The case reached the media wall of sound to make it into the news. On April 2, two girls and a boy, aged 14 to 15, beat Samara as she left her college, in Montpellier, in the Mosson district. Falling into a coma, the young girl only came out two days later. The motive of the attackers? They would have been furious to see a photo posted by Samara showing her bareheaded. Tensions between the teenager and one of her attackers, who was veiled, had lasted for several months. The second had even been excluded from the establishment on several occasions for having threatened the first.
Before changing her version, Samara's mother indicated that her daughter was regularly treated like kouffar (disbeliever) or kahba (whore) because of her outfits “ European style “. This case is not an isolated case, and testifies to a growing phenomenon in France: that of women who, under the aegis of the Islamization of neighborhoods, monitor other women. The phenomenon of “big brothers” was known, we now have to deal with that of “big sisters”.
Women under surveillance
Let's come back to the first. In the 1980s, communication problems emerged between institutional actors, mayors, police and young people from the “neighborhoods”. Sensing the urgency of reconnecting with the youth of the cities, certain municipalities are starting to buy social peace through these famous “big brothers”, whose role is to act as intermediary with young people.
Selected for their status, their authority, their neighborhood of origin but also often for their ethnicity, the “big brothers” are then there to maintain order by buddying up with the young refractory people. In the article “The big brothers in the youth policy of Saint-Denis”, Pauline Beunardeau explains that thesebig brothersarouse “ the attraction of “little ones”, supporting a warlike reputation and commanding respect. This policy nevertheless quickly suffered from criticism, symbolized by the speech of Rachida Dati at the National Assembly in 2008 : “ Your integration policy was a failure! You created this “big brother” policy to take care of young girls who didn't ask for anything. (…) The big brothers led to a policy of community withdrawal, to an identity policy, which you supported ! »
Feminist movements are not left out. Created in 2003, the organization “Neither whores nor submissives” contributed, through the voice of Fadela Amara, to showing male oppression at work in the neighborhoods. This male oppression quickly becomes in people's minds that of big brothers. The failure of the latter can also be explained by a redefinition of the collective in the neighborhoods. From a family system where everyone, parents and “big brothers”, had their place within a so-called collective education, social networks and growing individualism have disrupted the benchmarks.
Many older brothers have left the neighborhoods. In 2017, the limitation of adult bridge contracts to three renewals finally made them disappear. And in the same pattern of purchasing social peace – nature abhors a vacuum – other big brothers, with long beards this time, have succeeded them. In this Islamization of social relations in the neighborhoods, while Islamist preachers replace the “big ones” from before, women are both watched and monitored. Since women are considered in Islam as the “guardian of the dogma” particularly through the education that they transmit to their children, they must have an immaculate reputation in the eyes of men but also in the eyes of other women.
READ ALSO : Louise El Yafi: “The veil worn by French women is the same as that worn by Iranian women”
Reputation logic
In December 2023, an Ifop survey thus revealed that 80% of French Muslim women under the age of 25 had already worn an abaya in public to protect themselves from external pressure. Monitoring women is also essential because having a godly wife is a social obligation for a man. The wife of Abdelaziz Hamida, elected mayor of Goussainville (Val-d'Oise) in 2020 and known to be close to the Muslim Brotherhood and the movement tabligh,would have even been the first in the neighborhood to wear the full veil.
Conversely, a man whose wife is not perfectly pious can see his reputation destroyed. We find this trend in the story of Abou Diaby, former French footballer, and his ex-partner Elisabeth Babe. Very religious and veiled, she is said to have cheated on her husband on several occasions, infidelities having given rise to several sex tapes made public. Abou Diaby then becomes in the eyes of all and on social networks a dayout. This Arabic term from Islamic vocabulary describes a person, particularly a husband, who is too permissive in matters of morals and sexuality towards members of his family and in particular his wife. In other words, a dayout is a man who doesn't know how to control his wife.
