Growing up as a Black Muslim woman: An inside story of belonging to a minority within a minority

This tale narrates my own story. First names and family names have been changed.

To my mother.

Have you ever been part of a minority within a minority?

In France, Muslims are a minority and they mostly come from Northern Africa. When I was growing up, Muslims were predominantly depicted as Arab men, North African men, who were the head of their families and the only one to pass on the teachings of the religion, Islam.

I’m Black, my parents come from islands in the Indian Ocean; I’m also a Muslim, and my mother was the only one to pass on the teachings of my religion, Islam. I belong to a minority within a minority. I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s.

I’ll tell you my story. Not the story of Black Muslim women in France, just my story. The unique story of a young Black Muslim girl, who’s growing up in her country, France, who’s learning to accept that she belongs to a minority, and who’s also discovering the diversity among people who profess Islam.

Let’s go back in time to the 20th century, to a period before mobile phones, when only five or six television channels were available. Back to the days of audio tapes. To a world before the Internet.

Part I

My Name is Fatima

I was born in France and grew up in a town in the outskirts of Paris. At the time horse butchers plied their trade in the town, and a magnificent nativity scene was set up at Christmas. My neighbourhood consisted of high-rise blocks in the style fashionable in the 1970s. You could also come across punk youth, whose look I rather liked although I was a bit scared by them. In the building where my family lived, middle-class and working-class people dwelled side by side, including North African families and so-called ethnic French.

I didn’t like dogs. Except my neighbours’ dogs. My mother would send me over to fetch an extra egg from neighbours in our building, and in turn they’d come to us and get a packet of baking powder. Such was our way of interacting with our neighbours for most of my childhood.

My parents, who were both Muslims, brought me up as a Muslim.

Islam is my Parents’ Religion

Islam is above all the religion of my parents, of their parents, and of their grandparents. All of them were brought up in this religion.

My father moved to France in the early 1970s after a stint in the Comoros Islands. My mother joined him after they married, before the Comoros gained independence in 1975. When they arrived, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing[1] was at the helm of the country.

Islam is above all my mother’s religion. As a child, I would see her praying on a prayer mat. She’d be reading a little book in Arabic with a gold cover that her father had given her before she left the Comoros for France.

I equated the practice of Islam with my mother’s behaviour: the ablutions she performed before settling on her prayer mat, her fasting all day until sunset during the month of Ramadan.

Like my brother and my sisters, I was brought up in the Muslim religion and the five pillars underpinning it. I had to learn them by heart and repeat them back to my mother, in Arabic and French: the declaration of faith (‘There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His messenger’), the five daily prayers, the Ramadan fast, zakat (alms giving as a way of purification), and the pilgrimage to Mecca for those who can afford it.

I’d listen to my mother’s stories about God, angels, and the devil, then I began to study, in all seriousness.

My Religion is Islam

‘Everyone has a religion: some people go to church on Sundays, others attend the synagogue on Saturdays. As your religion is Islam, you have to learn the Quran’.

My mother began her lessons with this little lecture every time my siblings and I were slow to sit by her side to be taught our religion. Her opening words varied: ‘Your classmates have a religion, yours is Islam’ or ‘Your classmates are learning their religion, and you don’t want to learn yours. But yours is Islam’.

In a way, these words made sense. I saw people going to church on Sundays. My classmates in primary school would tell me they attended the synagogue or the church. I also remember that other children had no religion at all, and didn’t believe in God. I’d catch my sisters’ eyes during my mother’s little lectures, but none of us would have dared raise the topic of atheism at that particular time.

I found out later that it would have been a wasted effort. During holidays in the Comoros, I overheard my siblings trying to convince one of our cousins that there were people who didn’t believe in God. ‘This is impossible!’ he kept repeating, as he gave arguments to prove the existence of God. We had atheist friends; thus, we knew atheism was a fact, not a hypothesis. Therefore, my brother and sisters had fun seeing how our cousin was racking his brains to try to understand such an alien notion.

My siblings and I learned to read suras in Arabic. I’ve been reading vocalised Arabic from an early age and I can read the Quran. My mother taught us when we were still very young – I was around five or six years old the first time. She used a small Quranic book, the Juzz’Amma, that covered the first part of the Great Book. The book also included the Arabic alphabet and a breakdown of the text into syllables. Her father had sent it to help her begin our religious education.

Step by step, I learned to identify the alphabet, join letters, write and read the suras, starting with the shortest ones. As we progressed, we went over all the suras we’d learned.

