Silvia Orriols does not speak for us
A few years ago, together with the psychologist Pilar Arlándiz, I organized a reading club in the public library of Ripoll. Among the people who attended the activity was Sílvia Orriols. There was still time before she entered the town hall. I recognized her when she intervened to ask me a question whose answer, if I answered honestly, could only confirm her racist and xenophobic postulates. The situation was not new to me, that of Aliança Catalana could be exactly the offspring of another essentialist whose political party only had one point in its electoral program: making life impossible for its Moorish neighbors. I am referring to Josep Anglada, who, when I was in high school, dedicated himself to stoking the fire against immigration in neighborhoods like our organizer. activities like the collection of signatures against the opening of an oratory. The difference between the leader of Plataforma per Catalunya and the mayor of the capital of Ripollès, also from Vic, is that she cannot be blamed for the clearly fascist past that Anglada had, who had been a member of Fuerza Nueva. Although seeing the little eyes she makes at Vox when it suits her, ignoring the fact that it is a formation that deeply hates Catalanism, I would not be surprised if she ended up establishing the alliance with that other nationalism, Spanish but as exclusive and morophobic as hers.
Faced with the fact that the ultra parties take the complaints and demands that we women who were formerly Muslim make against the religious misogyny from which we come and use them to defend their postulates, there are those who invite us to keep quiet. Ah, it is that you say things that Orriols applauds and spreads. Ergo You are far right. It's like saying "Hitler was a vegetarian, if you are a vegetarian you are a Nazi."
I confess that it really bothers me to have to live with this botched simplification of ideas, thought and its expression in public debate. Every time we equate intermediate positions to one end of the political spectrum without accepting the nuances or wanting to know the reality from which people think and have opinions, we are contributing in a very important way to what is called polarization. Perhaps it is the weakest point of open democracies right now: that politics has become football-like and it is increasingly difficult to address complexity. Because everything is either with me or against me, you are either one of mine or one of the others. And if you are one of the others, you are not someone who thinks differently but an enemy. And an enemy can be eliminated.
The fact is that feminism within Islam (secular feminism and not so-called "Islamic feminism", which is religion and not feminism) has existed long before the formation of far-right parties in Europe and long before they decided to exploit the situation of Muslim women. Neither Fatima Mernissi nor Nawal El Saadawi were invented by Silvia Orriols. Fighters for equality in countries where religion is the law are dedicated to defending girls' access to education, fighting against child marriage, ending legal frameworks that make women the guardians of their husbands or fathers. They organize to care for mothers who are heavily stigmatized in countries like Morocco because sexual relations are prohibited. They work against the elements to win freedom for all, as feminism has done everywhere. This is not the case with Orriols, who proposes measures to go against women she considers redundant for not having eight Catalan surnames. No, she neither represents us nor has any credentials in equality that legitimizes her speeches. We do not accept that she speaks for us.