Through his plays and his books, Ismaël Saidi, Belgian author and actor, stands up against Islamist radicalization through humor.
And by an opening speech that he brings to the four corners of France.
While, for the past five years, he has been playing his play “Jihad” - recommended by the radicalization prevention plan - in middle and high schools, prisons and MJCs, he has just released a book, “Like a Muslim in France ”(Ed. Autrement), published on January 13.
"European of Muslim faith and Judeo-Christian culture", he never ceases to work to live it together.
After each performance of his play, a debate is held around burning topical questions: identity, discrimination, communitarianism, attacks.
With pedagogy and listening, he advocates tolerance, tries to deconstruct the ambient victim discourse, fertile ground for hatred.
A former policeman, himself rooted out of a rigorous Islam for the love of music, brought up close to the now infamous Molenbeek district, he knows what he's talking about.
And knows how to capture the attention of a young audience.
Before an animated series, “Les voyages de Lina”, soon on Lumni, and only one on stage, “Muhammad”, in which he tells the story of the prophet and that he will create in Liège, he confides.
What is the idea of this book?
ISMAËL SAIDI.
I tell about the meetings that I made in France during my tours and debates with the public.
I brought out all these elements which, I think, may be of interest.
Despite what may seem negative, when I speak of well-established communitarianism, the book is hyperpositive.
This communitarianism, or the development of halal, a self-locking according to you ...
It is obvious, it is self-discrimination.
We try to do like everyone else but with our own methods, and finally we created our own ghetto.
Getting out of it becomes very complicated.
There is a problem today, but I'm trying to show how it can be broken down upstream, with devictimization work in particular.
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That is to say ?
In the book, a 14 year old kid complains about discrimination in hiring even though he has never looked for work!
Because it is the ambient discourse.
There is a victim factory, which is very dangerous.
This speech should not please everyone ...
Much more than the rigorous Muslims who thrive on this soil, this discourse disturbs those who have made a business of it.
A business?
Associations, elected officials in places, a bit of everyone.
If I keep telling you that you are a victim, I instill in you that you need me.
And that I am here.
And I can collect grants.
When I was a cop, we used to say that the police need thugs… Some structures need discrimination and that there continue to be victims.
This 14-year-old kid, convinced that he will never have a job because he is black or Arab, he grows up with this resentment.
The hatred of the other starts there.
Is the law on separatism putting the cart before the horse?
I have no opinion on this.
Me, I act more upstream with an artistic work to avoid arriving at these laws.
But if someone continues to believe that everyone who eats pork is going to burn in hell, no law can help.
I'm not saying everyone who thinks this is going to end up killing someone, but the beginning is always the same.
I have a problem with over-victimization and this lack of empathy towards the one who is different that we can sometimes find in the eyes of my co-religionists.
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What's this ?
A reaction ?
The final reaction of over-victimization.
You see yourself as the victim, therefore you have rights, but you forget your duties.
And since you live surrounded by people like you, you don't ask yourself the question.
The concern is the one-lane highway.
A kid tells me that if he enters a church he will become a Christian, and therefore that is prohibited.
We taught him that.
He has been taught to reject the other.
The minority ended up learning to reject the other.
So what do we do ?
We don't stop… Every fault is a crack in the wall, we keep going.
Or we start where it never started.
We never dared?
But we must dare.
Between humans, we should not be afraid to say things that annoy each other.
Today, we feel very much in France this fear of being considered as racist.
If you know what you are worth, don't be afraid of being called a racist.
Ismaël Saidi's play, “Djihad”, at the Lepic theater, in Paris, in October 2019. / Marielle Gaudry
You cannot be accused of racism ...
I can be accused of something else, not Muslim enough or perverted by the media-je ne sais quoi.
We can all have a ball in our feet, that shouldn't prevent us from walking.
What does the word Islamophobia inspire you?
It is an aberration.
A little 85-year-old lady who constantly sees people on TV shouting
Allahu Akbar
and killing, she may be afraid of Islam.
It is not rational, fear, we do not choose, it falls on you.
A phobia cannot be punishable.
We work on it, we question it.
If we start to forbid people to be afraid, they will still be afraid but will keep it to themselves.
It will become anger, resentment, hatred and may lead to acts… I refute the word Islamophobia, I speak rather of acts or anti-Muslim words.
Did you imagine taking on this role while writing this play?
No, and I quickly turned it down.
Out of fear, I didn't want to be a spokesperson.
And then I thought it was cowardly.
A painting, a film, a play provoke reactions and debates.
Let's open it.
Coming to see these young people is to make them feel that they are important, that they have a voice.
I feel like I'm doing what I would have liked to have been done for me at their age.
VIDEO. When Ismaël Saidi was playing "Jihad" in a neighborhood house in Villiers-le-Bel
Some must remain airtight ...
This is not to convince the most important, but to bring another story.
This victimization problem, in a roundabout way, is what killed Samuel Paty, not the cartoons.
The message behind it is:
They blame us!
We insult our prophet!
No one is defending us!
A kind of excessive victimization.
While the guy showed a caricature of a guy who maybe never existed.
We stay with a concept, an idea, no one has insulted you ...
In the book, a young person asks you if you have the right to say that ...
Yes, I have the right to say.
They don't know, they've been told the opposite.
It's as old as the world to forbid you to think… You have to make them understand that Islam is not their identity.
You have to be able to move from
Islam is what I am
to
Islam is what I believe in
.
Who is this book addressed to ?
To those who want to have a little hope.
These meetings are small moments of grace.
In five years, I have seen that people are basically good in France.
Imagine in a Muslim country, a group of Coptic Christians shoot one November evening on shisha bars.
I tend to believe that in some countries, we would have found all the Copts hanging by their feet guts out.
In France, we tried to understand, there were calls for respect.
There are indeed some hate speeches, but we did not switch to that despite the heinous attacks.
In villages that voted for extreme parties, I saw fear, questions, but no hatred.
It takes a foreigner, a Belgian, to tell
you
:
you have a fucking country
.
It is no longer a country, it is a notion.