Ben Badis' Jews: Islamic Reform and Colonial Subjecthood in Interwar Algeria

Aomar Boum 0:00

Good afternoon, everyone, or good evening if you happen to be in the East Coast. My name is Omar boom. I'm a professor of anthropology and Near Eastern languages and cultures and history at UCLA and Maurice, some other chair in Sephardic studies. It's really my great pleasure to welcome our last speaker of the average lecture for the year, Dr Joshua Schreier. It's also it's great to have somebody who represents Algeria. We haven't had an Algerian scholar representing the series yet, so this is a great win for us. So Dr Schreier will be talking about when bad is Jews, Islamic reform and colonial subjecthood in inter war Algeria. But before I give the floor to drier, what I will do? I'll introduce the the adiros Lecture Series, what? What, what we have been doing in the last five or five years, and introduce Dr Schreier, and then give the floor to Dr Schreier to give his talk. The aviros lecture series is made possible through a generous private donation. The aviros lecture series brings original scholarships to UCLA through a concert ship co sponsorship with the allen d levy Center for Jewish Studies and the Center for Nutrition studies at UCLA so and for that, I would like to thank Dr Ali Baghdad, Dr Sarah Stein and Dr aslavali, as well as Johanna Christian and Chelsea from both centers for their work on this and for supporting this project, each of the lectures will be what actually is published by the UCLA Center for Leadership Studies as part of the aviros occasional paper series, which you can look at and see online. Aviros is the Latin name for for Ibn Rushd the 12th century, Andalusian polymath whose philosophical works integrated Islamic traditions with ancient Greek thought. Over subsequent centuries, his commentaries on Plato and Aristotle came to influence Jewish and Christian thinkers through Europe, among them Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas and Baroque Spinoza. The choice of aviros as the name of the for the lecture series is significant because it points to a history of cordova's Jewish Muslim relations and the connections between aviros and Maimonides, both of whom were committed to intellectual exchange and communion life across religious boundaries. Now I want to turn to introducing our speakers today. Dr Joshua schweier was raised in Boston, in Baltimore. He received his BA from the University of Chicago and his MA and PhD from New York University. He teaches history at fast College. Doctor works at the intersection of Middle Eastern, Algerian, Jewish and French histories in the context mostly of Algeria. He is the author of Arabs of Jewish faith, the civilizing mission in colonial Algeria, published by Rutgers University Press in 2010 and really fantastic book on the merchants of Quran, a Jewish port at the dawn of published by Stanford University Press in 2017 scholarships, look at Algerian Jews in the first decades of The French occupation of Algeria, exploring how colonialism affected local commercial networks and alliances, how the occupiers turn to local notables to help and to help and expertise, and how pre colonial Jewish elite continued to exercise influence under the new order. More recently, his work has looked at how a century of colonialism have informed how Muslims and Jews understand or understood their relationship to Algeria France and their shared North African history by the final decades of colonial rule. For that, I turn the floor to Dr UCLA,

Speaker 1 4:31

thank you so much for that introduction. Omar, thank you so much for inviting me. It's wonderful to be here. It's an honor. Whoops, it makes it easier for me to thanks so much. Also to Christian, your persistence and my difficulty and actually kind of coming up with plans is really admirable, and I very much appreciate it. So over the past decade, A A. Good deal of work has looked at the relationship, and I put this word in quotes, between Jews and Muslims in Algeria and France in the 20th century, the relationship has been either the primary topic of these works or kind of an inevitable ancillary question. And work studying personal memoirs or the press, or how the Palestine conflict resonated in North Africa between incidents of Muslim Jewish violence, menacing FLN statements during the War of Independence, or Algerian Jews eventual migration to France, or at least the great majority of them to France after independence. The consensus seems to be that the Muslim Jewish relationship was words one scholar burdensome, if not historically, a conflict. The presence of so many Algerian Muslims and most Algerian Jews in France, after the process termed decolonization, seems to have invited scholars or created a situation which scholars could supposedly track this strained Muslim Jewish binary into the