Algerians do not know the history of the association of Algerian Muslim ulemas and its role of supporting colonial France and facilitate the task of deculturating the Algerian people of their true culture, and uprooting their identities, including a project of Arabization and Islamization. Just after its creation in 1931 the association showed its support and allegiance to France, including the support of its founders like Sheikh Abdelhamid Ben Badis, Sheikh El-Okbi, and Sheikh Mohamed Bachir El Ibrahimi we see well in this official document of this organization and a number of their newspaper, “Essouna”, dated April 17, 1933 and which clearly demonstrate the support of this Arab Islamist organization to the colonial authorities.
It is a historical truth which no one can refute because authentic documents attest to it and are not at all theses or testimonies of any kind. “We are not enemies of France and we will never activate against their interests. On the contrary, we will try to facilitate the mission of civilizing the Algerian people and Islamize the whole nation “, can we read on the front page of the newspaper “Essouna”.
The collaboration of Algerian scholars of Islam with French colonialism
A statue of Emir Abdelkader in a town in France to establish a traitor, collaborator of the French Empire, as a hero
As long as France and Algeria maintain the memory of colonization, the Kabyles or the Berbers will be the eternal losers.
The French State, which aspires to reconciliation with Algeria and its French suburbs, invents, through its historian B. Stora, a memory which, admittedly excludes apologies, but instead of these apologies, it (France) will offer Algerians and its French suburbs significant compensation, such as the erection, in a square in Paris, of a statue for their friend Emir Abdelkader. A character that suits the French, Arabs, Muslims and Suburbanites. Remain the Kabyles, who do not like the Emir too much, they count for less than nothing. Once again, they will be satisfied with a few polite expressions on the part of certain cynical Parisian politicians: “The Kabyles are nice”.
As everyone knows, the Kabyles are democrats. They fit in well. They don’t like problems. They won’t say anything as usual. But it will still make them a topic of conversation in bars, as well as some cockfighting between the pros and cons. Just to let off steam so as not to die of frustration and jealousy.
The last straw is that many of these Kabyles, while contesting this Franco-Arab-Islamic memory, continue on the sidelines to sing another memory, theirs, – (not quite the same as that of Stora, but not quite another) – that no one recognizes them, neither in France nor in Algeria.
Why do the Kabyles want us to recognize a small memory in a great memory? A small war within a big war?
The Kabyles must understand that, without a state, they will only obtain rights granted to Arab Muslims. France negotiates with States not with kind, integrated, courageous, secular, hardworking, honest, democratic communities …
Nothing will change this situation, not even the brilliant letters of our intellectuals (my respects to Madame Yacine), but “This is how it goes with Mac Donald”.
Our parents waged war with the Arab-Islamists. By waging war with them, they offered them, with the help of France, Algeria on a silver platter. The Algerian war is a notarial deed that our parents signed with their eyes closed to their former colonizers. They ceded to them until their status as colonized. The colonized, in the eyes of the world, is no longer the Berber, but the Arab-Muslim.
By continuing to celebrate the Algerian war, to maintain the small local memory in the great Algerian memory, we will remain the orphans of history, the unworthy descendants of Fadhma N’soumer. In Algeria, France or elsewhere, we will only have rights as Arab Muslims, but never as Kabyles.
In short, as with slavery, as long as France and the West recognize the status of colonized to Arab Muslims, this recognition prevents seeing the colonialism exercised by these alleged victims on other peoples.