Kahina Bahloul

Childhood in Algeria Kahina Bahloul was born in Paris in 1979 to a French mother and a Kabyle Algerian father. and her atheist mother was the child of a French Catholic man and a Polish Jewish woman. As a child, Bahloul was raised in the Kabylia region of Algeria. Though her father had little formal knowledge about Islam, he taught her to practice the religion in conjunction with humanism and progressivism. She never left Islam, but she distanced herself from the religion as a teenager because she felt unwelcome as a woman. While in Kabyila, Bahloul obtained her master's degree in law. She took interest in Algerian law's adherence to Sharia, as opposed to other places where Western law was inherited through colonialism. In her view, patriarchy in Algeria prioritized men over Sharia. As the Algerian Civil War progressed, Bahloul objected to what she saw as fundamentalist Islam being imported to Algeria from Saudi Arabia, including the expectation of women to wear a hijab. Life in France Bahloul returned to France in 2003, a decision that she attributed to the country's principles of democracy and gender equality. She considered French society liberating, especially because she was allowed to choose what clothes to wear. She coped with his death through the works of Syrian poet Khaled Roumo. It was at this time that she explored Sufism and mysticism in Islam, To further her involvement, she began sharing her religious beliefs when she created () on YouTube. == Imamate and Fatima Mosque ==

Bahloul set out to create a unisex place of worship, and she applied for the establishment of Fatima Mosque in November 2018, co-founding it with philosophy professor Faker Korchane. Bahloul was recognized as an imam in May 2019, making her the first French woman to hold the title. She delivered her first sermon to a mixed gender group of ten women and twelve men. As she became a prominent figure in the French Muslim community, she held workshops in Drancy about Islamic prophets with the Alawya order, and she co-founded La Maison de la Paix, which provided Sufi teachings in Paris with the Norwegian imam Annika Skattum. La Maison de la Paix lacked funding and closed after one year. Bahloul formally announced the creation of Fatima Mosque in September 2019, making the announcement at Saint-Jean Lutheran Church. Men and women are allowed to pray together on opposite sides of the prayer hall, and the imam leading prayers alternates between a man and a woman each week. It allows worship by non-Muslims, welcomes LGBT people, and conducts marriages between Muslim women and non-Muslim men. As the project became known, Bahloul received derision and threats from the most conservative adherents of Islam. She has stated that being afraid of threats would prevent her from accomplishing anything, and she dismisses them as "young people having fun on social networks". Crowdfunding was held to establish a permanent location, but it was unsuccessful. Instead, rooms are rented each week, the exact locations kept secret to avoid violence. The first service was held in February 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic began shortly afterward, and the mosque's activity was held online until the following year. Bahloul wrote a memoir, Mon islam, ma liberté (), in 2021. She was identified by Forbes as one of the 40 most important women in France the same year. Fatima Mosque became less active online in 2022 and it came to focus on a smaller group of members. Korchane left the mosque in 2023 in protest of Bahloul's support of French religious policies such as an abaya ban. == Religious and political views ==

Bahloul is a Sunni Muslim, She invokes Sufism as a form of individualist Islam that is free of dogma. but that it has also allowed Islamic nationalism and anti-Western sentiment to replace liberal Islam. == References ==