post colonial period. Much of this conflict tends to come into relief around incidents of anti semitic rhetoric or violence and or the failure to disaggregate Jews from Zionism and European policies in Palestine, or the supposed but obviously, positing a relationship between Muslims and Jews as a subject of analysis traceable through time is in itself problematic. These two terms do not really define comparable social categories. In the Algerian context, privileging religious affiliation as a means of identifying groups, especially in this context, grays out the overwhelming importance of French Imperial subjecthood and citizenship in defining social identities in Algeria, French colonization, after all, radically redefined the terms Jew and Muslim in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They came to describe not only a faith, but different legal statuses, relationships to France and even a person's presumed adaptability to modernity, civilization or even intellectual autonomy. More specifically, in the decades leading up to and following the 1870 premier decree, Jewish came to describe a subcategory, albeit contingent, contested and often threatened of French citizen in radical contrast, Muslim came to be almost, but not entirely, synonymous with a new term as well indigenous. Not only were Muslims not emancipated under the premier decree, but in 1881 just over 10 years after most Jews in Algeria became French, their Muslim neighbors were subject to the indigene that widened the differences in the legal differences between Muslims and Frenchmen. It was an important manifestation of a long process of indigenization, or to loosely paraphrase Sarah Stein's conclusion regarding the smaller communities of unemancipated Jews of the Algerian Sahara indigenous people were not found France made them. Tracing the relationship between Jews and Muslims through time is further complicated by how these categories have served its conceptual building blocks of the notions of emancipation and citizenship. From even before the French Revolution, the idea of Jews helped articulate Republican in a French context, virtue or the ability of good government to emancipate enlightened and regenerate Jews, men that many considered to be the most oppressed, vile and corrupt of France. Meanwhile, Islam, it scarcely bears repeating, had a long enlightenment and post enlightenment history of serving as a manifestation of tyranny, fanaticism and lack of reason in French thought, as Naomi Davidson has demonstrated by the 1920s and 30s, the period that this paper is discussing, Muslims became privileged, privileged foils against which rational, autonomous citizenship was defined in France, or the ultimate example of a subject defined and they held to their religion. In this light, one might must understand France's 1870 emancipation of Algerian Jews as part of a wider history of exclusion, oppression and racism. It is no surprise that despite Algerian Jews deep historical roots in North Africa's Arab Islamic society, by 1961 during a Jewish riot against Muslims in Iran that I discussed in a previous article, the French language press routinely described Iran's Jews as Europeans, despite obviously their roots in North Africa, in the context of French Algerian history, Muslim and Jew do not operate as autonomous or easily comparable categories. Rather, I posit that the terms flow into one another, masking a far more consequential social hierarchy. While both helping to articulate a racist Imperial ideology, yet Muslim reformists did discuss Jews and Palestine was not irrelevant to how they saw them. This power represents a very early foray into a new project about how interwar Algerian Muslim reformists saw Jews and their future in Algeria, I suggest here that they were aware of and at times underlined how colonial dynamics had radically changed Jews and their place in Arab Islamic society, and how Muslims now related to Jews. Here I look at the writings, either penned or republished by the sheik Abd Al Hamid bin dadis, the influential head of the association de julima, and the most prominent figure in the movement of Islamic for Islamic reform, is an interwar al jury his journal Shahab, which ran between 1925 and 1940 reveal an understanding of Jews in a particular moment in reformist thought. So scholars have been badass, from Ali to Ali Marat to after asraf have tended to agree that bin badas was generally not anti Jewish. He was pretty careful about distinguishing between Zionism, which he unequivocally criticized, and Jews, notably his neighbors. Furthermore, it has been noted he publicly intervened in instances of inter communal violence, notably the midst of the 1934 anti Jewish riots in Constantine but this project seeks to go beyond the question of how Jews and Muslims got along, and how, or if, Algerian Muslims disaggregated