Welcome to hardtalk. Im stephen sackur. The fierce argument about the roots of islamistjihadist violence can sometimes be a matter of life and death. My guest today knows that all too well. Zineb el rhazoui is a french moroccanjournalist who was working for the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo when 12 people were murdered in the magazines paris office in 2015. Zineb happened to be on holiday. Now she lives under police protection. She has since written a book on what she calls islamic fascism. To what extent does she feel she is fighting a war . Zineb el rhazoui, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you. There are words which seem to me to define your life. They are words like fight, struggle, resistance. How long do you feel that these words have been at the centre of your life . You know, as a muslim born woman, i realised very early in my life that i had to struggle against injustice and inequality, because i grew up in morocco, and in morocco, when you start to understand things, you realise very fast that you dont have the same rights as men. Even men dont have many rights in a country ruled, at the time, by a totalitarian king, and also by religious law. So as a woman, i only had two choices. Either accept it and disappear as a human being, and feel destroyed, feel that i am no longer living. Or struggle and refuse to be half a citizen. But thats not necessarily a choice that a lot of girls, young women, females, feel to be their reality in a country like morocco today. I mean, a lot of women probably wouldnt frame their lives as a choice between disappearing and struggle and resistance. So why were you different from so many of your peers, back home in morocco . Maybe these women did not have the tools, maybe they did not have the courage. I dont know why i was different. For me, its a question of dignity. Ive never considered myself as inferior to men. Ijust wanted to be able to say what i think, to have a normal life, to enjoy rights and freedoms. Thats what it is. And for that simple thing, you need, unfortunately, to struggle and to make war. Make war . You really feel that . Yeah, of course. In a way, it is easy to define your life by that transformational moment that came onjanuary 7, 2015, when the magazine you worked for was attacked by two jihadist who murdered a dozen people. Maybe it is wrong to call that transformational. Maybe you felt you were at war before that happened. Of course. Actually, i had the first fatwa against me in 2009 in morocco, because a group of activists, secular activists in morocco, they decided to organise a public picnic during ramadan. Because in the civil code, the penal code, it is punishable byjail if you publicly eat during ramadan. We consider these laws archaic, they violate human rights and freedoms. So we just decided to protest with sandwiches. And i deserved a fatwa for that. Theres something symbolic about going out with sandwiches to eat in a public space in morocco. Surely you knew that would offend so many of your fellow citizens in i assume it was in casablanca . Why did you feel it was ok, and indeed necessary, to offend so many other people . If they are offended, actually it is their problem. Are they offended when they see somebody when they are fasting, on television, eating a sandwich . Why are they offended if i eat . They are fasting and they are going to paradise, im not, let me eat my sandwich and drink my coffee. I want to be free to eat, i want to be free to exist as a moroccan citizen who does not necessarily respect and follow this islamic rule. So if they are offended, that is their problem. I believe that sometimes provocation is necessary to impose a debate, to make people think they can have a debate about things that are debatable in society. We will get to the debate and the ideology and the taboos later. I want to stick with the impact on your life and your emotional life in particular. You have a young woman who is used to being in trouble. You are familiar with the notion of fatwa. You have been arrested and detained by the moroccan authorities. You decide to leave morocco after the uprisings of 2011 and the political turmoil. You end up in france, you get a job with Charlie Hebdo, the most famous satirical, provocative magazine in the country. Were you therefore, perhaps, not as shocked and surprised as so many of us were by the attack on the magazines offices . Was it something you were half expecting . Yeah, we were half expecting that. But we never imagined it would be as violent as that. Actually, charb already had a fatwa, a contract on his head. We used to joke about that. Because the contract was Something Like 200,000, which is not enough to save the newspaper from bankruptcy, otherwise we were telling him we would sell im to them. You to them. Charb was, as they say in french, an arabophile. He loved the arabic culture, the arabic language. He was always saying allahu akbar, and we said, stop joking about that, one day theyll come and kill you, and we wont be able to tell if its real or not. For those who dont know the story, you survived because you were on holiday on january 7, 2015. You were on holiday in morocco. Your colleagues and your friends, especially charb, who was your mentor and your collaborator, he was one of those who was gunned down and killed. I was actually supposed to be there that day. I was working. I was in morocco, but i would wake up that day and send my suggestions for the articles. It was about islamic state, by the way. I sent an email to charb saying, thats what i wanted to do that week. I was waiting for the answer. And i got a phone call