Sonia Mabrouk

Sonia Mabrouk (سنية مبروك; born 1977) is a Tunisian-born journalist who in 2010 obtained French nationality. After first embarking on an academic career in Tunisia, in 2005 she turned to journalism, writing for the magazine Jeune Afrique. In 2009, she was engaged by the French parliamentary television channel Public Sénat and later hosted political programmes on the radio station Europe 1. In 2017, Mabrouk published her first book Le monde ne tourne pas rond, ma petite-fille.

Due to her stances, on the French political spectrum, Sonia Mabrouk is generally ranked on the conservative right-wing, or even on the far-right.

Early life
Born in Tunis on 17 December 1977, Sonia Mabrouk was brought up as an only child in an upper class Tunisian family with connections to President Habib Bourguiba. Her grandfather Mongi Mabrouk was Tunisia's trade minister and her uncle Hédi Mabrouk was a diplomat and foreign minister. After matriculating from high school when she was 16, she studied at the Carthage High Commercial Studies Institute, HEC, graduating in 2002. When she was 20, she earned a master's degree at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University with a thesis on marketing (2004).

Career
After initially spending three years in Tunis as a lecturer at the HEC, in 2005 she moved to Paris where she first worked as a journalist for Jeune Afrique, conducting interviews with politicians. In 2008, she was engaged by Jean-Pierre Elkabbach to become an interviewer on the pariamentary television channel Public Sénat. Despite lack of experience, she quickly made her mark. In 2013, she hosted programmes on the radio station Europe 1, in particular the popular Le Débat des Grandes Voix featuring discussions with political figures. From September 2017, she joined Canal+ where she was one of the hosts on the news programme Voix de l'Info on CNews.

In addition to journalism, Mabrouk published her first book, the conversational Le monde ne tourne pas rond, ma petite-fille in 2017, followed by the novel Dans son cœur sommeille la vengeance in 2018. Both works deal with Islamic terrorism, one of her favourite subjects. Her opinions on wearing the burkini have led to her being considered Islamophobic, despite being from a muslim background.