Friday afternoon, the Maison d’Ennour bookstore in Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis) is full of visitors. They have just left the La Fraternité mosque, right next door. The prayer and the imam’s sermon were not long, they were divided into two parts so that the mosque, despite its large surface area, could accommodate the many believers. In the bookstore, books in French or Arabic are arranged on the shelves, next to djellabas, veils, perfumes and bottles of olive oil. At the heart of this place, comics for children, all printed by the same publishing house, MuslimKid. On another shelf, numerous works by Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328), the inspiration for Salafist ideology, and Youssef al-Qardaoui (1926-2022), Qatari preacher of Egyptian origin and reference theologian of the Brothers Muslims. Highly publicized on Islamist channels, the latter was banned from staying in France in 2012, Nicolas Sarkozy justifying this decision for two reasons: his anti-Semitic remarks and his declaration on the Al-Jazeera channel according to which “jihad is a duty for all Muslims”.
The atmosphere of the Maison d’Ennour (“light” in French) is not so different from that of the Al Bayyinah bookstore, the name of a surah in the Koran. This is located in Argenteuil (Val-d’Oise). Its founder, Thomas Sibille, known for his opposition to modernity as a means of advancing Islam, declares in a video posted on Al Bayyinah’s YouTube channel: “If Islam is submission to God, if Islam is about getting closer to God, you can’t do it moderately.” In December 2015, Sibille was listed as S for the following reason: individual in relation to the Islamist movement in Ile-de-France.
On Saturday afternoon, there were many customers at Al Bayyinah. In addition to books, they buy abayas and veils, presented in the bookstore window. Educational comics for children are next door, also published by MuslimKid. The books of al-Qardawi, as well as those of Ibn Taymiyya, are there. The local describes itself on its website as “a publishing house in addition to being a Muslim bookstore and a wholesaler. Your online store offers you all types of products, books, clothing, well-being.” I ask the seller where I can find other Al-Qardawi books. He recommends the Albouraq bookstore in Paris.
““France is not tolerant of Muslims””
Not far from the Omar ibn al-Khattab mosque, in the 11th district, Albouraq occupies a large area. I come across a young man, waiting like me for the bookstore to open. Houssam (1), 18, left high school to work as a laborer. He lives in Evry (Essonne), comes here to look for works from the publisher Nawa. “I have read several books from this publishing house, they are interesting, help to understand the identity and the different ideologies of our religion,” he assures. Houssam, of Algerian origin, thinks that France is not tolerant towards Muslims: “This is not new, this country has always been racist towards Islam.” The bookstore opens, it contains works on Islamist history, numerous booklets of Muslim prayers, hadiths [NDLR : recueils des actes et paroles de Mahomet et de ses compagnons, à propos de commentaires du Coran ou de règles de conduite], conferences of preachers. There are hardly any books by Al-Qardawi, unlike comics for children. A shelf is filled with Nawa’s works. Houssam advises me Texts and contexts of Wahhabism by Aïssam Aït Yahya. According to his biography, this “thinker represents the new Muslim generation, identity-based and uninhibited”. He approaches Wahhabism as “a current, perfectly globalized religious movement, its founding links with the Saudi regime and finally its various so-called “jihadist” affiliations”. The Nawa publisher was closed in 2021 by the Ministry of the Interior. Gabriel Attal, government spokesperson at the time, criticized him for “advocating jihad under the pretext of translation”. Shortly after, Gérald Darmanin announced that this publishing house “in particular distributed several works legitimizing jihad”.
The hierarchy of paradise for children
Where is Allah? Patience, My book of invocations in two versions: one for girls, another for boys. Here are some titles of comics for children available at Al Bayyinah and at Maison d’Ennour. This latest work specifies the daily behaviors to implement to imitate Mohammed. From waking until sleep, the child has phrases to repeat, before and after the meal, when entering and leaving the house, and when putting on his clothes, just as the prophet did. The boys’ outfit, in all these comics, boils down to the white djellaba, up to mid-leg, the way Salafists dress in Saudi Arabia. The girls are, even at home, veiled. The faces are erased. It is forbidden in Salafist ideology to draw a complete being so as not to imitate God’s creation. But on the back cover, the publishing house, MuslimKid, justifies this way of drawing: “Develop children’s imagination and creativity to infinity.”
