Marième / Marie-Aimée Helie-Lucas (1939-2026)

We have just learned of the passing on August 9th of Mariéme Helie-Lucas, an Algerian sociologist and feminist activist committed to secularism for decades. Mariéme was certainly better known in the English-speaking world than in the French-speaking world. As a tribute, we are reproducing the post written by her friend Harsh Kapoor.

My former partner, comrade and lifelong friend passed away on the afternoon of August 9th.
What an exceptional personality: a humanist, socialist and internationalist feminist intellectual, who kept the proponents of identity politics at arm’s length and firmly opposed fundamentalism as well as warmongers.
She had already lived half her life when I met her; she was a true living memory of the Algerian revolution and of her deep friendships with Hélène Cuenat and Didar Al-Fawzi (the first friends she introduced me to) — dissident communist women imprisoned in France for their support of the Algerian revolution who had escaped from a Parisian prison.

She experienced the first government of independent Algeria; she felt horror at the repression of the left (and at the Stalinist contempt for Victor Serge, despite all he represented), at the abandonment of secular and socialist ideals, and at the pervasive racism (such as the treatment of Fanon and his wife, who were called “niggers”). She worked in solidarity with Henri Curiel (founder of the Egyptian Communist Party, who sought refuge in France in 1948 after the creation of Israel and the Nakba) and for the then-clandestine ANC in exile in Algiers, alongside Johnny Makatini—and, through him, Oliver Tambo and Joe Slovo.

She forged a deep friendship with one of the few honest men among the Black Panthers exiled in Algiers, and maintained a discreet relationship with Adolfo Kaminsky through photography and his most famous activities.
There were also his years teaching in the sociology department at the University of Algiers, his unique friendship with Ernest Gellner (dating back to his student years at the LSE in the late 1950s), as well as with Pierre Bourdieu and Jeanne Favret-Saada.

Then came the years of the Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) network, beginning in the early 1980s—a time when I collaborated with her and shared her life—as well as all those wonderful and lasting friendships forged with feminists and progressives from around the world. I hadn’t lived with Marieme since 2015, but we remained close friends, comrades, and members of the same family.

I am devastated, not knowing how to pick up the pieces. But our pact was never to say goodbye, and to preserve all those precious memories. “Lal Salaams” [red salutations] to you, “meri jaan,” who were so full of life… and loved Serge Rezvani and his beautiful song—*Le Tourbillon de la vie* (from *Jules et Jim*), performed by Jeanne Moreau.

Harsh Kapoor, August 10, 2026.

Lucas co-founded Secularism is a Women’s Issue in 2006. The organization advocates against allowing separate legal frameworks for people or specific faith communities, such as courts using Sharia law, arguing those regimes are often detrimental to women’s rights. The group also distributes information on the situation of secularists and atheists in countries where Muslims make up a large part of the population. It also advocates for secularism in Europe