Karim Ouchikh (born 13 March 1965) is a French politician. He is the current vice-president of the

National Council of European Resistance The National Council of European Resistance (, officially abbreviated as CNRE) is a France-based pan-European far-right political organization co-founded by Renaud Camus and Karim Ouchikh on 9 November 2017 by analogy to the National Counci ...

, a far-right pan-European political group. Elected Vice-President of the Rally for the Independence and Sovereignty of France (RIF) in 2008, he participated in 2011 in the foundation of Sovereignty, Identity and Freedoms (SIEL), of which he has been the president since 2014. Ouchikh is a prominent Roman Catholic convert from Islam in France.

Biography

Origins

Karim Ouchikh was born into a modest family of Algerian

Berber Berber or Berbers may refer to: Ethnic group * Berbers, an ethnic group native to Northern Africa * Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages Places * Berber, Sudan, a town on the Nile People with the surname * Ady Berber (1913–196 ...

origin that had settled in France in the 1960s. His father was a

miller A miller is a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a grain (for example corn or wheat) to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalents ...

and his mother a housekeeper. He grew up on a housing estate in the suburbs of

Gonesse Gonesse () is a commune in the Val-d'Oise department, in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. The commune lies approximately eight kilometres (five miles) north of Le Bourget Airport, and it is ...

. In 1990, he registered in the Bar Association and was one of the lawyers defending the victims of the Concorde accident in Gonesse in 2000.

First steps on the left

In 1995, Ouchikh joined the

Socialist Party Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of th ...

and became a member of the municipal government of deputy mayor Jean-Pierre Blazy. However, Ouchikh disagreed with the left on European and social questions, and he left the SP in the mid-2000s, after sustained at the 2005 congress the motion for a left alternative.

Evolution to the right

In 2008, Ouchikh joined the Rassemblement for the Independence and Sovereignty of France (RIF), of which he became vice-president, and participated in the creation of the party Sovereignty, Identity and Freedoms in 2011. After the resignation of

Paul-Marie Coûteaux Paul-Marie Coûteaux (born 31 July 1956, in Paris) is a French politician and author. He served as a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2009 for the Movement for France, and a member of Via since 2018 Early life Paul-Marie Coûtea ...

in 2014, he was elected acting president of the SIEL. Finally, on 25 October, a new Congress elected him president. He is a director of the Rassemblement bleu Marine and a cultural advisor to the president of Front National. Regarding the presidential election of 2017, Ouchikh "supports the candidacy of

Marine Le Pen Marion Anne Perrine "Marine" Le Pen (; born 5 August 1968) is a French lawyer and politician of the far-right National Rally, National Rally party (RN). She served as the party's president from 2011 to 2021, and ran for the French presidency in ...

while watching with kindness Renaud Camus", and also supported

Jean-Frédéric Poisson Jean-Frédéric Poisson (; born 22 January 1963) is a French right-wing politician and the president of VIA, the Way of the People (previously called the Christian Democratic Party). He was mayor of Rambouillet from 2004 to 2007, then became a N ...

, president of the

Christian Democratic Party __NOTOC__ Christian democratic parties are political parties that seek to apply Christian principles to public policy. The underlying Christian democracy movement emerged in 19th-century Europe, largely under the influence of Catholic social tea ...

, in the Republican presidential primary. However, denouncing "the hegemonic will of Florian Philippot", the SIEL ended its alliance with the FN in the Rassemblement bleu Marine in November 2016. He is also a councillor and agglomeration of

and a regional councillor of

Île-de-France The Île-de-France (; ; ) is the most populous of the eighteen regions of France, with an official estimated population of 12,271,794 residents on 1 January 2023. Centered on the capital Paris, it is located in the north-central part of the cou ...

. The administrative court of

Cergy-Pontoise Cergy-Pontoise () is a new town and an agglomeration community in France, in the Val-d'Oise and Yvelines departments, northwest of Paris on the river Oise. It owes its name to two of the communes that it covers, Cergy and Pontoise. Its population ...

invalidated his municipal campaign accounts on 27 October 2014 for late justification of certain invoices. The State Council invalidated the decision in December 2016, allowing the reimbursement of his campaign expenses. In 2017, Ouchikh was a candidate in the ninth district of Val-d'Oise. He finished 13th with 0.68% of the votes. In 2019, he ran with Renaud Camus for the

European parliament elections Elections to the European Parliament take place every five years by Universal suffrage, universal adult suffrage; with more than 400 million people eligible to vote, they are the second largest democratic elections in the world after Electio ...

: "we shall not leave Europe, we shall make Africa leave Europe," as they wrote to define their agenda.

Religious beliefs

A member of a poor Muslim family, Ouchikh converted to

Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

during the pontificate of

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005. In his you ...

, after being touched by the faith of the participants in

World Youth Day World Youth Day (WYD) is an event for the youth organized by the Catholic Church that was initiated by Pope John Paul II in 1985. Its concept has been influenced by the Light-Life Movement that has existed in Poland since the 1960s, where dur ...

in 1997. Baptized by Father Philippe Dorizon, he received

confirmation In Christian denominations that practice infant baptism, confirmation is seen as the sealing of the covenant (religion), covenant created in baptism. Those being confirmed are known as confirmands. The ceremony typically involves laying on o ...

from Mgr Jean-Yves Riocreux. He claims to have acquired during his

catechumen Catechesis (; from Greek: , "instruction by word of mouth", generally "instruction") is basic Christian religious education of children and adults, often from a catechism book. It started as education of converts to Christianity, but as the ...

"an indispensable spiritual teaching" but also to have discovered "a Christian civilization of which edid not suspect until very recently the infinite wealth of". In September 2016, he founded the SOS Churches of France association, intended to fight for the defense of the Christian heritage of France.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ouchikh, Karim 1965 births Living people People from Saint-Maurice, Val-de-Marne Converts to Roman Catholicism from Sunni Islam French former Sunni Muslims French Roman Catholics French people of Algerian descent Socialist Party (France) politicians 20th-century French lawyers Far-right politics in France