One of these comics is titled Describe paradise to me. She is aimed at children aged 3 to 6, parents explain to children the paradise of Islam. There are “rivers of good-tasting milk. There are no old people, they are all young and beautiful, never sick and healthy.” A reference to the words of Mohammed: “When the people of paradise enter there, they will not have hair on their bodies, they will be hairless, white.” In this paradise, as the parents explain, there will be a hierarchy between Muslims, everything will depend on the level of their belief. “The highest degree, the one in which all Muslims would like to be, is below the Throne of Allah, it is called Al Firdaws.” This level, according to the hadiths, is reserved for the prophet, his companions, and the martyrs who died defending Islam.
While walking through Al Bayyinah, I came across another book, addressed to parents, on raising children. It is written by Mohamed Ali Ferkous, professor of Islamist sciences in Algiers and published in bilingual, French and Arabic. The author emphasizes the need to teach prayer to children, citing the hadith: “Order prayer for your children at the age of 7, beat them for them at the age of 10, and separate them them in their diaper.”
Anti-secularism speech
In his book, Islam and secularism, available in Arabic in the Ennour bookstore, Al-Qardaoui writes: “They, the Westerners, needed secularism because of certain conditions that concern them. We, the Muslims, do not need it. For For us, it does not solve the problem of religion, on the contrary, it is the real problem. Secularism is in contradiction with the Sharia that Allah put on earth to organize people’s lives.” In another book called Properties of the Islamist movementfrom the same author, we read: “It is unacceptable to see that Christianity, Judaism and Zionism remain the only ruling forces in Europe, America and Australia. It is necessary to have a presence of Islam in these countries to protect the affairs of the ummah [NDLR : l’ensemble des musulmans du monde].” In the following pages, Al-Qardawi lists the duties of a Muslim in these countries: “To protect oneself and one’s family from assimilation into society, to be united with one’s Muslim brothers, to be a preacher of Islam, and remain committed to the defense of the ummah.” In his book On French Islamic Ideology. In praise of insubordination to modernity, published by Nawa, Aïssam Aït Yahya writes: “Is secularism an opportunity for Muslims? Needless to explain, it serves as a release and a pretext for large parts of the French population to discriminate, to stigmatize, to attack any cultural practice of Islam.” These quotes are examples of an anti-secularism discourse very present in these bookstores.
A possible ban?
According to lawyer Caroline Valentin, “the Nawa publishing house was dissolved by a decree of 2021, but this dissolution did not impose the withdrawal of the books it published, nor the ban on selling them. fact, whether at the initiative of the executive power or the public prosecutor’s office, this dissolution was not accompanied by the decision to withdraw the sale or prohibit the marketing of the books published by this publishing house.” Regarding Al-Qardaoui, she assures that “the decision to prohibit him from staying in France was not followed by orders prohibiting the sale of his books.” For Caroline Valentin, “it is very complicated to implement the ban on the sale of a book already published, in particular because of the practical difficulties in withdrawing from sale copies already in circulation. On a political level, such a decision , very rare in a democracy such as ours in which freedom of expression is a pillar, would necessarily be widely distributed and commented on and could increase the attractiveness of the book in question.” But, specifies the lawyer, on the other hand, “it is as important as the very powerful cultural ban which weighs on the expression of hatred of the other, because it belongs to a religion, to a nation, an ethnic group, or a “race” as the law says, continues to be maintained. That books inciting hatred remain on sale over the counter is shocking and it must remain shocking. On the other hand, a bookstore which incites hatred, which participates in the decision of opinions and ideologies contrary to public order must be closed.” In The conquered territories of Islamism (PUF), the academic Bernard Rougier, who developed the concept of “Islamist ecosystems”, clearly demonstrates the centrality of these places of Islamist sociability in the diffusion of radical Islam.
In fact, if the executive power seems to have partly taken note of this by closing a growing number of radical places of worship or associations – the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), BarakaCity -, bookstores seem for the moment have gone under the radar.
(1) The first name has been changed.
* Writer and poet born in Damascus, Omar Youssef Souleimane participated in demonstrations against the regime of Bashar el-Assad, but, hunted by the secret services, had to flee Syria in 2012. Refugee in France, he published with Flammarion The Little Terrorist, The Last Syrian, A Room in Exile And Being French.
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