Wanting to clear his honor, Abou Diaby accused his ex-wife of hypocrisy in a video where he mentions the word “veil” no less than fifty-nine times: “ Now she's flirting with the veil, because what are they saying to each other? They say to themselves “I'm going to show my veil, I'm going to take out my veil, I'm going to appear to be a pious, virtuous girl, but it's not the case. You have to see them all in the 9-4 wearing the veil, I'm not making a generalization, they're really pissed. »
The person concerned responded as follows: “ I'm sorry. I receive threats from everywhere, messages from everywhere (…) He wanted to dirty all the veils through me, and this to increase the pressure on me and the shame that accompanies it. » This case shows how much, in Islam, the woman plays the role of guardian of her husband's reputation. If her behavior is not pious, it is the entire community on which she brings opprobrium.
Women supervisors
If the “big brothers” have disappeared, with the Islamist preachers have arrived the “big sisters”. Sometimes older than those they advise, they act as a religious compass within the women of a community. Their character being supposed to bring them closer to God, they hold the Truth in the eyes of other women. Both supervisors and teachers, they call the bad sheep back to Islamic order and convince those who have not yet converted to orthopraxy. This monitoring and control is done through “reminders” based on the da'wah, that is to say the invitation made to men by God and the prophets to believe in Islam.
READ ALSO : Louise El Yafi: “Jihadism: women are as dangerous as men”
Indeed, if each believer must remind himself of what is lawful and unlawful, everyone must remind others all the more. Monitor the behavior of other believers and bring “lost” people back to the right path. A large number of private women's groups are even dedicated to these daily reminders on WhatsApp and Telegram. The pattern is always the same. It is enough, from a link shared on a social network like Facebook, to join a Whatsapp or Telegram group after sending a voice message to prove that we are a woman. This being done, it is possible to access a private discussion group in which only a few administrators have the right to post messages, which are religious reminders.
Access to the group validated, several dozen notifications per day are sent covering various and varied Islamic precepts such as “ As a reminder, whoever feeds a fasting person when he breaks his fast will have the same reward as the latter. ” Or ” Seize a firm resolution, O you who have committed excesses and know that nothing prevents your repentance. »
The administrators of these accounts arrogate to themselves the status of “scholars”, and are perceived by other women as “better Muslims”, set up as models to follow. Through these repeated reminders, networks of radicalized women slowly but surely enter the lives of other women to “advise” them and make “recommendations” in order to guide them on the path to God. Under an apparent benevolence, it is in fact a whole digital surveillance of Muslim women that is being organized.
Shaïna was “responsible for what happened to her”
This control between “sisters”, although it is most often done “gently”, can also be done through violence within neighborhoods. In his investigation entitled Reputation, journalist Laure Daussy examines this constant surveillance of women in Creil, witnesses to the assassination of Shaïna, stabbed and burned alive at the age of 15 after having been raped and then harassed because she had become an “easy girl” in everyone's eyes. If the essay dissects a daily life of male surveillance, it also depicts girls who are sometimes equally cruel.
READ ALSO : Louise El Yafi: “A State that veils can only be a State that rapes”
Laure Daussy writes for example: “ On the occasion of a tribute to Shaïna, Sarah posted a story on Instagram to recall the tragedy, but some girls told her to stop posting this kind of thing online, because for them, Shaïna was “responsible of what had happened to him. » For her part, when the journalist Hind Fraihi arrives in Molenbeek (in her book Immersed in Molenbeek), it is the gaze of other women that she feels especially on her and mainly that of ” Muslim women covered from head to toe » who refuse to greet her, she who is not.
Another example of female malice, in 2023, a young teenage girl, unveiled, was beaten up by another young woman, veiled, while a third filmed the scene. The first had apparently reported the second's brother for sexual assault. The one who wears the veil being above other women because closer to God, she is also the one who arrogates to herself the right to control their reputation. And to make other women, like Samara, pay the consequences.
