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 high-level 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 two-year 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 M.Sc. 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 L'une voilée, l'autre 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 Islam's 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. It's 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 Jean-Marc 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 a-t-il sa place dans l'entreprise? (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 l'Islam (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 government's intention to altar constitutional provisions on the French nationality, Bouzar severed the organization's connections with the ministry in February 2016, making it completely independent.
Bouzar was honoured as a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 2009 for her contributions to French cultural heritage. In 2014, the French politician Jean-Louis Bianco decorated her as a knight of the Legion of Honour.
Source: Article "Dounia Bouzar" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
