(BRUSSELS) — Conventional Western stereotype has it that Muslim women living in the West can be divided into two clear-cut categories: on one hand, the veiled subjugated traditional housewife; on the other, the unveiled, modern, professional woman. This is the story of a woman that, by these standards, could be seen as having moved from the first category to the second. But more than anything else, this is the story of a woman who mistook her culture for her identity and who had to fight against all odds to earn herself the right to be what she is in a society that would only be content with classifying her in a given category.
Rachida Aziz was born 41 years ago of Moroccan parents in Antwerp, a major town in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium. At home, she would speak Moroccan Arabic and she learned Flemish in school; that is, until she stopped going because she could no longer take it.
“At that time, I was the only Moroccan in school and the other children were forbidden to talk to me. I would come home crying every day.”
So, despite her very good marks, she decided to quit and went to a ‘professional’ school to learn sewing instead. When she was 15, her parents moved to Brussels. That is when she decided she would wear the veil: “I have a religious upbringing, so I was very convinced by it all and back then it looked to me like the best thing to do to express my identity. We were six girls at home, but I was the only one to say yes to all of it.”
She also said yes to the Moroccan husband her parents choose for her and she married when she was 18. “To me, it was normal that my parents would decide for me, I thought they knew what is best for me. And I had someone to look after me, so to me, all was well.” She spent several years as a perfect housewife, until she realized she was bored. And so she started taking Islamic theology lessons. It was a revelation: “For the first time in my life, I felt I was accepted and my intelligence was not being denied. I started having the feeling that I could grow. It gave me the courage and the strength to open my perspective.” As a result, a first shifting in her thinking occurred: Rachida Aziz learned to question, something she was brought up not to do. Still, she felt she did not have enough space to let it all happen so she put brakes on it and tried instead to find a compromise to accommodate her different needs.
She decided she wanted to work. From then on, one thing brought her to another: She started working as a nanny for an Irish-Italian family that convinced her she could still study. As a result, she went to evening school and finished college; at the same time, she was hired by a non-for- profit organization called “Schools without Racism” to give trainings against racism in school. She was thinking about going to university when she fell ill: Her immune system was turning against her. She had to stop it all, working and studying . She spent a lot of time in the hospital and had to stay in bed for weeks. Doctors, while not knowing exactly what the problem was, gave her more and more medicine and told her her immune system would continue to deteriorate; they did not believe she would survive.
Two years later, though, Rachida was still there. She concluded doctors did not know anything and that she was no longer sick and stopped taking medicine. “I went through hell for two months trying to kick morphine on my own.” Her enthusiasm for her new project probably helped her out. “I was still veiled then and had difficulty in finding nice clothes to wear with my veil. So I started designing my own. They had a lot of success with my friends and their friends and I realized I still could contribute to society.” She was denied access to the two major designer’s schools in Brussels but went on regardless. She wanted to create nice and inspiring clothes for Muslim women and all other women. Her clothes are so cleverly designed that they can fit any situation and any woman’s wish, simply by shifting the cloth up or down.
“You know, women that wear the veil make the choice for themselves; we cannot insult their intelligence by telling them that their choice is wrong, because then what you are actually saying is that this is not the way she should think, hence that she is stupid. Besides, as long as they stayed home, it was OK. The issue started when they went out to go to school or find a job. So what we are saying to these women is, ‘You do what you want at home but not in public,’ hence, ‘Don’t go out.’ But we have no right to keep them at home; if they can’t go out, they can’t emancipate!”
Rachida Aziz’s project grew, and in 2009, she opened a store in the center of Brussels and named it Azira. The premises were carefully chosen, close to the city’s fashion district and at the same time not too far away from where a lot of Muslim women go shopping. She had that vision of Belgian and Moroccan women meeting each other in her shop and buying the same clothes. The owner of the first place she found “refused to rent it to me, because he did not want a veiled woman; the owner of the second place I visited did not want foreigners. So I got a Flemish blue-eyed friend to sign the renting contract for me!” She was refused the city subsidies given to the district’s designers, but she went on regardless. She is now regularly organizing concerts and exhibitions in her store, by and for people from different backgrounds.
It is when her father passed away in 2009 that Rachida Aziz really started questioning herself. “I realized how it was all linked to my education. I wondered what was mine and what was my education. This time, I let all the questioning in. I felt I could not build a new person on top of the old one; I had to destroy the old one. I realized I had to let my husband go if I wanted to build that other person. So I divorced.” Two years later, she went to Jerusalem. “It was a great experience at the human level. You feel like you are in another dimension, maybe because of the history, of all the things that happened there. It gave me more insight into what I am. And I decided to stop wearing the veil. I decided I did not want to put more time in religion.”
Rachida Aziz realized she cared most of all about equality, justice, respect, environment, fighting against poverty … And the way to address these issues, she thought, was through women. The production of her clothes is done in Morocco, by a small workshop employing single mothers. “You know single mothers are still very much marginalized in Moroccan society; people think they may have a bad influence on others. Additionally, this workshop provides decent working conditions; it is all very important to me.”
It is intrinsic in her project: Rachida Aziz wants to stand up for respect, for everybody’s rights. Including, and this is very unusual for a Muslim woman, gay rights: “Yes, in Muslim families, you just don’t talk about that. But my sisters and I used to challenge my mother on all kinds of subjects starting with the question: ‘What if …?’ And one day, one of us asked: ‘What if I marry a woman?’ To my astonishment, my Mom answered it would be OK. We thought she was kidding but she was not: ‘Well, I have seen my daughters unhappy with men, so if they can be happy with women, why not?’ she said. This is when I realized she had actually thought about it. It was extraordinary to us, and to me it was very important. This said, I think Western societies still have an issue with gays as well; it is not only Muslim societies.”
Today, when Rachida Aziz invites people to her events, she tries to bring them together around something that unites them. “We don’t’ talk about diversity. Diversity is there, it exists, it is a reality, so it is not an issue. The problem is how people treat each other. It is about respect, so I work around values. You cannot adhere to the project if you can’t give the same respect to others as the one you are expecting. It works both ways.”
Her strong opinions recently made her lose an investor. “I tend to be very vocal about certain issues; gays’ rights, women’s rights, citizens’ rights … So although he was very interested in Azira and thought the commercial potential was huge, in the end he decided he would not do it because of what he called my ‘political engagement.’ I call that ‘social engagement’ not political.”
The difference matters. Rachida Aziz does not want politics to mingle with what she is doing. When she was approached for the first time by a political party that wanted her on its voting list: She refused. More, recently, another political party tried to recuperate her project to political ends.
“You know, in some areas of Brussels, there are a lot of people from foreign origin, so local politicians there like to promise more respect, more opportunities for everybody. With my project, they can sort of show that they make it happen, even though they did not help me in any way. I was really choked. I don’t believe in politics to change things; I am actually fighting the system. My whole purpose is to help people realize that the state is not the people. I think people naturally love each other, but the system, in order to maintain itself, has us believe that this is not the case; they make us believe things that would ultimately divide us. I think that bringing people together in a relaxed way like I do in my store makes them realize they are not against each other.”