"The main region of concern is Kabylia, but missionary activity is taking place also in other regions of the country." -- from this news article
There is no mystery as to why Christian missionaries might be having their greatest success in the Kabyle. In Algeria, that remains the Berber heartland. It is where the Berbers, that is, those who were not forcibly transformed into “Arabs” during the centuries of Arab rule (interrupted by 132 years of French rule) are concentrated. And how many of those "Arabs" who now persecute the Berbers realize that they themselves are a generation, or two, or five removed from their clearly Berber origins? (There is, by the way, a genetic marker that, in studies by French geneticists in Tunisia, shows that Berbers and Arabs can be easily distinguished.)
The cause of the Berbers is hardly known in this country. The writer Kateb Yacine, a Berber who refused to write in Arabic, but chose French, is celebrated in France, especially among Berbers -- but unknown in this country. His anti-Arab rage is not likely to cause his books to be included in the syllabuses of courses on "Francophone" literature, given that so many such courses are now taught by French-speaking Arabs.
What is that Berber cause? In the first place, it is linguistic and cultural. In Algeria, where the French saw the Berbers as more akin to them than were the Arabs -- one French general wrote a book about the "Europeanness" of the Berbers -- the Berbers were not discriminated against. But as soon as the French left, the forced arabisation of the Berbers started up at once, as if the French interregnum, with the wider possibilities that French education made possible to both Berbers and Arabs, had never existed. Older people in Algeria speak and use French; the younger ones are forgetting. And meanwhile, the Berbers were forbidden to use their own language, the Berber language, Tamazight, in their schools, in their institutions. At times, they could even be punished for using it among themselves, on the street. Berber culture was officially ignored.
About twenty years ago, news of agitation began to reach the outside world. There were riots in Tizi-Ouzou, reported in France, but hardly anywhere else in the Western world. In America, of course, we had all been sufficiently subject to ARAMCO propaganda (performed as a "public service" by the big oil companies, as part of their propaganda payoff to the Saudis for allowing them to find, produce, and then pay exorbitantly for the oil that happens to lie under the malevolent sands of "Saudi" Arabia), to believe that there is something called "the Arab world," and that in this "Arab world" there are no Copts, no Armenians, no Assyrians, no Chaldeans, no Turkmen, no Mandeans, no Maronites, and of course no Berbers, no Jews (no, there never were any Jews in North Africa or the Middle East -- they all came to Israel, you see, from Europe). Everyone in the Arab world was an "Arab."
The discovery or rediscovery of a Berber identity is or could be an important weapon in unsettling the world of Islam, and perhaps causing the Maghreb to see itself, as it should, not as "Arab," but as the victim of Arab imperialism.
For what is Islam if not a vehicle of Arab imperialism, and what are the Berbers, if not the victims of that Arab imperialism, an imperialism far more potent and long-lasting than the European kind, for it attempts to efface the historic identity of whole peoples?
And it makes perfect sense that Berbers in the Kabyle would, having felt along their pulses the Arab imperialism of which Islam is the vehicle, be more open to the efforts of Christian missionaries. Or more likely, they are not so much responding to missionary activity, but to their own observations as to what Christianity is like, and what Islam has brought them.
In this respect, one should not underestimate the fact that Berbers now live in France, that they make up most of the membership of such groups as the "maghrebins laiques," and that they, not the Arabs whose ethnic identity is so found up with Islam, are capable, in some cases, not of identifying with the Arabs, but more closely with the French. And those Berbers communicate with Berbers at home, or through the Internet. And sometimes they return to Algeria and Morocco to see their families, and bring with them their own observations on the relative merits of the Islamic world, a world suffused with Islam, and the non-Islamic world, the one they have experienced in France.
The more the non-Arab Muslims of the world, and 80% of the world's Muslims are not Arab, come to realize -- and it would not be hard to help them to realize, for they will not be able to deny the facts, having experienced so much of it themselves -- that Islam is a vehicle for that Arab supremacism, the more likely it is that at least some of them will fall away. And others, who may stick with a kind of "non-Arab" Islam (as if such were possible) will, in so doing, at least help to divide, and therefore to weaken, the Camp of Islam and Jihad.
