English: At International Women’s Day prominent journalist and feminist Zineb el Rhazoui will speak at De Balie about women’s rights, freedom and equality. El Rhazoui was a staff writer for Charlie Hebdo at the time of the attack at the magazine’s office. She survived, because she was in her birth country Morocco when the violence took place. Her personal experiences with institutionalized discrimination of women and press censorship in the name of Islam in her country of birth, made her an atheist and feminist. El Rhazoui continues to speak out for women’s rights and freedom of speech even though this condemns her personal freedom. She receives death treats daily, but refuses to be silenced.

“Today I wander around in a moving jail — it’s a moving cage — but in reality I am more free in my head than those who threaten me. Because their cage is inside their head. They have this cage in their brain and even if they have freedom of movement it is their spirit and their reason and intelligence that is imprisoned. I am much freer than them,” El Rhazoui recently said in New York Times.

Zineb el Rhazoui will be interviewed by De Balie director Yoeri Albrecht during this program.

Singer, artist, producer and poet Rajae el Mouhandiz will join in conversation this evening and will musically accompany the program.

Zineb el Rhazoui studied English and Arabic at the Sorbonne University in Paris and obtained a master’s degree in sociology of religion at graduate school EHESS. After graduating, El Rhazoui teached at the Université française d'Égypte. During that time, she also started her career as a journalist writing for the Moroccan weekly Le Journal hebdomadaire, where she covered stories about human rights in Morocco and the conflict in Gaza. In 2009 she co-founded the pro-democracy, pro-secularism movement MALI (Mouvement alternatif pour les libertés individuelles). El Rhazoui was arrested three times by the Moroccan government for criticizing it. After the Arabic Spring she fled Morocco and started writing for Charlie Hebdo. Last year she published her new book Détruire le Fascisme Islamique (Destroy Islamic Fascism). Her story, from censored journalist in Morocco to the most heavily guarded woman of France, is captured in the documentary Nothing is Forgiven.

Rajae el Mouhandiz is a singer, composer, short film maker and (music) theater maker. She produces Maghreb pop, soul and jazz. With a British Council grant and a US licence she initiated and produced theater production Hijabi Monologues NL (nominated for the Golden C award). Performing Arts Fund NL has rewarded her the New Makers Grant to further develop her signature style & audience in the Netherlands, Morocco and the USA in 2017/2018. In 2017 she created a research music theatre production titled Home, Displaced. In the last 9 years in a row Rajae was listed in the arts and culture section of the annual list of the 500 most influential Muslims in the World.

About De Balie Invites In De Balie Invites De Balie welcomes international thinkers to Amsterdam to discuss the relevant topics of this day and age. De Balie sees it as her duty to stimulate reflection and dialogue: the essentials for an open, democratic and civil society and constitutional state. Therefore we ask international speakers to incite debate and to speak about subjects that keep us occupied, that keep confronting us or that could use a new or different perspective. Subjects that describe the age we’re living in, with thinkers who will have become the key figures of our time, when we look back a hundred years from now. De Balie Invites has an impressive line-up of guest speakers. The next guest invited for the series is former President of the United Nations Security Council Kishore Mahbubani.

Language: English

Editor: Ianthe Mosselman

N E D E R L A N D S :

Sinds ze de aanslag op Charlie Hebdo overleefde is journaliste en activist Zineb El Rhazoui doelwit van doodsbedreigingen en daarmee de best bewaakte vrouw van Frankrijk. Ze spreekt zich fel uit tegen wat ze de wat ze de 'facistische islam' noemt en onderdrukking van vrouwen uit naam van religie. Ondanks de bedreigingen weigert ze haar toon te matigen. Op Internationale Vrouwendag spreekt ze over vrouwenrechten, de Islam en vrijheid van meningsuiting en gaat ze in gesprek met Rajae el Mouhandiz, zangeres, componiste, maker van korte films en een van de 500 meest invloedrijke moslims ter wereld.