Soheib Bencheikh

Soheib Bencheikh (* 1961 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia ) is a French Islamic religious leader and author. He is regarded as progressive and advocate of French secularism.

Life

Bencheikh graduated in Islamic theology at Al- Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt, and at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. He received a doctorate in religious studies from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes ( EPHE ), Paris, France. He was appointed in 1995 by Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Paris Mosque, the Grand Mufti of Marseille. In 2003, he is a founding member of the Conseil français du culte musulman.

Bencheikh is an anti- fundamentalist religious leader and an outspoken opponent of eiferischen Islam. He is known as a reformist theologian who is committed to interfaith dialogue. Among other things, he wrote the books Les Grandes religion and Marianne et le A Prophet: L' Islam dans la France laïque, his well-known work on the positions and opportunities for Muslims in secular democracies. He represents a modernist Islam, calling among other things, the formation as the best protection of honor and welfare of women (and not the hijab, which is not binding according to his words ). When controversy over the Muhammad cartoons published in 2005 and the subsequent, sometimes violent protests, Bencheikh defended freedom of the press, which is "holy" for him.

Bencheikh intention to participate in the French presidential election in 2007, but he missed the required 500 signatures from mayors to become an official candidate. For the 2012 presidential election recommended Bencheikh, prefer the extreme-right Front National to give the voice as the incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom he strongly criticized as opportunists and populists. This was interpreted in various media as a recommendation to vote for the FN, which Bencheickh however clearly distanced.