Jews from their attacks on Zionism, Bin bodies saw Jews is different a group that had been fundamentally transformed by the colonial order yet remained due to their history, history deeply rooted in Algeria's North African context, quite unlike the French to which they had been legally assimilated, or most of them had been, while positing and advocating for distinctly Arabist, Algerian Muslim personality, Bin badas presented good Muslims as unequivocally loyal to the Republic. This is at a specific time. This is the pre war period, peaceful and neighborly with their French and Jewish compatriots, yet culturally and politically identified with a wider Arab Muslim world. But he also saw Algerian Jews as a group that the colonial order had transformed into a distinct and potentially threatening class, a group in Algeria, not without commonalities with their British aligned Zionist settlers in Palestine. In short, the question of anti semitism is kind of a limiting rubric for understanding Algerian Muslim reformers understandings of Jews, as well as understanding how colonials constructed modern Jewish and Muslim subjectivities in Algeria. So in addition to bin bodice his own writings, here we look at articles reproduced from other sources. Arthur osarov has explained, Arab newspapers in Algeria during this period, including a Shahab, were often less in a position to do their own reporting that didn't have the means to be sending journalists in various parts of the world than to provoke thought locally by discussing news from other sources. Indeed, his discussions of Jews seems to have borrowed from articles that appeared in France and England, not to mention the Arabic press in the United States and specifically in New York. A theme echoed in several of our Shahad articles was the European emancipationist conviction that Jewishness was purely a religious category in March of 1930 for example, the journal published an Arabic language synthesis of writings by the well known French Jewish journalist, historian and Trey fusar Joseph reinach, who lived from 1856 to 1921

Speaker 1 13:59

The Editor cited a 1919 article that appeared in the London based Morning Post entitled On Zionism. But the synthesis also seems to have used some of the ideas appearing in a 1916 French language letter reinach published in Paris's Jewish Journal universe Israelite, with a less ambiguous title, controlism, pour emancipation against Zionism for emancipation in Arabic, the title became the hardly more ambiguous, Judaism and Association of Religion, not one of race or about the genes. The author argued that it is commonly thought among many people, including Jews, the devotees of this religion in all the regions of the world, stem from the sons of Israel. Yet the historical truth disputes this, as the first Israelites propagated Judaism, and idolaters were among the first who adopted it, and this is how it spread among the diverse nations. The article traced. History of Judaism, essentially undermining the Ethno national mythologies of Zionism. Notably, this included the portrayal of Jews as a people who had been expelled from a national homeland and wished to reconstitute their states. The Jews of Palestinian extraction are quite few. It noted stating that quote, There is no Jewish nation, nor a Jewish job, a people, but a Jewish Dean. It follows, then that quote, historical research dispels the common illusion about the Jews that they are a pure race, unmixed with others. What followed was a historical discussion of the spread of Judaism in the world among many different peoples, emphasizing particularly histories of conversion. For example, the article reproduced, among other things, the theory that Ashkenazi Jews of Russia were descendants of the Khazars, an early medieval Turkic people that converted Judaism to Judaism sometime between the eighth and 10th centuries. According to the piece, the cousins were a civilized nation, widespread among the Caspian Sea and the Crimean peninsula. A number of Jews of Constantinople took refuge among them and spread the Jewish mother, the Jewish doctrine among them. If there was any ambiguity, the article argue, argue, clearly that this history dispelled the notion of Jews organic origins in a specific country. Quote, this policy of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine means the establishment of a state on the basis of religion, and that is against the totality of the principles of this era. So this was the Arabic reproduction of reinox work in various other places. The fact that bin that is reproduced in Arabic language summary of reinox work deserves a bit of attention. Ethan Katz, for example, has described reinach as one of the sons of Adolf Premier, by which he means the Jewish inheritor. Means the Jewish inheritors, or one of the Jewish inheritors of Premier's