telling me, where are you . Are you at Charlie Hebdo . Because theres been a shooting. That is how i learned they were killed. I need to ask you about the feelings youve had since then, how youve processed it. Its a long time now, its years, but you were one of the people, we know that the jihadists wanted to kill you. You were on the list, along with charb and others. You and charb had collaborated on a book they particularly disliked. Yet some people who died were not writing about islam at all. Some were not even editorial staff. Do you feel guilty that you are producing work that was the cause of these jihadist violent people to go to that office, and yet others died, who had nothing to do with the cause, and you survived . Of course. When such a violent event happens, you are in a post trauma situation. And just as if you survive a plane crash, you feel guilty, because you survived and all those people died. Ifelt guilty during the months and months. Did you also have a sense of responsibility . No. Because i understood after that that the only guilty people for that crime were the terrorists. I think it was a big mistake. We usually do now look for the reasons of the crime in the victims. Many people now, every time you have a terrorist attacks, many people try to say, it is because of the Foreign Policy of the country, it is because of racism, it is because of non integration, et cetera. But actually, the guilty people are not the victims. The only guilt i find is the ideology of the killers. So the book we referred to, the life of mohammed, which you worked on with charb, looking on that now, you would change nothing . You would publish it again today, knowing what you know now like you did in 2013 . You know, when we published that book at that time, we knew that we were threatened. And actually, that was published after the molotov cocktail attack on Charlie Hebdo in november 2011. So we knew that there was a taboo. But our duty as journalists, as satirical journalists and cartoonists, i am not a cartoonist, but charb was, is to break taboos in society. This is exactly ourjob. For us, as a french satirical newspaper, the right to so called blasphemy, the right to criticise religions and to not necessarily criticise them but discuss and debate about them, thats what drives a limit between civilisation and barbarism. Interesting use that word duty, in your answer. It seems to me that reading what you have said and written about your feelings after the Charlie Hebdo attack, you feel a strong sense of duty. A sense of duty to not only keep up the struggle but to intensify the struggle, in your writings and your words, taking on islam. It seems that that obligation lives on in you now, more than before . Of course. As you said in your presentation, its a question of life or death. Its not something. Its not something superficial, a superficial question in our society. Islamic terrorism has been killing people around the world, in the west, but also in africa and in muslim countries. So we need to fight that ideology on an ideological level. But there are also obligations you have to live a life that is tolerable, notjust for you, but for those you love. And when you say that isis continues to issue threats against you, which essentially revolve around separating your head from your body, that impacts your child, you have a child, it impacts your husband, it impacts all of your family. And it would be entirely legitimate for you to take a step back and say, i have to live a life, notjust be a warrior in a struggle. My friends, and those who were struggling with me, were killed. I cannotjust say that i am lucky to live, and keep silent. When we keep silent, actually, we put in danger those who talk. So if all of us talk, if all the media in the world published the cartoons in 2006 in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, what would they have done . Could they kill all of us . Without stating the obvious, this isnt just about you. You have had a child since. You are a mother now. You are also a daughter. You have parents. Let me tell you something. 0n the 14th ofjuly, when this terrorist attack happened in nice, and there were a lot of babies who were watching fireworks, who were killed, actually, those babies, those families, they were not threatened. They were not targeted. Iam. I have security, they do not. They were killed and i am still alive. Iam 0k. I am personally targeted. But it is our civilisation that is targeted, that is what i believe. It is our style of living that is targeted. Do your family all support the stand you continue to take . Some of them, of course, are still in morocco. Yeah, most of my family still lives in morocco. Actually, yes, they support me. All of them . Most of them support me. Most of them support me and, you know, there is an intelligent way to deal with these things. I have a lot of friends who are believers, who worship god who do not necessarily agree with me but we still respect each other on a human level and we are still friends and we still see each other and we find pleasure to be with each other. But interestingly, some people who come to this argument about islam and violence from a somewhat similar place to you, do believe that you have gone too far. I mean, im thinking of 0livier cyran, for example, a former Charlie Hebdo journalist himself, who says that and others on Charlie Hebdo just went too far developing this, what he calls, islamophobic neurosis that gradually took over and ended up endorsing attacks on members of a minority religion with no influence in the corridors of power. His message, basically, you went too