I wasn’t sure where my mother got it from, but she owned an audio tape stored in a pink pouch. The tape cover featured the photograph of a gentleman with a tiny hat on his head, a little moustache, and a long coat. He was sitting in front of a microphone and was called Minchaoui. This tape covered the suras I was learning, the shortest ones. My mother would turn on the tape, and I’d follow the man’s reading with my eyes on my copy of the Holy Book. The recording lasted an hour, which is a very long time for a child. As I grew older, that pink tape became a bit of a horror: it lasted long enough for me to miss the start of my favourite TV programmes. I did, however, have some preferred moments when listening to it: the reading of the suras of Dawn (Al-Fajr) and of Men (An-Nas), in other words … the suras that ended each side of the tape!

I couldn’t understand why this gentleman took so much time, pulling on each letter, waiting a long time before reading the next word.

As my learning progressed, I listened to other tapes, with longer suras. I felt more and more irritated when hearing those readers. Some verses are long; so, to catch their breath and finish in one go, they would stop in the middle then go back and read the whole thing in one breath. As a result, I couldn’t keep up. I felt I was wasting time.

Despite my progress, my mother still kept her infamous pink tape, and when I thought the lesson was over, she would play it to make me ‘go over’ the first suras. As long as it didn’t spill into my favourite television series of the moment, that was fine with me. But as you can imagine, this was rarely the case.

The Month of Ramadan

I lasted until six p.m. In my childish mind, I thought I’d manage to last another two or three hours, so I could break my fast together with my mother.

The first time I observed Ramadan was to copy her. The month of Ramadan has always been a month of celebration for me, especially as a child as it meant playing non-stop at lunchtime!

During my primary school years, I fasted at weekends, on Wednesdays and during school vacations when they fell during the month of Ramadan.

For me, these festive days began with suhur, the recommended pre-dawn meal, eaten before sunrise, before the beginning of the fast. I looked forward to these meals in the night. The day before, our family would go to the market and stop at a bakery. My parents would let us choose the Danish pastries we wanted to eat during this special meal. My mother would often add other sweet cakes, and this meal was one of my favourite moments.

The feeling of celebration was at its highest when all my siblings decided to fast on the same day. This way, none of us would have to stop playing in order to have lunch and thus disrupt the organisation of our games.

Our mother would get up very early to prepare this special breakfast: after setting the table, she’d go into our rooms and wake us up one by one. I found it hard to get up. Then I went to the bathroom for a quick wash and I settled at the table in front of the pastries we’d chosen the day before.

The first moments of suhur were silent, but very soon it gave way to bursts of laughter, sometimes muffled by a single glance from my mother, as she reminded us that our neighbours were still asleep.

The nights all ended in the same way: after meticulously brushing my teeth, I’d express my intention to fast the next day, in petto or loudly. This is a key step to validate the fast. Before I could wish my mother a good end to the night, she’d ask me about my intention: had I said it loudly or inside my heart? I’d said it, that’s what mattered.

When it was time to break the fast, iftar, we’d turn on the radio to a Middle Eastern channel. I’ve kept this almost ritual habit, even when I was living in England and I wanted to find a station broadcasting the adhan (the call to prayer) to get the right Ramadan atmosphere.

At home, we listened to readings of the Quran on the radio before the adhan, while my brother, my sisters, and I took great delight in seeing the table set by our mother. Often, we had to stop playing fifteen to twenty minutes before the break so we had enough time to freshen up. I guessed my parents let us play as a means to distract us from our hunger. How nice to play without interruption for lunch or snacks!

The sound of the radio announcing the adhan was a great moment of excitement. We’d break our fast as soon as the first words of the adhan sounded.

When she was in primary school, my sister used to argue with one of our Muslim girlfriends on the timing of the break: should it be at the ringing of the bell, during the call to prayer or afterwards? Yes, even as youngsters, we used to debate the validity of our fast.

At weekends, my parents would often have friends, family, or members of the Comorian diaspora staying with them. As iftar was a time for sharing, we’d go from having six people in the house to nine or more. These gatherings were also an opportunity to enjoy Comorian cuisine. I really liked the atmosphere and the festive hubbub reigning in the flat.

