Her name is Kauzar (Ceuta, 27 years old) and on Tik Tok, where she is known as Paradise River, has a million followers. From that and other social networks, he has been helping for years to debunk myths and stigmas about the Muslim community among the younger population “sometimes through sarcasm, sometimes through humor.” He now lives in Germany but this Friday he ended up in Valencia to participate in the II Autonomous Congress of Islamophobia, which demands solutions to a phenomenon of hatred against Muslims.
Ask. How did you enter the world of social media?
Answer. I started when I was 14 with an anonymous profile and I liked it, I got loose and later created a group called A rose, coffee and women, which brought together more than 8,000 women. When I went to Germany five years ago, I jumped on Instagram and YouTube to tell what it was like to live in another country. It was quite everyday content aimed at my community in Ceuta, like what most creators do, in which I talked about cosmetics, stores and things like that. But one day I saw a news story about a girl who had been banned from her high school for wearing the hijab and I was outraged. In the heat of the moment, without thinking about it, and with 3,000 followers on my account, I put my phone in front of me and recorded how bad something like that seemed to me. [polemizó con otro influencer] and I criticized people who promote hatred towards Islam without imagining that the video would go so far. At that time I didn’t even have a profile on Tik Tok but I created it to respond to Islamophobic attacks. I read a lot of comments about ‘why didn’t I go to my country?’, when I am Spanish, just like my parents and grandparents, Moroccan by origin.
Q. What do you talk about on your networks?
R. I talk about everything, but my content has to do with activism. Normally I come across those ‘go to your country’, Islamophobic types. Sometimes I make videos of purchases in Germany, so that people in Spain can compare, and someone tells me: ‘Of course, living on aid, like anyone.’ Or you’re live chatting and someone jumps in with ‘And does your husband know you’re here?’ Let’s see if he’s going to hit you.’ Others consider you an immigrant because you are Muslim. And there is one thing that is repeated a lot and that is that the false idea has spread that child marriage is allowed in Islam and many ask me at what age my parents married me. Well, I got married, being of legal age and by my own decision. However, there are more positive comments than negative ones.
Q. How do you react to bad comments?
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R. I have two ways to combat them. When the hate (hate) comes from someone who I consider has influence and their thoughts can influence their community and increase hatred towards us, I usually make a video response. Maybe I’m live and someone comes in and tells me ‘how many wives does your husband have? and I tell them there are four, one is cleaning, the other is cooking and they believe it. Or when they accuse me of living on aid and I respond that they have to work because if not the aid will not arrive. Sometimes I have to block them.
Q. Many Muslim women are tired of being asked just about whether or not they wear the headscarf. They say they don’t need to be saved…
R. It’s not that we don’t need to be spoken for. Be careful, there are women who are being forced to wear the hijab In certain countries, perhaps those women do need the voice of the rest because from where they are they cannot speak. And I support it. Are there women who use the hijab forced? Yeah. Do they need you to speak for them? Maybe. All those that use hijab Are they obligatory? No. I wear it because of my religious beliefs.
Q. The congress against Islamophobia in Valencia warns that hatred against Muslim people has skyrocketed around the world. Do you perceive it in networks, especially with the rise of the extreme right?
R. I come from Ceuta, which is a city where we have coexisted several different cultures. Suddenly, Vox appears and gives legitimacy and voice to a group of people that we didn’t know were among us. People who don’t love us, who have a bad opinion of us but have never let us know. It wasn’t correct. The fact that hate crime for Islamophobia is not punishable in Spain does not help.
Q. You talk about Gaza in your videos. The images we see every day are shocking.
R. It makes me very sad that there are people who think that the conflict began on October 7 because this has been happening for 75 years. I want to think, and I am very proud of Spain in that sense, that the West is beginning to wake up. For me, Israel is the darling of the West, of the United States, which has been perpetrating a crime for years, but I thank Pedro Sánchez for saying enough is enough. Gaza is not an open-air prison, it is a concentration camp because criminals go to prison and in Gaza there are babies and old people who have done nothing. I believe in the coexistence of the two peoples, Palestinians and Israelis. But you can’t continue massacring people.
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