Republican reformist imperialism, and even includes both Prime Minister Leon Blum and the jurist Ben in this in this category of people, reinach was a firm believer in the above mentioned 1870 law, a name for Premier that led to the near elimination of the Jewish personal status in Algeria, a change that led to their or kind of was required given French law for their civic equality with French colonists. While reinach hoped to see an improvement in the status of Muslims, he still championed the law that maintained the personal status for Muslims, that is the Crimea decree, the colonial intervention and mark of legal and for inferiority that was extensively the barrier keeping Muslims from full citizenship in French Algeria. So one might imagine that bin badas, who was obviously critic of Muslim inequality in Algeria, would have little use for what amounted to kind of a liberal apologetics for Imperial for Colonial laws. But bin bot is actually relied on still existing Muslim personal status laws, as as James McDougall has explained to articulate and locate a non French Algerian Muslim personality, one that Muslim reformers such as himself sought to cultivate, refine and spread bin bodies would eventually call on Muslims to retain their Muslim personal status when it was more of a choice. I'm seeing it as an aid to develop Muslim distinctiveness in the colonial context, but also to maintain it as well. So reinachs assimilationism, at least in shahabs Arabic version of reinach was not entirely incongruent with with ulamas articulation of a distinct non French Algerian Arab Muslim society in which Jews, like in the Republic, were a long established social subset. Indeed, reinach anti Zionist casting of Jewishness is purely a faith meshed with the idea that Jews were a long standing feature of Mardi Arab Muslim society, one that bin bodies argued that Muslims, as Muslims, had always and should always get along with so we see a certain kind of overlap there between reinach perspective, which is very Republican, and Bin bot is reform Islamic reformism. So as noted above, Bin badas Salafism, at least in the period discussed here, overlapped in some places with reinax republicanism. Certainly bin badas reformist message was that Muslims must be distinct from the French. They should be literate in Arabic, which is something obviously very important to him in the Algerian context, and distance themselves from putatively corrupt popular religious practices associated with. He associated with the Sufi orders. According to the historian Ali mera, this liberal, ultimately, mashraki reformism was first planted in the Maghreb, or at least in Algeria, with the Egyptian modernist Mohammed Abdus 1903 visit to Algeria. Of course, the British Consul General, Lord Cromer's approval of Abdul's reformism found no parallel in French attitudes towards Muslim reformism. In Ben badas, in fact, the French were generally very suspicious of reformism in Algeria, he nonetheless preached loyalty to France. Bin badas through a cleric and an Arabist, worked with Mohammed salah, Benjamin, one of the DR Mohamed Salah Angelou, one of the French educated reformist of the Federation, or kind of a loyal opposition working for change within the system in the interwar period, while keeping their distance from more radical independent, independentist leaning figures such as musalia, thus casting Jews first and foremost as adherence of Judaism, as opposed to a nation hardly clashed with his casting of good Muslims as loyal Republican subjects, uninclined towards displays of violent sectarianism. This long, the long shared history of Jews and Muslims in the Maghreb, as well as their common language and religious similarities, was advanced also elsewhere in in in a Shah in some versions, these articles suggest a more wholesome version of a more recent phenom, phenomenon that that Omar boom has critiqued as, quote, unquote, the performance of con events. Yeah, I couldn't help but thinking about this while reading this, or the polemical quote celebration of the historical symbiotic relationship between Jews and Muslims, unquote, often by those in power in an idealized North African or Muslim past. One notable example appeared in 1934 and was entitled Jews in Africa. The article referred to a piece originally published in the Brooklyn based Journal of Samir, which ran from 1929 to 1959 it was edited by the Lebanese born poet Ilya Abu Mahdi. Now Abu Mahdi is worth noting. Was a politically engaged member of Ptolemy, or the pen league collective of expatriate Arab writers that included jubron. Abu mani's article argued that, quote, The Jews have found freedom under the protection of Muslims such as they never found among other nations. Furthermore, it stated, perhaps the closest people to the Jews are Muslims. For the Islamic religion is akin to the mosaic