Zineb El Rhazoui (Casablanca, 1982) is a French-Moroccan journalist, feminist and critic of Islam. Her personal experiences in her native country with institutionalised discrimination against women and press censorship in the name of Islam turned her into a militant atheist and feminist. She was a journalist for the French-language Moroccan magazine Le Journal hebdomadaire, where she reported on the human rights situation in Morocco, among other things. The magazine was closed down by the Moroccan authorities in 2010. From 2011 onwards, she worked for the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. She was not in Paris at the time of the attack in 2015. Shortly afterwards, she too became the target of death threats. In 2016, her book Détruire le fascisme islamique (Destroy Islamic Fascism) was published.
Laureate Difference Day Honorary Title for Freedom of Expression 2016
Since her early adolescence, French-Moroccan journalist Zineb El Rhazoui has been challenging the subordinate role of women in Islam. She began her career as a journalist in Morocco, where she founded several pro-democracy, secular organisations. She was arrested several times and eventually deported from the country. She left for Paris, where she became spokesperson for the feminist organisation Ni Putes, ni Soumises. In 2011, after the Arab Spring, she was recruited by Charlie Hebdo magazine. She worked on projects including articles about the Prophet Muhammad, for which she received death threats from IS. Zineb escaped the attack on the Charlie Hebdo editorial office on 7 January 2015. She was abroad when two Islamist terrorists murdered twelve of her colleagues because of satirical cartoons about Islam. A few days after the attack, she also received death threats from IS. Since then, her life has been dominated by measures to ensure her safety and security.
According to her, these measures have changed her a lot. She learned through this security that you can only find it within yourself. She trusts the universe, who she is, and does not want to be surrounded by armed agents all day long. She refuses to carry that fear. This makes her feel freer than those who threaten her, because they are imprisoned inside. Nevertheless, Zineb now has to think carefully about every step she wants to take. She now knows what is important in life, which means, among other things, that if she had to do it all over again, she would do the same. If she has to choose between a false sense of freedom – which is the price you pay when you choose to remain silent about things that need to be said – she chooses to do the right thing, even if she is threatened. The goal of life is not to be successful with a fancy job, house and car on the doorstep, but to be free. Even if you pay a price for it. Freedom of expression is about freedom and dignity. Remaining silent about what is going wrong means the end of humanity. That is why she also speaks out clearly about what is happening in Palestine.
Zineb El Rhazoui had to return the prestigious Simone Veil Prize, which she received in 2019 for her fight against Islamist extremism, in 2024 because of her criticism of the Israeli bombing of Gaza. Simone Veil personified the legacy of the Shoah. She rightly stated: never again a Holocaust. But also: never again for all of humanity. Not for the Jews, not for others, not for the Palestinians. That is why Zineb was very honoured. But if the prize today means that she must remain silent about the Israeli government's war crimes in Gaza, about the unbearable life that the Palestinians have had to endure for 75 years, then she is happy to return it.
She explained that for the Palestinians, all the boxes of genocide have been ticked. Schools and hospitals have been bombed, water and humanitarian aid cut off. Nearly 2 million people have been displaced. That forced displacement alone is a war crime. The political intentions and structural decisions to reduce and expel the number of Palestinians is a historical continuity, a textbook example of acts of genocide. For her, both Hamas and the Israeli army are terrorist organisations. The difference is that the latter has been committing genocide for 75 years and the former is a terrorist organisation that grew out of the Palestinian resistance to it. International law states that every people under occupation has the right to defend itself with the means at its disposal, including military means. What she did strongly condemn was Hamas's attacks on civilians. She herself makes no distinction between Israeli and Palestinian civilians. The greatest violation of freedom of expression is that Israel denies journalists access to the Gaza Strip and that more than a hundred journalists have been killed. The greatest massacre of journalists of all time.
Sources: Amnesty International, De Morgen, NPO Buitenhof.