far. Yeah, actually, 0livier, when he published this tribune, it was a few years ago, it was before the terrorist attacks, and he was giving examples of what he considered as proof that Charlie Hebdo is so called islamophobic and i do not agree with this term, by the way, and im going to talk about it later all he did, cyran was quoting my articles without saying who is the author because maybe it will be strange if you accuse an article of being racist and if you say that the author is a muslim born and has an arab name. Surely you are not arguing that because you are muslim you are necessarily immune from the accusation that some of what you write is islamophobic and in citing of hate against muslims . You could be a muslim and still be responsible for incitement. I did not accept the word islamophobia. For me, it is an intellectual posture. For me, if you are muslim born, if you are christian born, jewish born, you have the right to criticise ideas and religions are ideas. I was muslim born, i was ruled by islamic laws so why am i not allowed to criticise that law . There is a big difference between criticising ideas and criticising people. Let me give you an example, as a feminist, for instance, i am against the veil, i dont like the veil. For me it is a sexist costume, but it does not mean that i hate individually every veiled woman and that i deny her her rights as a human being. There is a huge difference between criticising ideas and criticising people. But you make it sound so simple but it is actually kind of complicated to unpick the two parts of that. Let me quote rather than me tell you let me quote you words that seem to me quite relevant, from timothy winter, who changed his name because he converted to islam he became abdal hakim murad. He works at cambridge university, a director of religious studies at wolfson college. Hes a well respected thinker, and he says this, scorning the prophet. In the way he sees yours and some other writings, he says, scorning the prophet goes beyond free speech, it is an act of violence. And he compares it with the days of nazi terror when cartoons supplied a key weapon of anti jewish polemic. Hes making a direct comparison there. Are you not guilty of that kind of incitement, particularly, may i say, with the book that you published which essentially its title is clear to destroy islamic fascism . Yeah, because i talk about an ideology in that book. For me cartooning the prophet is not Something Different than cartooning the pope, any chief of state, jesus, moses or god himself. It is notjust cartoons. To quote you, i think from this book directly, islam is not a religion of peace and love but an ideology that teaches hate of the other and which blesses the inferiority of women and non muslims. You are essentially condemning as fascists an entire religion. Do you know any religion of peace and love . Do you imagine if we applied christianism by letter in the society . Divorce would be forbidden, women would have less rights, et cetera et cetera. But youre not couching this as an argument against religion, you are couching it as an argument against what you call the fascism of islam. Of course. Today, islam is applied by the terrorists as a fascist ideology, as something you can compare to it a genocidal ideology. This ideology is committing crimes. It is killing and, no matter who they kill, the most important is killing the maximum number of people. Of course this ideology, you can compare it to fascism there is a lot of characteristics that are very close to what you find in all other fascisms. Do you not see that when you call islam a brand of fascism, you are aiding and abetting those who, right now, on the streets of european cities, are attacking muslims simply because they are muslims. You are giving them some sort of intellectualjustification and we know from the figures that in france, germany, the uk, the number of attacks on muslims is rising exponentially. Islam we should first define it. Are we talking about islamic civilisation . About islam with a capital i wish defines the territories where this civilization spread and includes music, costumes etc, or are we talking about what is written in the islamic texts . The fact of praying five times a day et cetera. If we are talking about the religion, this religion is a way of worshipping, written in a bedouin country, 15 centuries ago are we really keen now to apply it as something ruling the society in 2017 . Of course islam does not respect equality between men and women. I am asking now for a society where we apply human rights rules. If islam is a primate spirituality, if any religion is a spirituality and it stays at home, if religion helps someone to become someone better, religion is welcomed in that case but no religion, neither islam, christianism, can rule the society, a democracy. Who are you trying to persuade of your message with the way you present your ideas . It seems to me it is very unlikely you will persuade moderate muslims of your case when you begin by saying that you associate islam with fascism. People who live in muslim countries ruled by islam, they know that our far right wing is the islamists. In europe, the far right wing definitely dont share the same project of society with the islamists but they have the same dialectic tools. But interestingly, you are now talking about islamists and at other times you just talk about islam terror in the same way that donald trump does. Is it a particular problem with some fundamentalist islamist factions, at one far end of the muslim religion, or is it a problem with the religion itself . For mw the islamists are those who see