On April 2, Samara, a 13-year-old teenager, was violently attacked in front of her Arthur-Rimbaud college in Montpellier by several young people of her age, to the point of being plunged into an artificial coma for several hours. Three minors were arrested and “admitted (him) to having struck him”, indicated this Friday the prosecution, which requested the placement in pre-trial detention of the oldest of them, a 15-year-old boy. “Obviously, I want to know everything about what happened during the previous months or the previous weeks in the establishment where Samara was hosted,” declared the Minister of National Education Nicole Belloubet two days after the assault, before announcing the arrival of general inspectors at the young girl’s college for a “flash mission”.
The day before, Samara’s mother had spoken to several media outlets, accusing a young girl in particular, educated in the same establishment, who would be at the origin of the revolt against her daughter. “Samara dresses in European style […], Samara had made her hair red, she explained. She received so much mockery and insults – she was called an ‘unbeliever’ – that she ended up dyeing her hair because she couldn’t take it anymore. She was constantly molested all day long. Laughter, spitting in her hair, it was hellish for her.” Before adding: “We are from the same community, I am Muslim, my daughter too, and we perhaps do not have the same version of religion that this young girl. We are perhaps more moderate than these people.”
This testimony led to strong reactions from political representatives of all sides. Thursday April 4, after 24 hours of emotion on social networks, Samara’s mother, invited on the set of the show TPMP on C8, returned to the affair, before reading a press release live: “I denounce the exploitation of my daughter’s suffering by the extreme right. We are a Muslim family, my daughter is practicing and pious, she observes the fast of the month of Ramadan and prays five times a day. I incriminate the daughter who harassed my daughter, not a community […] so there is no point in using us to sully our religion.”
Afraid of the runaway networks? Intimidations? Retrospective doubts? The investigation will reveal what caused Samara’s ordeal. The first elements, in any case, cannot fail to bring to mind the case of Shaïna, murdered in Creil five years ago, a case to which the journalist from Charlie Hebdo Laure Daussy, wrote a book: The reputation. Investigation into the making of “easy girls” (ed. Les Echappés, 2023).
L’Express: Can we draw a parallel between the Samara affair and the phenomenon that you describe in your book The reputationthat is to say the pressures exerted on young girls who are victims of a certain religious rigorism in their neighborhood?
Laure Daussy: We will have to wait for the results of the ongoing investigation to know the exact facts and progress of this case. However, the first statements from the young girl’s mother suggest that Samara would have been criticized for certain personal choices such as, for example, the way she dressed or did her hair. Which led to her being harassed and called a “kouffar” or “unbeliever” by another teenager of Muslim faith like her. My book The reputation takes as its starting point the death of Shaïna, this teenager burned alive in Creil in 2019 at the end of a long ordeal. During my investigation, I realized that many other adolescent girls lived under the pressure, the threat, the constraint of a whole bunch of prohibitions both of a patriarchal and religious order: they are not welcome at certain café terraces, must not appear with a boy even if the latter is not their boyfriend, are supposed to remain virgins until marriage and everything relating to sexuality and their body is considered as taboo… Many wear clothes loose enough to respect the rules of modesty imposed on them by certain defenders of a rigorous practice of Islam. Some choose to wear the veil for strategic reasons and to avoid any risk of attacks or insults from groups of boys. Contrary to what some feminists argue, we can clearly see that, in this case, the veil is in no way a tool of emancipation.
In the case of Samara, it is not boys who are at the origin of the cabal led against her but a young girl. Isn’t that amazing?
During my investigation in Creil, the harassers were mainly boys but I noticed that girls could also relay certain pressures. Quite simply because it is very difficult to escape from this system and it is sometimes easier to howl with the wolves than to defend one of your comrades. I remember this friend of Shaïna who herself described the teenager as an “easy girl” in front of the police. I also collected testimonies from teachers who witnessed certain warnings from students towards other classmates: “Be careful, you are wearing too much makeup”, “you should not dress like that”. In some neighborhoods, policing your peers makes you a “good Muslim.”
Don’t social networks play an amplifying role in these stories of harassment?
Of course, social networks have the effect of increasing the threats made against certain young people and of conveying a certain image or reputation. One of the young girls behind the Samara lynching allegedly created a fake account to harm the teenager. It was also through this means that she would have arranged to meet the other attackers near the college. In Creil, I was also able to see that public accounts had been created on Instagram solely with the aim of humiliating certain young girls. Boys also published naked photos of their ex-girlfriends obtained under duress. A phenomenon of “revenge porn” which makes them prey.
The public and secular school is supposed to be a sanctuary away from all religious pressures. But this does not seem to be the case in this establishment in Montpellier?
Indeed, Samara’s mother claims to have alerted the establishment in advance of the threats weighing on her daughter, after her main teacher informed her of these threats. However, it seems that the information was not communicated and that his request for protection was not taken into account. School has a huge role to play in transmitting the values of secularism, especially today when these principles are regularly attacked. Remember that the 2004 law, which prohibits any ostensible religious sign at school, was put in place in particular because young women complained of being pressured to wear the veil. Several of them testified in this way before the Stasi commission, which gave rise to the 2004 law. I take this opportunity to welcome the decision of PS deputy Jérôme Guedj to refer the matter to the prosecutor for threats of a religious nature on the basis of article 31 of the law of 1905, a little-known article which punishes any religious pressure. The principle of secularism is based on the freedom to believe or not to believe without pressure. If the facts denounced by Samara’s daughter are proven, beyond the obviously reprehensible beating, it is important to remember that this pressure also falls within the scope of the law.
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