2024-01-14 07:00:25
Islamologist Rachid Benzine has always worked for interfaith dialogue. From his youth in Trappes, in Yvelines, this teacher retained a taste for exchange in a period when clashes over religious questions became paroxysmal. After having published in September 2023 a highly noticed novel, entitled The Silences of the Fathers (Seuil), he is currently working on an essay on the war of stories.
I wouldn’t have gotten here if…
…if I had not entered the associative field in the 1980s with my friends from Trappes. I was 14 years old and I became vice-president of an association called Issue de emergency. We were bored, we just wanted a place with a table football, to make booms and listen to funk and soul. At first we were refused, so we organized a march and a sit-in at the town hall to protest the decision. We were the first youth association in Trappes. Very quickly, we set up academic support for the little ones. As we were all minors, adults came to support us by occupying the positions of president, secretary, treasurer, etc. This collective adventure was foundational for me. There I met a worker-priest, Jean-Michel Degorce, who arrived with very committed left-wing Christians to give us a helping hand. I understood that, in order to grow, we needed adults to trust us.
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You were born in Morocco, in Kenitra. How did your family end up in Trappes?
My parents came from the countryside, from a working class background. My father had obtained diplomas and had created an Arabic language learning school in a slum before leaving for France to look for work. Friends had found him a job on a construction site. Initially, he lived in Sonacotra homes. He had no intention of bringing his family, he just wanted to earn enough money to support us and return to Morocco. Then my big sister joined him, she did housework. It was she who encouraged my father to bring us here as part of family reunification. So he applied for accommodation. My mother had no desire to leave her country, her brothers and sisters. She finally said, “If there are good schools for the kids, fine. » In the end, my parents never left again. My father spent his whole life here as a scrap dealer. When he was not working, he took refuge in books, reading poetry, theology and exegesis of the Koran. He was considered a scholar by his friends.
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