islam for me the islamists are those who see islam as a political project. While the muslims, who can find who are they . If the muslims are a community, as many people pretend in europe, so i belong to that community. Isnt it . For me, muslims are not a community, they are individuals, they are citizens, they have the right to define themselves by other things than by religion. Why do people consider that the muslims are condemned to be ruled by their tradition . A final thought, zineb, if i may, and i want to take you back to the beginning and you telling me that from being a young woman in morocco, you have always felt this absolute need to resist and to struggle and, to use your words, to fight a war. That fighting of the war has ended up with you living in a sort of metaphorical cage with security guards, secret locations, having to move time and again to make sure nobody knows your routine. Is it worth it . I think of the muslim people, those who were born in an muslim countries who do not have the right to drink beer, who do not have the right to have a love story, who do not have the right to produce a movie with a kissing scene, who do not have the simple rights that people enjoy here in the west, those people actually live in a jail and they do not have a choice but struggling against this ideology and i do not understand this leftist europe, born with all these rights, who thinks that we have this kind of complacency towards what they think are muslins and who think that we are people condemned to be ruled by our traditions. No, in the muslim world you have people who deserve the same universal rights as you and this is my struggle. And anyway, if i live, me, in a moving jail, i consider that inside my head i am much more free than those who threaten me. Zineb el rhazoui, we have to end there but thank you for being on hardtalk. Youre welcome. Thank you, zineb, thank you very much indeed. Well, theres been some significant accumulations of snow across parts of Northern Ireland and scotland, the far north of england, and we continue to see wintry showers, snow showers, through the course of the night, early into wednesday so thats prompted the met office to issue an amber warning for parts of south west scotland, Northern Ireland, for this combination of snow and ice. Very windy too during the overnight period. Gale force winds, particularly across irish sea coasts in towards the south west for a time. Plenty of snow showers continuing across scotland, Northern Ireland and into Northern England that accumulate and continue to tot up. Across the south, some dry interludes in fact, particularly across the south east, but wherever you are its going to be a chilly start to wednesday. Wednesday itself looks like to be another cold and a windy one, there will be wintry showers again but also some good spells of sunshine and increasing amounts of sunshine as we head on into the afternoon. But plenty of wintry showers, snow showers across scotland and Northern Ireland to begin the day. Strong winds too so therell be some drifting of snow, blizzard conditions, take extra care on the roads, watch out for icy stretches as well. The same too for parts of Northern England but the further south that we head, fewer showers through the morning period. A few running through the cheshire gap there in towards the pennines and the odd wintry showers across the higher ground, the moors of south west england. But elsewhere it should be dry, chilly and bright with some sunshine through the morning. Those showers continue across many northern and western areas, but through the afternoon, like i mentioned, increasing amounts of sunshine for england and wales with most of the showers confined to scotland and Northern Ireland, the far north of england with snow amounts continuing to tot up here. It will be cold if you factor in the wind, subzero feeling temperatures in the north. But to the south with the sunshine, it shouldnt be too bad. Now, onto wednesday night, this is the area of low pressure will the next hazard to our shores. Its going to bring a spell of wet and very windy weather to all areas. Across the north of this rain band, were likely to see a spell of snow for Northern Ireland, Northern England, central, southern scotland, which could be heavy for a time. Severe gales sweeping through england and wales along with that rain but it clears out quite quickly through thursday morning, and in fact, into thursday afternoon, and improving picture, the winds falling lighter. Therell be fewer showers, most in the north and west, against snow on the hills, but some good spells of some joint further south and east. But that area of low pressure is cause some disruption, the severe gales, heavy rain and also the snow, which could fall across southern areas, so keep tuned to your bbc local radio. And then into friday itself, its looking quieter. Not as strong, those winds. Still blustery across the north and the west where therell be most of the snow showers. Good sunny spells further south and east. This is the briefing. Im sally bundock. Our top story protestors in barcelona demand the release of catalonias separatist leaders. The regional parliaments set to reopen for the First Time Since it was shut down by madrid. 20 countries back the strict enforcement of sanctions against north korea in the latest bid to curb its nuclear ambitions. Crisis in cape town the worst drought in a century means water is running out fast. Technology and terrorism the worlds social media giants attend a hearing in the us aimed at tackling the spread of extremist material. Also in business, well be live to sydney for the latest