Abd Al Malik: from the question of oneness to the responsibility of dialogue
Régis Fayette-Mikano, later known as Abd Al Malik, grew up in a devout Catholic home. He accompanied his mother to Mass, prepared for communion, and served as an altar boy. At a Catholic school in central Strasbourg he found books and philosophy, while outside it he lived another life in the Neuhof estate: a gifted student by day, and a young man stealing and dealing by night in order to belong to his group.
Earlier, seeing a woman on the ground during a bag-snatching with a friend had shaken him; he recalled knowing he could not continue.
His questions changed as friends began to fall around him. Some died from overdoses; others went to prison or psychiatric institutions. He said that this closeness to death stirred existential questions and a powerful need for meaning. The matter was no longer only how to leave crime, but why a person lives and what ground can sustain a life.
He returned to the religion in which he had been raised and questioned clergy and catechism teachers. The Trinity was the concept he could not understand, and their answers did not satisfy him. When he spoke to his older brother Bilal, Bilal gave him books about Islam. The view of Christ as a prophet seemed to him more coherent with monotheism, and he said that what he read felt close to his “natural religion” and to his vision of the human being and the world.
He entered Islam at sixteen or seventeen, around 1991–1992. He soon visited a mosque with a friend and described feeling that he belonged and had found an identity he had lacked. The decision was followed by practical change: he stopped stealing and dealing, and his days became ordered by prayer, reading, and preaching.
He did not later present that beginning as complete. He said that adolescent anger and a need for a group helped turn religion into an ideological banner for him, and that he began to see the world in narrow binaries. Music, study, and preaching remained separate lives until he felt that this understanding did not make the integrated person he was seeking.
His correction came from within the journey rather than outside it. Books and study brought him back to what he called the heart of Islam, and Sufi companionship gave him a way to examine himself instead of placing all responsibility on others. As he told it, the question became: what is my own share of responsibility, and what can I do to improve my surroundings?
His mother respected his new practices and saw his changed conduct as something good. He came to connect faith with art, education, and dialogue, insisting that he needed his Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, and atheist brothers. In his story, entering Islam did not end the questions; it began a path on which he corrected his early fervour and tried to hold together divine oneness, knowledge, and responsibility towards others.
Sources
- Journal Ventilo — direct interview, 28 November 2006
- Psychologies — direct interview, 9 June 2009
- Le Monde — later independent interview, 24 March 2019
Photo: Aditi Gogoi / Unsplash.