Eric zemmour tariq ramadan biography

Can you say something about your background and heritage? How do you define your identity? What is your mother tongue?

I was born in Geneva, into an Egyptian family, and for years what I remember is that we were always talking about the Arab world.

My father and my mother were in touch with all the people coming from abroad – mainly from the Middle East but also, because my father travelled a lot, with people from Asia. So, Arabic was my mother tongue, and because of the people from Asian countries my second language at home was English.

I was really helped by my parents to be involved in Swiss society.

Eric zemmour tariq ramadan biography wikipedia

I was in the mainstream school system, practising sports and never wanting to be isolated. But we used to speak about one day going back to Egypt, to the mother country and our roots. In my mind and my heart, Egypt was idealised, really.

It was somewhere where people were struggling for justice, always doing good – and where it would be easy to be a Muslim bec