Souhail chichah tariq ramadan biography

However, not everyone sees him as an influence for good.

Souhail Chichah, a member of the ULB staff.

Photography: Andrew Firth. Can you say something about your background and heritage? How do you define your identity? What is your mother tongue? I was born in Geneva, into an Egyptian family, and for years what I remember is that we were always talking about the Arab world. My father and my mother were in touch with all the people coming from abroad — mainly from the Middle East but also, because my father travelled a lot, with people from Asia.

So, Arabic was my mother tongue, and because of the people from Asian countries my second language at home was English. I was really helped by my parents to be involved in Swiss society. I was in the mainstream school system, practising sports and never wanting to be isolated. But we used to speak about one day going back to Egypt, to the mother country and our roots.

We had the attacks on Tariq Ramadan, who is actually a very 'moderate' intellectual, and in the past few weeks, my good friend Souhail Chichah, a researcher at.

In my mind and my heart, Egypt was idealised, really. It was somewhere where people were struggling for justice, always doing good — and where it would be easy to be a Muslim because, according to all I heard, the atmosphere was really different. I first went to Egypt when I was 17 and saw my own larger family, living their daily lives, and it was a shock, because it was not at all the way I had pictured it.

For the first time, I realised that I was not in fact an Egyptian. I had the language, the feelings, but I was not like them. But then around 23, 24, I realised that I was to stay in Europe.