#85 - Conférence Celebrating Dissent à Oslo

Episode consacré à mon invitation à participer à la conférence CELEBRATING DISSENT 2024 à Oslo.

https://ex-muslim.org.uk/events/celebrating-dissent-oslo/

Voici le texte que j'avais préparé:

"Hello everyone,

My name is Mouhammad, also known as "MoMo".

I started my activism with a podcast called "Apostates Islam". 

In this podcast I invite former Muslims to explain how they went from believing in Islam to leaving it.

For me, this podcast was the start of a long adventure, which led me to co-organise, alongside Nadia El Fani and Betty Lachgar, the previous 'Celebrating Dissent' conference in Paris.

Today, I'm the president of the only French association dedicated to the emancipation of apostates.

The reason why I manage to find the energy to do these things is that past inspires me and gives me the motivation to keep moving forward.

Growing up in France, laicite was not really an issue for me as a child. 

I was aware of it but my father raised us in a muslim household so this was the norm for me. 

I did not experience a conflict between the secularism and our home life.

However, I had a traumatic childhood.

My father raised us in a very brutal way. The way he chose to educate us up was nothing special in the environment I grew up in. It was in the Islamic suburbs of Paris, where children had to be totally obedient to their parents, if they didn’t want to get beaten.

My father was a fervent Muslim, and his way of educating was perfectly in line with the principles of Islam.

To illustrate my point, I can quote the prophet who said: Order your children to pray when they are 7 years old and hit them if they don't when they are 10.

Not to mention that the second Caliph of Islam, Omar Ibn al Kathab, was notorious for beating his children.

With these role models, I'm willing to support the fact that beyond a tradition of violence in North African education, parents find justification for their actions within their religion itself.

Terror was therefore the default method of my education. But it wasn't the violence towards me that left the greatest trauma. It was the violence inflicted on my mother.

You should know that my father never hit my mother until the day she left Islam.

My father saw her leaving the house without her Islamic veil, and it is when things got worse: he asked her to put on her veil, and when she refused, he hit her.

This was followed by other episodes of violence.

My father's behaviour was not dictated solely by anger and emotion: he found justification for his attitude in the Coran itself.

Sura 4 verse 34 states that a husband who fears his wife's disobedience is allowed to hit her.

Hitting one's wife is therefore a normal method of managing conflict within a couple in Islam.

Having these memories of violence towards my mother, coupled with the realisation that my father had a conscience of his own, left me with a feeling of bitterness.

These stories are now part of my past, but after leaving Islam, and seeing how isolated apostates are, I immediately made the connection with my mother's situation.

That's when I decided to create the podcast. 

As soon as the opportunity arose, I started an association whose aim would be to ensure that apostate don't find themselves alone like my mother was. 

My vision was to create a community and a support system for apostates. 

I want to express with my story, that no matter what your past was made of, you can always choose to build your future in a positive way. "

Adherez à MELP, l'association d'aide aux apostats: https://www.melp-asso.org/

CHARLIE HEBDO PARLE de la conférence que j'ai co-organisé avec LSF en 2023 : https://charliehebdo.fr/2023/12/religions/laiques-sans-frontieres-pour-loi-1905-universelle/  

Adhérez à l'ass