My mother often reminds me of how she used to find out when Ramadan ended. It was often by chance: a Muslim neighbour would see her from her window and wish her a happy holiday. Indeed, unless the sky is clear, it’s not easy to see with the naked eye that the crescent moon indicates the start of a new month. Later, one of her compatriots, who also lived in the area, got into the habit of phoning her to announce the beginning and end of the fasting month.

One of our Muslim neighbours, a woman from Algeria, told me about the first times she spent Ramadan in France. She used to phone people in Algeria to find out at what time they broke their fast. ‘Oh, you can laugh, it wasn’t like now, with calendars and everything,’ she said with a grin. She explained what my mother had already told me: they didn’t have calendars. Today we can have a good laugh as our smartphones are telling us the time to the second in every city in the world.

As far as I was concerned, choosing our festive outfits in the stores was the kick-off to Eid-el-Fitr, the celebration marking the end of the month of Ramadan. I often got a beautiful dress, and I was also entitled to a new pair of shoes. A special atmosphere prevailed in stores and in market stalls, as other children also came with their mother or father to pick their Eid outfits.

On the night known as ‘the night of doubt’, i.e. the twenty-ninth day of the month of Ramadan – sometimes said month included thirty days – we’d leave the radio on and wait for the announcement regarding the appearance of the new moon. It signalled the start of a new lunar month. I’d also watched out for phone calls from my parents’ friends: they’d ring us when they got the information by means other than the radio.

Confirmation of Eid kicked off the festivities at home. Euphoria set in. My brother and sisters and I would run out to get our new clothes and look at them, already wishing the next day had begun. And it was a truly perfect party when it happened on a school day!

The ritual for this special day began very early in the morning. Before my siblings and I woke, our Muslim neighbours would bring us a plate of fine pastries from their region, Morocco and Algeria. After calling on our Muslim neighbours and wishing them a happy holiday, we’d come back home and gobble down the sweets we’d been given. We also savoured the pastries brought by our neighbours. Of course, I’d lost my appetite when it was time to eat the festive lunch prepared by my mother.

In the afternoon, my sisters and I would meet Muslim friends from my class or from the leisure centre, and we’d stroll through the neighbourhood and around the school. We enjoyed parading around in our festive clothes and waving to our non-Muslim classmates as they came out of school – just to show them that we’d been having a good time. But we were nice and shared our sweets with them.

There was the occasional hitch when not everyone celebrated Eid on the same day. The group outings then included only my brother and sisters. I have to say it spoiled the party a bit.

The Quran’s Content

As a teenager, I didn’t quite understand why my non-Muslim circle of friends and acquaintances were surprised: yes, I could read Arabic without understanding it. I understand now with hindsight and further thinking that this was tantamount to saying that I mastered the pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese without understanding a single word. I realise now how odd it sounded.

Because I learned Arabic reading and writing as a child, together with learning to read and write in French, my proficiency in Arabic felt as a part of me. That said, many Muslims from non-Arabic-speaking communities share a similar position.

This fact undoubtedly surprised the family worker who visited us regularly (we’d call her now a ‘home help’). As she was chatting about religion, she guessed that my mother didn’t understand Arabic, and subsequently didn’t understand the Quran although she was reading it daily. My mother prayed and chanted words she didn’t understand. She had been taught the principles and stories of Islam, but she didn’t know the exact content of the Quran.

During the colonial period in the Comoros, boys and girls attended Quranic school before going to French school. They needed to complete the reading of the Holy Book before any ‘administrative’ education could take place. As a consequence, Comorians of my mother’s generation and older generally knew how to read Arabic. Exceptions were unusual. The family worker asked a colleague to provide my mother with a French translation of the Quran.

Once we had the translation at home, we experienced a true revolution. Our Quranic reading sessions were interrupted from time to time, much to my delight, and we spent these moments translating the suras we were reading. I thought it was great, it was my favourite time! Before we got the translation, I hadn’t really thought about what I was reading in Arabic. In my child’s mind, it was something my mother asked me to do. I must say I wasn’t particularly fond of reading the Quran in Arabic. The stories my mother told us about her Quranic schooling in the Comoros Islands were much more mesmerising, as were the lessons taught by her schoolteacher about heaven and hell. But I was even more enthralled by the revelation brought to me by the translation of the Quran.

I was just starting secondary school when my mother made a decision that would change everything about my identity as a Muslim. She’d noticed that my brother, my sisters, and I were dragging our feet more and more to pick up our Qurans and study with her. Therefore, she decided to enrol us in class at the mosque.

[1] French president from 1974 to 1981 (Translator’s note)