Maeril is a young illustrator and filmmaker who lives and works in Paris. As part of her work at The Middle Eastern Feminist, she made this bystander’s guide to Islamophobic harassment.
There are versions in both French and English.
Maeril wrote that as a French Middle Eastern woman, she wanted to try and do something to raise awareness of the Islamophobia she’s witnessed in Paris. The accompanying text to the comic reads:
This is an illustrated guide I made as part of my co-admining work at The Middle Eastern Feminist on Facebook! It will be published there shortly.
The technique that is displayed here is a genuine one used in psychology — I forgot the name and couldn’t find it again so if you know about it, feel free to tell me!
Some could say: “Yes but you can use that technique for instances of harassment other than Islamophobic attacks!”, and my reply is: Sure! Please do so, it also works for other “types” of harassment of a lone person in a public space!!
However I’m focusing on protecting Muslims here, as they have been very specific targets lately, and as a French Middle Eastern woman, I wanted to try and do something to raise awareness on how to help when such things happen before our eyes – that way one cannot say they “didn’t know what to do”!
I’d like to insist on two things:
1) Do not, in any way, interact with the attacker. You must absolutely ignore them and focus entirely on the person being attacked!
2) Please make sure to always respect the wishes of the person you’re helping: whether they want you to leave quickly afterwards, or not! If you’re in a hurry, escort them to a place where someone else can take over — call one of their friends, or one of yours, of if they want to, the police. It all depends on how they feel!
According to Maeril, the first step to overcome “bystander syndrome” is to engage the victim in conversation, ignoring the aggressor.
Maeril suggests that in order to make the victim feel safe, you should try talking about any random topic. Don’t acknowledge the aggressor’s presence.
And she says to just keep going until the attacker completely runs out of steam.
Finally, once the aggressor leaves, take them to a safe space to regain their bearings. And if they ask to leave, respect their wishes.
The comic now has almost 70,000 notes, and people have been thanking Maeril for her really helpful advice.
“I based the comic on the idea of non-complementary behavior,” Maeril said.
Non-complementary behavior is a psychological concept where you adopt the opposite conduct of another person’s. For instance, if someone is being aggressive toward another person, you should adopt a very warm behavior to hopefully defuse the situation.
Maeril said that though the comments have mostly been great, she’s also received negative feedback.
“I expected it to be shared, but not to this extent,” she said. “I also had hate messages. People asking me, ‘What do you do if you got a Muslim who wants to cut your throat with a machete?’ But it makes me want to do even more than what I already do.”