religion, and the Hebrew language is a sister to the Arabic language. In addition to finding freedom, Abu Mahi argued, Jews thrived culturally under Muslim protection. Quote, If they counted the Jewish geniuses in science and philosophy and poetry and art, they would find most of them established among the Muslims and in the schools of the Muslims, especially in Spain in the days under the rule of the Arabs. And then in North Africa, the article went on to mention Arabic phone Jewish luminaries living under Islam medieval periods, such as the poet, grammarian and commentator, do not spin rat, the philosopher and rabbi and the philosopher, commentator and physician Ibn or Maimonides, much like the Iraqi Jewish intellectuals of the same interwar period, whose writing often referencing the medieval Jewish Arab Arab referencing medieval Jewish Arab thinkers as well performed arabness. Terms Abd Al Hamid or bin bodice might be said to have used interlocutors to project arabness on medieval Jewish luminaries, Ben Bos public efforts could be seen to reflect this idea about Jews by suggesting that despite the current violence

Speaker 1 23:55

in this concept of the of the riots in Constantine Jews might once again harmoniously form part of Algeria's Islamic culture. In this, he differed from a powerful current in early Algerian nationalism. Again, as Omar boum has discussed, Ben bodice and his colleagues of the Association of mass such as Taib al UCLA, made public efforts to be in dialog with Jewish leaders, including Bernard lakash of the League International. Distanced them from and were partially criticized by more radical national leaders, such as in sabotage, for their closeness among others to left his Jewish figures calling for unity between Jews and Muslims, such as goes on to get a sense of the contrast, an article in the messalus Journal of Ummah quoted in Astros book mentioned that everywhere Jews are agents of imperialism, and quote the struggle against Jews as a struggle against Zionism. See, I don't think you'd see as much as that kind of sentiment, and it. Been badass is not involved. However, been badasses dedication to Jewish Muslim peace and narratives, uniting and harmonizing the religious and culturally cultural history of Jews and Muslims does not preclude his casting of Jews as potentially threatening specifically to Muslims, a classic contemporary French and perhaps Jewish colonialism had transformed, if not outright created, in the wake of the 1934 anti Jewish riots in Constantine. Al Shahab reprinted another article from Brooklyn's Samir, this time by Abu Mahdi himself. Interestingly, Bin badas used a New York based journal to discuss events in his native Constantine in I'm sure there's a much more interesting story behind that that I don't know yet. The article claimed that the violence was perhaps the first of its type in the history of Algeria, as the Jews have lived long centuries in the countries of the Maghreb without any outrage being committed against them, and so observers cannot blame. Quote, religious intolerance. Rather, insisted the writer. Quote, Zionism is among the most important factors that provoke the indignation of the entire Islamic world towards the Jews. Unquote the article positive that Zionism helped change the very understanding of Jews among Muslims, notably, Muslims had used to think of Jews as an element of their own nation, but since they took up the banner, perhaps a clumsy translate the banner of the Zionist homeland, things changed, quote, armed with the Balfour Declaration, the Jews position changed in people's eyes, and they became like a nation of conquerors and usurpers attempting to exile the Arabs from Palestine in order to take their place and to establish a Jewish Kingdom Britain's post World War One Balfour policy insisted the writer transformed the Jews subjectivities from Arabic speaking practitioners of a religion akin to Islam, safely Living among and with Muslims into a nation of conquerors, such favoritism on the part of the British of British colonial power, not only toward Jews and Muslims apart, it would not end well for the Jews. The writer predicted, Bravo money predicted British Zionist policy necessarily tore the Jews relationship with their putatively true Muslim friends. So he wrote, The Jews that won with Zionism an imaginary homeland, gained with it the enmity of the nations. Yet they the Jews. They the Jews are closer to them than all other nations, speaking, presumably of Muslim Arabs, the author underlined that in them, they the Jews, have kin and blood relations, and as they populated several villages and hamlets in Palestine with Zionism, they destroy palaces of loyalty that they had possessed in the hearts of their brothers, the Arabs among whom they had always lived as Dear friends. Such sentiments echoed Ben badas his own reckoning