Ideally, one would wish this Total System, that has held so many hundreds of millions in thrall, and thwarted over so many centuries so much human potential (think of the art, think of the science, that might have resulted in the absence of the dead hand of Islam on so many people, prevented from so many forms of artistic expression, so many avenues for free and skeptical inquiry that are necessary for the enterprise of science, so much dull fanaticism, so much boredom, so much violence, in posse and in esse) would be seen in such a light by Berbers, by Kurds, and by people in the subcontinent. Why should Muslims in India not "rediscover" their own history, their Hindu, or Buddhist, or other non-Muslim roots? Why shouldn’t it be also seen as such by those in Malaysia and the East Indies, with its rich pre-Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist past?
Meanwhile, start reading those Berber sites. And hope that the French state, instead of Sarkozy's folly of "integrating" its Muslims by government-supported mosques, will try to work on the Berbers, work to make them see the light, work to help them to achieve their own destiny. That destiny is different from, and superior to, that of the Arabs whose method of domination comes from, is supplied by, Islam, Islam, Islam.
That is all ok, Hugh,l but what to do with those Berbers who prefer to be identified as "arabs" ?
Help those in North Africa (and in France) who know, are well aware, of their Berber identity. And they will point out, in the ways that they think most effective, that many of those "Arabs" are in fact one or two or five generations away from being Berbers. DNA is coming to the rescue. Some of those who proudly identify themselves as "Arabs" will resist. But others may listen. And as they recognize the violence, the "culture of death" of Islam, as in Algeria, perhaps those who wish to make a break from Islam, and recognize that such a break is hardest of all for Arabs, and that another identity needs to be accepted, invented, believed in, will manage to discover, and embrace, those Berber "roots."
It seems fanciful, just as it seems fanciful that Iranians, those who are not merely disgusted with the mullahs running things, but coming to be disgusted with Islam -- that "gift of the Arabs" --- itself, may wish to rediscover Zoroastrianism. Not because of any particular wonderfulness in what Zoroastrianism has to offer, but simply because it offers another identity (see Bernard Lewis's excellent "The Multiple Identities of the Middle East"), in a part of the world, and among people, who believe that "everyone simply has to be something." And that "something" cannot be, as it is in the advanced West, a collection of ideas or ideals -- as an American might define himself as loyal to the American Constitution, and wishing to defend the political and legal institutions of this country, fortunately fashioned by an inimitable group of geniuses, and fortunately, not yet made complete hash even by those who embody the degradation of the democratic dogma.
Somewhat off-topic...but did you know that the legendary singer Edith Piaf's maternal grandmother was a Kabyle Berber living in France?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabyle_people
Hugh,
I have read enough Arabic sources from northern Africa before the 19th century and in none of them there is indication that some Berbers were forcibly transformed into Arabs. The history of Ibn Khaldun is a clear proof to that. Yes, there were many Berber tribes that claimed Arab descent for the simple reason that the Berbers were Bedouins like the Arabs besides that the Berber language contains similarities with Arabic (in fact Berber and Arabic belong to the Chamito-Semitic family of languages).
It was the French for whom there was no difference between Arabs and Berbers and who indiscriminately identified all the peoples of northern Africa as Arabs. French influence under French rule is the reason why even Berbers identify as Arabs.
"It was the French for whom there was no difference between Arabs and Berbers and who indiscriminately identified all the peoples of northern Africa as Arabs. French influence under French rule is the reason why even Berbers identify as Arabs."
-- from a posting
But is this true? Many Frenchmen wrote about the differences they perceived between Arabs and Berbers. French photographers routinely took pictures of Berbers in their Berber dress; the Arabs were much less willing. French military men wrote about the Berbers as "un peuple europeen" -- indeed, somewhere I have a book, written around 1950, with that very claim in the title,a book written by a French general.
