so, let us be friends, and June 4th may have been a bad day for me too.

:-)

I hear your point about ethnicity in Algeria, but I disagree. The number of “Arabs” was very low at the time of the conquest, just enough to get power over land owned by Byzantium, and I’d bet that the new power may have been felt as more palatable than the old one. I do not know how long it took for what is now Algeria to be islamicized or arabized, and I’d need more specialized history than what I have at home or is available electronically on the web, on a french sunday. But it probably took several centuries, and if islamicization had only left some jewish islands by 1830, arabization was not and is not complete, even nowadays, in Algeria.

Here, we get to a more philosophical and historiographical debate. What does “Arab” mean in a country, such as Algeria, with a Berber ethnic substrate, a berber language still alive in parts of the land, and a history of invasions, which is as rich as that of France? It cannot mean genealogy or ethnicity, since the number of Arabians, Arabs from Arabia, was so small, relatively to the indigenous population.

So it could mean arabization. But, in 1830, the Jews from Algeria spoke (judeo-)arabic or spanish, and often both. They could have been considered as Arabs, but the ottoman system of the millet considered them as Jews.

I must admit that I am stuck in a maze of contradictory definitions! So as to avoid the risk of anachronism, the pitfalls of biological ethnicity and some rather awkward distinctions, I state now that (as a group of humans) the Jews in Algeria were exactly as autochtonous as the Muslims. Moreover, in terms of religion, judaism existed in Algeria before the arrival of islam.

This way of saying things avoids all the difficulties with “nation”, “people”, and so on. Being brought up on a largely marxist-leninist soup, I also know that Uncle Joe Dzhugashvili, aka Stalin was the big specialist of nationalities. Therefore, I am always wary of the possible manipulation of these words. I’ve had too much of the soup, and I’ve grown very sensitive tastebuds to this particular flavor.

However, in regard to your italicized statement from #27, I was responding precisely to it. My point, perhaps expressed awkwardly, was that the Jews are much MORE indigenous to Algeria than the Arabs/Muslims who did not reach there until their 7th century conquest.

Someone made an interesting comparison (but I can’t remember who) : the horseman is in harmony with the horse, but the horse may disagree with this point of view.

If you’ll excuse my extrapolating but it seems that Walter Laqueur made a similar point

How much of this is genuinely believed? How candid can one (should one) be?

and mentioned that taquiya and kitman (religious norms for Muslims; which have become staples in the secular aspects of daily life that I have observed) which should enter into the realm of analysis.

In this respect, the word of the Jews from Algeria played a fundamental rôle, since they were exactly as indigenous to Algeria as the Muslims.

So, when I read you #62 (12:39 am, June 4th), I thought that you were trying to teach me what I had very clearly written in #27, (3:10 pm, June 1).

Beside that, and though I love fiction, uchronias and good story telling, I am deeply unhappy when someone comes up after the fact and from outside and tells me what should have been done, a long time ago. I tend to answer “yes dear, you are right, we fucked up” and to add, “and now?”. And probably include something like «b’tachles?».

I can easily beat my chest and say before the community “I fucked up, we fucked up”. I remember that there is a day, in the fall, for doing that. In any case, the chest-beating will be justified, because we all fuck up.

I am interested here in two things

1. understanding the fuck-ups

2. doing better in the future.

I am pretty sure that most regular posters here share this point of view.

My conclusion is that #62 may have been written on one of your bad days, and I hope that you will have lots of good days.

Mention of Ben Bella reminds me that he once said that Israel had to be destroyed or else the whole Muslim world would collapse. That is, if they could not destroy Israel, their societies would implode –apparently from the shame at not being able to defeat the Jews, the most despised of all kufar. Indeed, in Arab society, Jews were treated worse than Christian dhimmis. Christians too, as in Jerusalem, looked down on Jews and could take out their frustration at the humiliations of the dhimma on the Jews [no less an authority on everything than Karl Marx reported this. Marx was paraphrasing the book by Cesar Famin on the rivalry of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches].

If edward said were still around, that matter of Arabic-speaking Christians too harassing Jews should be brought up to him. This urge to humiliate Jews [or have them in an inferior social status] is, I believe, a strong motive among Arab nationalists today, including “secularists” and Christians, although it may not be found often in their statements to the West.

If anybody has the original Ben Bella quote [probably in French], then I would appreciate seeing it.

Michelle, I really can’t be sure why you didn’t like my comment #62. Maybe you think that I should not comment about a situation of which I am not part, and about which you presume that I know little. You can tell me why, if you like.

Morocco and Tunisia were protectorates, which means that they were not directly administered by France. So all the distinct religious groups had a personal status. But jizya and all the dhimmi apparatus were a thing of the past. I am not sure of when exactly this status disappeared. This is a good historical question. I’ll have to check.

This does not mean that hate or scorn disappeared at the same time, and I am always infinitely wary of those who praise the century old harmony between jews and muslims. Someone made an interesting comparison (but I can’t remember who) : the horseman is in harmony with the horse, but the horse may disagree with this point of view.

l’chayim!!!!!!!

:-D

Isn’t that because under the French Sharia stopped operating in civil discourse?
Islam was alive and well, although confined to the mosques, as the aftermath of Ben Bella showed.