about Palestine in an article, article detailing British killings of Palestinian demonstrators around the same time, he predicted a dark fate for the Jewish colonists of Palestine. The author warned that if Britain continued its vicious policies in Palestine, we are afraid that Palestine will become the graveyard of the Jews, not the national home field. So if scholars have rightly underlined that bin Bos blamed colonialism, rather than Jews in general for the troubles in Palestine, it still ought to be acknowledged that Jews did occupy a particular and in some cases threatening place in these writings. In other words, his quote, deliberate performances of close ties with Jewish community leaders, as osrath has put it, did not preclude lambasting quote, Jewish colonialism, which bin Bodhi saw as existing alongside or in addition to British colonialism. Colonialism is a nightmare. Bin badas wrote, In the wake of the October 1934 Jaffa massacre, during which British authorities beat and shot Palestinian demonstrators, describing how British mounted soldiers stormed Palestinian protesters, killing over 50 and beating many severely. The tone bin badas tone was behemoth. Quote, The misfortune in Palestine was dramatic. The catastrophe Nakba was immense. The was intense, immense. The December 1933 article rhetorically asked how Palestine could possibly endure English military colonialism and Jewish economic colonialism, placing the blame for Zionism success largely on Britain. The paper nonetheless saw Jews as benefiting. Quote, England has continued its cursed and harsh Zionist policy against all plausibility and all justice. It has allowed the Jews to come from every part of Europe to immigrate. Britain's despicable colonialism would inevitably lead to more unrest, since Palestine cannot accept quote death under the rule of Jewish colonization. Bin bodies distinguished between Jews and Zionists, certainly, but Muslim now faced a class of colonialist Jews that were, if not ABS created by the British, was certainly nourished by the British. The role of print coverage of martyred Palestine. This is a title of one of Ben badas pieces in the shaping of Algerian nationalist and anti colonial sensibilities is well established, once again, referring to Oscar offs work on the press in Algeria, the press made solidarity with Palestinians a rallying cry for international Muslim politics, in part because Palestine was close enough to be intelligible to an Algerian readership, yet distance enough to provoke question among French censors as to its comparability. In other words, it got your senses a little bit easier. The coverage of Palestine was also sheds light on how binbad is probably saw Jews as beneficiaries of colonial power in multiple settings, notably in France, in Algeria and Palestine, for example, in 1934 an article recounting the martyrdom of passam, the charismatic Muslim cleric credited with doing much of the organizational groundwork for the 1936 1939 Great Revolt in Palestine, Bin Bos announced that England has put her finger on the scale by placing her favor with the Zionist Jews against the Muslims. And land stolen from Muslim hands is offered to the Jewish peasants, and capital funds flow upon them from every direction, and Trade and Industry becomes in the martyred land of Palestine, monopolized by migrants. So the migrant Jewish peasants, as they put it, in Palestine, emerges a product of British policies, as we shall see, the theme of colonial policies and economics, creating a class of Jewish actors with a role in rural displacement also emerges in Ben badas discussion of Algeria in the wake of the 1934 Constantine riots for Joan or return for a moment. So the riot, the Constantine rights of 34 constitute several days of violence in the Jewish Quarter, in a market area known as SOF the wool market wolf place, which in French was known as the plastic which in which 28 people were killed. In an exhaustive recent study, Joshua Cole has shown the events to have arisen in a particularly tense and transitional moment. That was quote. I'm quoting Josh. Josh Cole here result of the colonial orders civic exclusion and shift exclusions and shifts in local politics following the 1919, reforms of the electoral process. This produced not only a new class of Muslim elected officials such as benjaul working within the French system, but also newly shifting set of ethnically tinted political alliances, adding to the mix where a rise of anti semitic was the rise of anti semitic fascism in Europe and Muslims, very limited electoral political power, despite these reforms to generalize which incurred. This is kind of Josh Cole's argument encouraging mass public demonstrations. And in this case, provocations became kind of a sort of political currents people saw it as almost necessary in order to get their voices across.

