the author who deplored the cynical rush of islamists and their western sympathizers in the media academia and politics to celebrate the controversial swimsuit as a form of liberation and simultaneously a banal piece of cloth preferred by muslim women even though most never wear it 
  western media in an intolerable readiness to oblige have defended the burkini as a freedom and a legitimate cultural expression of a part of humanity she said but pointed out that in muslim countries the beaches are not filling up with burkinis but they are emptying themselves of women from one year to another they are disappearing from the public space because the veil has never been anything except an extension of the walls of their harem to the exterior 
  as for mainstream or moderate muslim clerics el rhazoui tells women in the world that during the burkini debate in france not one imam stood up and said hey wait a minute you can be muslim and wear a regular bathing suit 
  history will judge those who have monopolized the debate given a platform to islamist fundamentalism and even given it a guarantee of acceptability the author of destroy islamic fascism told women in the world this is just betrayal and it is collaboration with one of the worst forms of fascism that exists today she said 
  according to the writer who is repeatedly accused of bigotry the islamophobia ruse is driven by great ignorance and a lack of understanding of the culture of islam and what islam with a big i is  they ignore its complexity and that there have always been opposition currents and progressive and liberal pushes from within 
  the accomplices dont recognize the struggles playing out today in arab countries will inevitably be won by the democrats and free people no fascism or totalitarianism has ever been able to win in the long haul of history the people who are the allies and collaborators of this totalitarianism today will be judged by history and seen as accomplices to this criminal ideology to which they have given a veneer of respectability 
  for el rhazoui the true racism emerges from a condescending approach to islamic culture that decrees an islamic woman in a burqa is congenitally not free and that her race is the burqa we present the fundamentalists as being a race and this only shows the contempt we have for this culture it is absolutely intolerable she says 
  survivor syndrome 
  women in the world asked el rhazoui how she manages to keep up her spirits and continue her struggle for the freedom to dissent after everything that has happened since january  
  it is a question people often ask me she said with a perceptible tremor in her voice but when you live through these moments in which you are confronted by a reality as cruel and simple as life and death you realize can put many things in perspective 
  straight after the attacks like many of my colleagues i felt guilty for having stayed alive i said to myself those who are dead are dead for all our work and some are dead when it wasnt even their work but it was my work because i am a journalist and i am still here and then you understand this is all part of survivor syndrome which is normal when you survive a massacre like that 
  as you start to heal you say i am lucky to be alive and if i am still here perhaps that is because i still have something to do i understood long before the attack on charlie when i engaged in a struggle for individual liberties and democracy in morocco that when you fight against totalitarianism whether it is political or religious you should never give your enemies the pleasure of stopping living we fight so that everyone can have a free and happy life and we must continue to live this same life 
  zineb el rhazoui c attends the funeral of french cartoonist and charlie hebdo editor stephane charb charbonnier on january   in pontoise outside paris martin bureauafpgetty images 
  still a day doesnt go past when she doesnt think of her old colleague charb and their many heated discussions 
  he was someone who was extremely lucid and for whom the concepts were clear he was a true humanist who didnt fear being accused of being racist because for him it was absurd 
  el rhazouis deconstruction of islam is also a defense of muslims she reasoned as salvation will come when we stop aligning the identity of an entire community with the most fundamentalist people who pretend to represent it 
  we have to extend a hand to all these muslims who are free people who have questioned their heritage and who are fighters for liberty battling for the same values as us but in a context controlled by islamists she says 
  life in a moving jail 
  since january  the survivor from charlie hebdo has traveled frequently to speak at universities and meetings of the freedom forum in europe and the us under the protection assured by the french state and the countries that receive her she says she would never complain about living under permanent armed guard and having her freedom of mobility curtailed because so many other writers and political figures around the world  and especially in islamistcontrolled or influenced countries  are taking the brave decisions to do as she does but without any security 
  i always find some spaces of freedom there are always little escape hatches life continues says the woman who has just written her second book since the charlie attacks and recently became a firsttime mother in what she laughingly called the surprise baby boom at a publication that used to have one of the lowest birthrates in french media 
  today i wander around in a moving jail  its a moving cage  but in reality i am more free in my head than those who threaten me because their cage is inside their head they have this cage in their brain and even if they have freedom of movement it is their spirit and their reason and intelligence that is imprisoned i am much freer than them 
  follow emmakate symons on twitter eksymons