Some Berbers came not to resist their definition as "Arabs" (and some became fully arabised, and no doubt many of the "Arabs" now persecuting "Berbers" today are in fact of Berber descent) the way some Copts and Maronites have had a false "Arab identity" pushed on them, or have semi-accepted it, an "identity" constructed out of nothing more than the fact that they are speakers, "users," of Arabic, and may have Arabic names forced on them over time. Indeed, there are differences between Arabs who have become Christians (as a few did in the 19th and early 20th centuries) and those Arabic-using Christians -- Maronites, Copts, Assyrians, Chaldeans -- who are not Arabs, but some of whom have, in order to survive in an ever-threatening Muslim sea, had to find their role as "Arabs" or even, in the manner of the Christian Syrian Michel Aflaq (one of the founders of Ba'athism), hyper-Arabs, as promoters of an Arab identity, pan-Arabism,the whole works -- as an alternative to Islam (they were fooling themselves, because pan-Arabism for Muslim Arabs was never a real alternative to Islam, but merely a temporary goal, a subset, of the goal of a reunified Muslim world).
Not every ill that befell the non-Muslims in the Muslim world, or non-Arabs in the Muslim Arab world, can be attributed to colonial powers. There were French then, during the time of the "presence francaise" that brought schools, hospitals, modern agriculture, and other elements of modern civilisation, to North Africa (in Morocco and Tunisia, over about half-a-century; in Algeria, over a 132-year period) who were quite capable of distinguishing Berbers from Arabs, and it was not their pressure that caused some Berbers to forget their own identity, any more than it was France as the guarantor of the Christians in Lebanon and Syria who caused some to make themselves hyper-Arabs. Aflaq founded the Ba'ath party with two associates not when the French seemed to be there to stay, but when it was clear that they would, in a few years, be leaving.
Hugh,
It is true that the French could forunately distinguish between Arabs and Berbers but this happened after 1830 when they became better acquainted with the people of the land.
Now until the 19th century northern Africa was known as Barbary in English and Barbarie in French. It is clear that Barbary is derived from the name of the Berbers, in Arabic al-Barbar, and that it means "the land of the Berbers". But when Europeans used this term they didn't have in mind the Berbers. In fact, until the 18th century the people of Barbary were known as "the Moors". The European used to make a distinction between Turks and Moors and not between Arabs and Berbers. Surely, "the Moors" contains both Arabs and Berbers. During the 18th century the Europeans replaced the name "Moors" with the name "Arabs" under the influence of the scholarship of Arabic language; the name "Arabs" seemed to them to be more correct than "Moors".
Starting from that period, the Europeans started to refer to the people of Barbary as Arabs. When the French conquered Algeria, the people of the land were all Arabs to them. In one correspondance between an Englishman and emir Abdelqader the Algerian, the Englishman asks the emir about the customs of the Arabs in Algeria. The emir replies that "the Arabs and Berbers" had such and such custom. For the Englishman the Muslims of Algeria were Arabs, but for the native of Algeria they were Arabs and Berbers.
In Algeria, besides Berbers and Arabs, there was a class of population living in cities which was mixed and which had no defined identity. However, they all spoke Arabic. For the French, this class of people were "Arabs". Because city people were always in contact with the French and they were under their influence through education, they adopted the Arab identity to differenciate themselves from the French. This gradually will lead them to Arab nationalism.
So the Arab identity was not forced neither by the invading Arabs nor by the French. It was adopted under the influence of the French for whom all the Muslims of northern Africa were Arabs. Surely the French realised after 1830 that there was a difference between Arabs and Berbers, and if I am not wrong the term "Berbers" started being used after 1830.
"So the Arab identity was not forced neither by the invading Arabs nor by the French."
-- from a posting just above
Does this mean that the Arabs, who ruled in Algeria before the arrival of the French in 1830 -- or perhaps more accurately, when rulers who considered themselves to be "Arabs" (some may have been arabized Berbers, just like those in the Sudan who, considering themselves to be Arabs, engage in the slaughter of those who, identical in ethnic makeup, are perceived by them as "non-Arab" and therefore an inferior brand of Muslim, one that can be killed in a struggle to seize their land, seize what may lie under that land), were not aware, that the Berbers were not aware, of any distinction between the two, and that until the French came along, they co-existed in harmony as the two local constituents of the Umma?
