By Lola Bailey
Nawel Mourmes, 20, is a French Muslim living in the South of France. Growing up in her small town, Mazan, she always felt different.
“I remember not being invited to people’s birthday parties because I am a Muslim,” said Nawel.
“They would come up to me and tell me to my face ‘I’m sorry I can’t invite you to my birthday party’ and honestly it would be disheartening.”
French people can be very xenophobic especially in recent years as the right and the far right are getting closer and closer to being part of the French government.
Nawel said: “France is a country that advocates secularism, from one day to the next they say ‘yeah so the hijab is banned’, without real explanations. You can’t wear ostentatious signs of religion and all that, but there are people that have huge crosses around their necks and no one bats an eye.
“You can’t tell the difference between the Christian veil and the Muslim hijab, and I’m sure if it’s a white woman wearing the veil, they’re not going to say anything, they’re going to say, ‘ah, it’s the Christian veil, it’s good’. They’re assuming that there’s a problem with Muslim hijabs.”
In France, Muslims make up four to 10 per cent of the population. Nawel said in recent years her religion has been “glamorised” in the media. It has become “fashionable” for influencers to claim they are Muslim. She said: “One day to the next they call themselves Muslim, but they are going to pop the bottle of champagne that very evening with a good pork platter on the side.”
There are five pillars to Islam, the profession of faith, giving to the poor and living your religion, Ramadan which is fasting during the day “putting yourself in the place of those who have nothing”, conducting six prayers per day, giving zakat which means giving to charity and then there is Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca.
“I’ve never done it,” said Nawel. “I’d like to do it, it’s really, three quarters of Muslims do it.
“You know, it means going to Mecca as part of a pilgrimage, so that you can pray there, or at least see where the prophet Mohamed is buried. And then to go and see Qibla, the big black box.
“It’s in Mecca, the story is that it’s a black box that was sent down by God and has been for a very long time, so that’s where you have to go to pray, and when you pray, you pray in the direction of Mecca all the time. I pray towards the south-east as that is the direction where Mecca is. You don’t pray in any direction, it has to be towards the black box,” Nawel said.
When asked about her relationship with Islam, she said: “I don’t feel like I’m really into my religion.
“I remember there was a day when I was crying at night, I prayed, I prayed for God to help me and heal me and I was healed, well Islam met my needs, so I feel the duty to show my gratitude. I do everything I can to be fully in the religion and then do everything, follow everything to the letter and try to be a better version of me in Islam.”