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

By Fatima Adamou

How does it feel to grow up as a Black Muslim woman in France?

Fatima Adamou provides us with some answers in this autobiographical account set in the 1980s and 1990s.

Her story narrates the straightforward tale of how she studied her religion, Islam, and how she discovered the diversity of Muslims when she was a teenager, all the while facing challenges because of her skin colour.

Anyone interested in learning about French Muslims and their various legacies should read her narrative.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Aug 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9782322565221

Fatima Adamou

Born in France, Fatima Adamou has written fiction and non-fiction books for both adults and children. Her keen interest in her religion first led her to frequently share her opinion on topics regarding Muslim communities on a French Muslim news website. Driven by her passion, she then started blog writing on books and matters related to Islam and Muslims. Before she became a writer, Fatima Adamou worked as a teacher and in the interfaith sector. She lived in England for several years.

Book preview

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.

Table of Contents

Part I

My Name is Fatima

Islam is my Parents’ Religion

My Religion is Islam

The Month of Ramadan

The Quran’s Content

Part II

Learning at the Mosque

To Be Different

Back to my Mother’s Teachings

Learning about Islam through Oral Sources

Islam in Books

Woman in Islam

Part III

I Am First and Foremost Black

The Condition of Black People

Black People on Television

Inherited Conflict

Muslims, Africa, and Politics

To Learn about Others in order to Better Understand

Part IV

Other Muslims

Muslims’ Mixed Destinies

The Need to Always Stand up for Oneself

Headscarf

The Lost Ones

How to Be a Muslim Woman… a True One

Ramadan at the Lycée

Epilogue

Thanks

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’Estaing¹ 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