By Amokran Akvu
There would be no point in having an independent Islamic Kabylia. I do not think it is worth spending so much energy to return to feudalism in the third millennium.
The Kabyle people need emancipation, modernity, democracy. The first so-called Berber activists positioned themselves in total rupture with the archaisms of muslim Kabyle society, regardless of the form of Islam prevailing in Kabylia. Development, either economic, social, cultural, political, or technological, must be based on values that have proven themselves elsewhere in the world.
Iraqi Kurdistan is an autonomous province, but it will always remain an underdeveloped Arab-Islamic province on all fronts.
Even better: All Muslim countries are simultaneously politically autonomous, independent, and sovereign. But they remain underdeveloped, even when they are rich, because they reject modern values whom they consider Westerners.
If Algeria (people and power) resign to accept independence for Kabylia, it will ensure that it will be Islamic independence, so that Kabylia does not get a blemish and that the difference in cultural terms, political, social, don’t be garish. The Kabyle Islamists themselves are already agitated and offer us a marabout Islam by arguing that it would be different from the official Islam. It is not a question of fighting Islam, but of opposing universal values to it as recommended by most of the Amazigh activists: Democracy, human rights (as promulgated by the universal charter of human rights), freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and worship, freedom of opinion, equality between men and women, rule of law, modern, secular and democratic education ….. Proclaiming these values is enough to disqualify Arab-Islamic archaisms (called National Constants in Algeria) without even talking about it.
In a social environment shaped by these values, citizens will be free to practice muslim worship, but those who do not wish to practice it or who wish to practice it will have their freedoms protected. Islamist countries know that these are dangerous values for Islam and have hastened to redefine them in an Islamic framework, that is to say, to officially reject them (Islamic human rights). In order to unmask Islamism, it must be opposed to the modern universal values that nourish democracy. Islam is in essence the aggressor of these values in all muslim countries, but it always manages to position itself as a victim by pushing the militants of the opposing camp to forget to defend their values. Islamic totalitarianism finds itself disarmed when it fails to create confrontation. It is in a climate of confrontation that it manages to impose itself and take social, even political, power.
In a society where democratic values are affirmed and defended, Islam pretends not to oppose them and even to appropriate these values to better neutralize them (Example of Islamic human rights, of democracy in the framework of Islamic values, open secularism …) Human rights, individual and collective freedoms, gender equality, secular education, freedom of conscience and worship, equality before the law … these are the values that the Kabyle independentist must affirm. By affirming these values, one does not even need to explain how Islam is totalitarianism, a political and social dictatorship. The Islamists will understand for themselves and will position themselves as aggressors as they have always been. It is in this case that Kabylia will be sure to have the support of the entire international community. Defending Kabyle values mixed with Islam maraboutism will make the Kabyle question to be perceived as an internal Arab-Arab or Islamic-Islamic question. The treatment of such a question is known in the muslim world: repression in deafening world silence.
The movement Arouche demonstrated this to us in 2001; some 130 demonstrators were shot like rabbits in broad daylight without public opinion being moved. The animators of demonstrations and a good number of demonstrators did everything to make the movement appear as an Algerian-Algerian movement, that is to say, Arab-Arab or Islamic-Islamic, Algeria being officially Arab-Islamic.
In fact, the Kabylians have always shot themselves in the foot whenever they try to prove that they are more Algerian than the other Algerians. They disqualify themselves on the international scene simply because they do not proclaim universal values loudly as Kabyle values.