The Social Platform, Jan 2011
The five-minute interview : Noura Jaballah, President, European Forum of Muslim Women

Read the paper and the interview in this link or after

  Who are you?

How and why did you get involved in the NGO movement?

In the early 1980s, I’d come to France to study. I had enrolled my young son in kindergarten, and on his first day I went to speak to the headmistress to ask her about how the system worked. To my surprise, instead of answering me she walked out into the hall and called the other teachers, shouting “Come see, an Arab woman who speaks French!” - as if it were some kind of miracle! I learned that many parents in France of North African origin were excluded from participating in their children’s educations, such as at parent-teacher meetings, largely because of their lack of language skills. I therefore joined a social cultural association to help these women integrate and become more involved in this role, through language lessons and other means of support.

This was how my NGO work began.

What’s your biggest achievement?

The European Forum for Muslim Women is only five years old. But in 2008, for the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, we held 16 separate cultural events which brought together five thousand participants to show decision makers that we were united for issues of gender equality and against islamophobia.

This was a significant victory for us from an awareness-raising point of view.

 

What’s your next battle?

 

We’ve set up a team that’s developing an EUwide survey, so we can better understand the problems of discrimination and social exclusion that Muslim women face. We also need to build alliances in the NGO world to fight for social inclusion and equal opportunities for women.

 

Name one thing we could all do today to improve European society.

Forge your own opinion for yourself. People need to forget as much as possible their prejudices and search for first hand information.
 

The next time you see a Muslim in the street, ask them about their views. The best way to kill fear and prejudice is dialogue. Everything starts with dialogue.