Dounia Bouzar

Dounia Bouzar also Dominique Bouzar born 1964 is a French anthropologist writer and educator who has worked towards better acceptance of Muslims especially Muslim women in France She has held highlevel posts where she has contributed to promoting the understanding of Muslims but has not always seen eye to eye with the authorities Born in Grenoble Bouzar is the daughter of an Algerian father and a French mother She discontinued her secondary education before taking the baccalauréat matriculation After the birth of her first daughter she took and passed the examination allowing her to undertake university studies After a twoyear course at the French Red Cross in Lyon in 1991 she was able to join the PJJ Judiciary Youth Protection course at Tourcoing as an educator In 1999 she continued her studies at the University of Lille III leading to an MSc in education Brought up in a secular environment she first converted to Islam when she was 27 publishing her first works on the subject in 2001 Her Lune voilée lautre pas One Veiled One Not led President Nicolas Sarkozy to appoint her a member of the French Council of the Muslim Faith in 2003 She left two years later explaining that the Council was not sufficiently concerned with fundamental issues Instead she undertook a survey and analysis of Islams place in French society publishing Quelle éducation face au radicalisme What Education in the Face of Radicalism in 2006 for which she received an award from the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences Selected by Time as a Hero of the Year in 2005 the magazine quoted her concerns For years political leaders and religious scholars have been defining who and what we are as French Muslims Its up to us as French citizens and practising Muslims to tell them who we are and what we need In the same article she also criticized government proposals on the headscarf explaining Muslim women would be deprived of their freedom of choice if it were to be banned In September 2013 Prime Minister JeanMarc Ayrault appointed Bouzar a member of the Observatoire de la laïcité Secularism Observatory as a result of her work on secularism in companies with publications such as Allah mon boss et moi Allah My Boss and Me 2008 and Allah atil sa place dans lentreprise Does Allah have a Place in the Company 2009 She immediately suggested France should replace two Christian holidays with Yom Kippur for the Jews and Eid for the Muslims Faced with the problem of young Frenchmen being attracted to join ISIS in Syria in April 2014 Bouzar founded the Centre de prévention des dérives sectaires liées à lIslam Centre for the Prevention of Sectarian Excesses Related to Islam which initially had the support of the Ministry of the Interior However faced with the French governments intention to altar constitutional provisions on the French nationality Bouzar severed the organizations connections with the ministry in February 2016 making it completely independent Bouzar was honoured as a Chevalier de lOrdre des Palmes Académiques in 2009 for her contributions to French cultural heritage In 2014 the French politician JeanLouis Bianco decorated her as a knight of the Legion of Honour Source Article Dounia Bouzar from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30