Every time an Algerian woman stands up to defend her rights there is a man standing behind her who asks: What do you want, do you want to be like European women? And we answer: We want to be like Kahina! Kahina was an female Algerian ruler in the seventh century. She did not lead her country into fear and terror as the men today do.

We would at least like the people of the Western world to learn about our history before that judge us. We suffer from the racist view that universality is subject to geographic borders and is not valid all over the world. [...] Of course it cannot be a solution for the victims of Islamic fundamentalism to ask the west to deal with the matter on our behalf. But we need the help and support of the countries of Europe in our fight against the suppression of women in Islamic countries.

In the last years in Algeria there have been hundreds of dead of which many were women, journalists and simple folk; and thousands of raped and tortured women. In the last eight years 2,084 women have been abducted without one international committee protesting against it. Even worse: an Algerian woman has no right to political asylum in Germany if she is being persecuted by the GIA, the armed "Warriors of God", because she is not being threatened by the state. In contrast, her torturers are given asylum, because they are threatened by the death sentence after all the crimes they have committed in their home country.

But it does not stop there: even women who are persecuted in an established "state of God" are refused political asylum; also under the pretext that the persecution is cultural and not political. One day I read in "Le Mond" that Taslima Nasrin had earned her fate, because she had gone to the extreme of turning against a religion in a developing country. [...]

I am Algerian, I live in Algeria and am a member of the National Assembly today. I am proud to have been elected by the people of my country with the knowledge that I am a democrat and not religious. This is what I built my campaign upon. But the fact that I can be elected does not mean I possess even the most elementary of human rights. Because according to the ruling law - which was not made by the fundamentalists, but by the Algerian Republic - I am not of age as a woman. The Algerian parliament passed the new family law in 1984, [...]. According to it I am able to participate in making laws in parliament, but in my private life I am still a minor. Polygamy is allowed by law, and a man is still in the position to cast off his wife. If I wanted to marry, I would not be allowed to make the decision myself, but my 74 year old father must do it for me. If he were no longer alive, a brother or uncle or even a son would decide; also, with regard to whether I can travel abroad or not.

Thanks to our history and the common fight of men and women against the French colonial powers we have a relatively strong women's movement in Algeria. But even this was unable to hinder the disenfranchisement of women twenty years after the liberation. [...]

We are dealing with influential fundamentalist international that has have a clear strategy. In order to secure women's rights, we need a democratic international of women - otherwise we have absolutely no chance of conquering this beast. Not only Algerian, but Sudanese, Iranian and Afghani women know what I am talking about. They know the horror of "God's State" all too well. But alone, without your support, without the women's and human rights movement of the countries of the West, we are losing this battle of life and death.