Did no Berbers in North Africa, subject to linguistic and cultural imperialism, never become berberized over the centuries, in the same manner as over the centuries, many of the Christians and Jews in the Middle East became arabized either through outright force, or somewhere along the line, at a period of heightened pressure on non-Muslims by a particularly cruel or intolerant regime, because they "voluntarily" converted to Islam? Think of how many of the "Arabs" in Egypt are surely the descendants of converted Copts, of how many Assyrians in Iraq, how many Maronites in Lebanon (and Syria, especially following the massacre in Damascus of 1860, how many Zoroastrians in Iran, how many Jews not only in Israel but all over the Middle East, must have over the past 1350 years converted to become what their descendants think they have always been, Muslims and Arabs?
It would take some time for me to locate -- and you can probably do as good a job yourself -- the French who wrote about the distinction between Berbers and Arabs, in Algeria and elsewhere in North Africa. Meanwhile, I will keep searching for that book, by that high-ranking French military officer (the name, I recall, begins with a "B"), all about the Berbers and why the French should bet on them as natural allies. The book came and went, as did "la presence francaise" in North Africa. The idea, however, of regarding the Berbers as more accessible to Christian missions because they are aware of how Islam has been a vehicle of Arab supremacism, remains intact, and potentially potent.
Hugh,
I wasn't saying anything about Arab imperialism. In fact, there were two Arab invasions of northern Africa, one during the first Islamic conquests and the other after 1000 AD when the tribes of Hilal and Sulaym and others devastated all that regions. Both were devastating but the second was indeed more devastating than the first. However, with the rise of the Murabitun and of the Muwahhidun the Berbers took over the rule in northern Africa. The Muwahhidun were succeeded by the Zayanids, Hafsids and Marinids all of whom were Berbers and aware of their Berber idenitity. In fact, the region was known as Barbary as a result of the rise of the Berbers to power. You can reed the history of Ibn Khladun (not the introduction) for more details about Berber-Arab relations although I am not sure whether it is translated in English.
Concerning European travelers. There are many on the internet. You can consult Gallica the digital library of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France where there are many digitalized travels into northern Africa http://gallica.bnf.fr. There is also this site http://explorion.net which contains digitalized travel accounts. I think at Google Books http://books.google.com/ you will find other travel accounts.
In all cases try to look for the following:
(1) When did the name "Berber" first appear? Is it before 1800, between 1800 and 1830, or after 1830?
(2) When did the Europeans stop calling the Muslims of Barbary "Moors"? When do they start calling them "Arabs"?
(3) Do travelers separate between Arabs and Berbers? When do they start to make this separation?
I am sure you will find results close to my conclusions.
P.S.:
The Murabitun or Almoravids belonged to the tribe of Lamtuna, a relative of the Tuaregs.
The Muwahhidun or Almohads belonged to the tribe of Masmuda.
The Zayanids to the tribe of Zanata.
The Hafsids to Hantata a tribe of Masmuda.
The Marinids to Wasin a tribe of Zanata.
All were Berbers.
I'll look. As to Ibn Khaldun, I've read only the Prolegomena -- the Muqaddimah -- in the translation by Franz Rosenthal. Is it in that part that one finds a discussion of Berbers?
I am aware -- how could I not be -- of the Berber kingdoms. What I am talking about is something different. At some point, over time, people who were conquered by Islam did two things.
The first thing was for non-Muslims to become Muslims. Slowly, or sometimes rapidly (it could also happen in fits and starts), those conquered non-Muslims proceeded to become Muslims. It might happen because a local Muslim ruler demanded it. Sometimes conditions were so onerous that non-Muslims converted at a greater rate than when conditions were easier.
The second thing was for non-Arabs to realize that being an Arab Muslim was preferable to being a non-Arab Muslim. Look at the ethnic or racial makeup of some of those "Arabs" who are killing black African Muslims in Khartoum. When, how, for what reason did those obviously black African non-Arabs become "Arabs," think of themselves as "Arabs," and themselves engage in rape and pillage of "non-Arab" Muslims who look, in some cases, not much different from those who are attacking them?
If Berbers possessed, in the past, their Berber identities and continued to have power, when did they lose it, and what were the ways that they became minorities, seemingly, in most of North Africa? Is it because of the French? Did it precede the French conquest? When the king of Morocco (a special, sherifian, case) and the deys of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, were suzerains to the Ottoman padishah, what was the attitude of Berbers to Arabs, or for that matter of the Turks to the Arabs and to the Berbers?
