It is by examining the situation of the place and the inventory of achievements that we can conceive of a healthy vision of the future to build and to become better. Berbers are tired old people groups who have preferred to retrain in more powerful, more combative identities.
Like it or not, today the Berbiter is sandwiched between arab-islamism that promises security, and western modernity that promises freedom. The great Berber men who thought or think the Berbiter, I do not really know, aside from vague echoes of the work of Massinissa, nothing comes to my mind. The great recognized figures owe their celebrities only thanks to Christianity (from St Augustine to Amrouches) or to Islam. It may be that I am a victim of the long work of retreating Berber history by successive invaders. But no matter, I could always reply that there were no Berber men of genius to prevent the story of Berberia being buried under the propaganda of the invader.
I am Kabyle, and Kabyles are the Berbers I know best. There is really a popular will among the Kabyle to raise their heads. They are not content to be, but to become. I am proud of this combative people who seem to have chosen their path by preferring to live their Berbiter in Western modernity (in truth, it is the only modernity there is) rather than in Arab-Islamic archaisms. The Kabyle, like the Japanese and some Asian peoples think or aspire to Western modernity regardless of Judeo-Christian civilization that has made it possible. This is precisely what irritates Arab-Islamism. The latter does not conceive of progress outside a religious straitjacket. Arabo-Islamism thinks that Western modernity is the fruit of Judeo-Christianity whereas on the contrary, it has just emerged thanks to the withdrawal of the religious sphere. By its forced absence in the public sphere, Judeo-Christian civilization gave way to Greco-Roman civilization. A simple qualitative change in references has given birth to Western modernity. Muslims want to maintain religion everywhere as a cleavage point between civilizations and continues to directly endorse modernity to Judaeo-Christianity. It is in this that today the Muslim world is waging a religious war in the West, while the latter seems determined not to follow them on this minefield.
The Kabyle adopt exactly the same strategy in front of the Arab-Islamism. As a people, Kabylians inscribe their struggle in the strict secular and legal sphere. They refuse to join the Arab Muslims on religious and ethnic grounds. Kabyle people react, sometimes unknowingly, as perfect Westerners. Many of us are eager to end Arabo-Islamism by pointing to it and confronting it as such in its theology and history. Others think that it is not safe to do so.
The Kabyle, like the Japanese and some Asian peoples think or aspire to Western modernity regardless of Judeo-Christian civilization
