Latifa Ibn Ziaten Receives AJC Moral Courage Award

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May 13, 2014, 04:12 ET

WASHINGTON, May 13, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC presented its Moral Courage Award today to Latifa Ibn Ziaten for her determined efforts to counter the influence of radical Islam and other extremism in France.

Ziaten's son, Imad, a French soldier, was murdered in March 2012 by Mohammed Merah, a terrorist who went on to kill another two French soldiers, and then a Jewish teacher and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse within a week after Imad's death.

"I am very honored to receive this award," said Ziaten. "This recognition is important for the fight I lead for peace between peoples and the fight against all forms of violence and hatred."

Her son's murder prompted Ziaten to probe the conditions and thinking that underlie the kind of hatred that motivated Merah to brutally kill seven people. "It was necessary for me to try to understand the reasons for my son's death," she said. What she discovered, initially by visiting with youths in the neighborhood where Merah had lived, was frightening -- disaffected youths existing in difficult socio-economic situations, full of hatred towards France, Jews and others, and susceptible to twisted ideologies that promote hate and violence.

Determined to ensure that another Merah does not emerge and wreak violence in France, she established, in April 2012, the Imad Ibn Ziaten Association for Youth and Peace. During the past two years, Ziaten has visited dozens of schools to meet with students and teachers, as well as inmates in juvenile prisons. "I am going into difficult neighborhoods to talk to those young people," she said.

Ziaten has also been in contact with AJC France, directed by Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, who has established a network of Jews and Muslims, working together for dialogue and pluralism, and against racism and anti-Semitism.

Presenting the award to Ziaten, Rabbi David Rosen, AJC's International Director of Interreligious Affairs, said, "Latifa has overcome the enormous grief of personal tragedy and, with remarkable courage and fortitude, demonstrated that evil can be fought if only we choose to act."

Recently, Ziaten also has focused on preventing French youngsters from joining jihadi groups in Syria. Several hundred French Muslims already are in Syria fighting. French authorities, like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe and the United States, are gravely concerned about the potential dangers when they return, after being exposed to further radicalization and violence in the Syrian civil war.

Past recipients of AJC's Moral Courage Award include Tatyana Sapunova, a Russian who suffered serious injury when removing a booby-trapped anti-Semitic sign in Moscow; and Mithal al-Alusi, an Iraqi politician who, after visiting Israel, lost his two sons to the murderous hands of other Iraqis opposed to his outreach.

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SOURCE American Jewish Committee