I am making the case that the Berbers lost out to the Arabs because numbers of Berbers must have been arabized, lost their consciousness of their own Berber past. Not all, not even necessarily most, but a great many did so. How else can one explain the Berber plight today, and the notion that North Africa belongs to the Arabs, who often treat the Berbers with contumely (see Kateb Yacine), and to something concocted by ARAMCO, the so-called "Arab world"?
Concerning Ibn Khaldun, he relates all the history of the Berbers and of their states in his history not in the Introduction. I don't know if it was translated into English but there is a French translation by De Slane under the title "Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l'Afrique septentrionale".
I forgot to say that the Berber dynasties of Barbary were replaced by the Ottomans in the provinces of Tripoli, Tunis and Algers, and by the Alawids in Morocco. In Morocco, the Alawids who are still ruling are descends of Muhammad through Hasan son of Ali son of Abu-Talib. For the Turks as well as for the Muslims of Egypt and Syria, the people of Barbary were known as "Maghariba", plural of "Maghribi" which indicates one's belongingness to "Maghrib". In fact, "Maghariba" was the common name used by both Arabs and Berbers there. The people of Maghrib used to divide their land into:
- Barca, now in Lybia
- Tripoli, now in Lybia
- Ifriqiya, now Tunisia
- al-Maghrib al-Awsat "middle Maghrib", now Algeria
- al-Maghrib al-Aqsa "farther Maghrib", now Morocco
However, for the Turks the Maghrib was part of what they called Arabistan. Arabistan "land of the Arabs" for the Turks of Anatolia were the Arabic-speaking countries. Arabistan for the Turks was supposedly populated by the Arabs (note that the Turks admitted the presence of non-Arabs in Arabistan, thus for them Christians, Jews, Druzes, Alawites and others were not Arabs). I havn't yet read any Turkish source concerning Maghrib, so I am not sure whether the Turks considered the Berbers as Arabs but I can be sure that they considered Arabic-speaking city dwellers as Arabs in the same manner as they did in Syria and Egypt. So it is likely that the spread of the Arab identity among Arabic-speakers probably dates to the Ottoman period under the influence of the Turks and it continued under the French under the influence of the French who held similar views to the Turks. Both on the side of the French and of the Turks it was ignorance from the part of the two.
Concerning the term "arabize", in the Arabic language there is no equivalent for it. In fact, the meaning of "arabize" is ambiguous does it only mean "to become an Arabic-speaker" or does it mean also "to become Arab"? In Arabic, there are two terms similar to it:
(1) ista'raba استعرب= to become an Arabic-speaker
(2) ta'arraba تعرب = to become Arab
The active participle of ista'raba is musta'rib مستعرب whence the name "Mozarabe" is derived. That is why the Arabic-speaking Christian Romans (Rum) of northern Africa and Spain were known as Mozarabes. Like those Christians, Arabic-speaking Berbers became musta'riba (pl. of musta'rib) but they never became Arabs because in Islamic law nobody is Arab unless his father is Arab and since adoption is banned in Islam no one can become Arab.
Yes, many non-Arab Muslims wished to be Arabs and many pretended to be Arabs but that was at a time Arabs were dominating and when being Arab was a privilege. When the Berbers dominated and replaced Arab rule, the Berbers became the privileged ones and no need existed now to pretend to be Arab. So there were external circumstances, i.e. Turkish and French rule and influence, which lead Arabic-speakers to identify solely as Arabs. Sometimes one gets his identity from how others identify him and not from how he identifies himself. However, once people started identifying as Arabs, besides Arab nationalism introduced by French Arabophiles and besides Arab supremacism inherent in Islam, the situation you were talking about became a natural consequence.
Concerning the Arabs of Sudan. Those who massacred the people of Darfur are indeed Arabs. These are Arab nomads who through nomadism have preserved their identity as Arabs and who originally migrated from Egypt. These mixed with black women hence their color became darker but they are less dark than the people of Darfur, the color difference between the two is clear. Surely their Arab supremacism is inherent in their customs (and in the fact that they are nomads) and is encouraged by Islam.