Abnousse Shalmani’s fifth book, based on her powerful speech at the Prix de laïcité held at Paris City Hall on 8 November, takes an in-depth look at her love of secularism.

It could also have been called “Laïcité, je crie ton nom”, the latest book by Abnousse Shalmani, a French-Iranian writer born in Tehran. For this book is indeed a righteous cry in a heavy silence that precedes the worst. And Abnousse Shalmani experienced the worst of it when she fled with her parents from the Iranian mullahs who had come to power.

Without French secularism, the author’s parents would never have chosen France as their new home. Abnousse Shalmani succeeds in delivering and arguing this observation in 76 pages, which you can read in a flash. And it has to be said that current events are proving him right, especially since 7 October.

At a time when the Council Against Islamophobia in Europe (dissolved in France after the murder of Samuel Paty) is shamelessly organising the tour of a documentary film targeting the 2004 law on the wearing of religious symbols in schools, Abnousse Shalmani recalls his anger and concern at the Creil headscarf affair. Twelve years old at the time, she had only been in France for four years and was happy to have “escaped mullahrchy”. The young Abnousse immediately understood that what was happening in France would “anchor her in the certainty that secularism had to be defended”.

This is a book that should be read by anyone who doubts, forgets or wavers in the face of repeated, organised attacks on secularism. This book is a wake-up call, but above all it restores the desire to fight to make secularism not just a word, but a source of international pride. For it is this radiance, this light, that has enabled us to see the Shalmani come to our country. And, for want of a light, let’s savour a glimmer of hope: “Laïcité, j’écris ton nom” is one of the best-selling essays in France.

This book is a guarantee against forgetting what France could have been without its secularism. For its author, secularism is like a weakened national asset that we must defend in our turn, the very thing that has protected us so much.

– “Laïcité, j’écris ton nom” (Éditions de l’Observatoire), May 2024.