Speaker 1 33:46

So both explicitly and implicitly, Ben badas paper demonstrated how he saw these civic exclusions transforming Jews into the agents of an unjust order, both in Algeria and in Palestine. In Modi's article cited above, he cast French colonialism as at fault for inter communal violence. The author insisted that Jews in Algeria now act with greed and high handedness toward Muslims, Muslim farmers, and they have great disdain for them. Why? Well, it was the French government. The author explained quote that it naturalized them by General decree, and so they became Frenchmen overnight, those who immigrated from various countries and then then born, and those born in Algeria from fathers born in Algeria as well. And this inflated the citizenry, the citizenry, meaning the Jewish citizenry, with arrogance, and they behave badly. Now, according to the writer, Jews constitute quote a monopoly. Now, according to the writer, Jews constitute a quote monopoly of money lenders for Algerian farmers, not unlike British policies in Palestine, French colonialism in Algeria turned a blind eye to peasant indebtedness and increasing landliness landlessness, while. Jews now officially Frenchmen, to take advantage of their vulnerability. In the September 1934, issue of a Shahab bin badas published his own versions of 34 events in Constantine. And we then see the themes alluded to above the an implicit indictment of a clue of the colonial order which had changed Jews and place them in a different position for Muslims, a denial and rejection of Muslim religious or racial contempt for Jews, and a melding of Republican and Salafist rhetoric, rejecting communitarian or sectarian animosities and emphasizing Muslim loyalty to the Republic from the initial provocation, which is the insult Jew who was very drunk, apparently had leveled at Muslims while in the ablutions room of Hamas that apparently was visible from the street. The lengthy report often appears to blame the Jews for provoking violence while casting Muslims as threatened and powerless in his own role and that of Dr benjalo, well, he cast them as more as mediators and peacemakers. We've seen this. This has been talked about scholarship. Indeed, he cast Muslims as provoked, but ultimately peaceful subjects whose religion actually forbid hostility towards Jews. So at one point, he writes, the Muslims were not agitated. They responded to the provocation with reason. They forgave him as he was drunk. And this is definitive evidence of their tolerance. And they're not being inspired by religious hatred of the Jews, and they're not readying themselves to take any sort of revenge. Indeed, on several occasions, Bin bodice emphasized a distinct Muslim character that was naturally accepting and accommodating to Judaism, recalling an end to the French, for that matter, recalling a conversation he had with the chief of police bin badas. Noted that, well, I said to him, and Mr. Ahmed translated for me our Islamic disposition, our religious beliefs and our respect for men of the government. All this brings us to come to your aid in what you mentioned, and it is most regrettable, but we are refining the people and educating them and bringing mercy into their hearts for when insult and injury arrives upon them, such as, presumably, disappointment, not surprisingly, the role of educating and refining Muslims to be true to their religion and casting this process is compatible with, if not complimentary, to, French rule. Appeared on several occasions. It follows that bin bought the leadership of the Muslims, notably himself as a religious leadership and benjalo, who, of course, was coming from a very different place. It's Francophone, reformist French, educated and an elected official, a secular as loyal peacemakers, speaking of the events of Friday evening, August 3, which is in the midst of these riots, Bin bodies past Jews as having more power or not respecting the French agents, while Muslims, on the contrary, remained obedient and faithful agents of the law. Instead of stopping the aggressor, the other Jews of the quarter partook in the insults. This is how we portray the events, and this indicated, indicates how the spirit of little concern for Muslims is pervasive among members of their sect, and the lack of respect for the government on their part. Meanwhile, two Muslim police officers stood in the doorway of the Jew guarding the residents, and this indicated it's the respect Muslim holds for his duty, and it's in the execution of it in several places. Bin, by this reports aims to situate the violence in a wider context in which two proximate communities, Jews and Muslims, are allotted unequal rights and unequal privileges. For example, in response to Secretary General of the prefecture, Joseph Landel, pleading for calm on the morning of the fourth of August 4, Ben badas saw larger processes underway whereby French policy had brought about tensions between Muslims and Jews by inflating Jews power and creating in doing that kind of fear and a sense of powerlessness among Muslims. And he makes various commentaries about, you know, kind of, you know, equivalencies with like someone being what part someone would do if they were being pursued by a beast, by a wild you know what people do under threat? The thing that emboldened the Jew to this repeated infringement is the weapons that they carry. With the knowledge that Muslims do not carry a weapon. They're not allowed to carry a weapon, and as long as they carry the Jews carry a weapon, they shoot for the slightest thing. But the evil does not end there. I asked him, thus the prefecture, the prefecture to disarm them, and he apologized, saying this is not possible in his implicit criticism of the inequality between. Jews and Muslims in Algeria, a product of French policy, Bin botta suggested France had created a haughty and disrespectful class when France's own agents couldn't, really couldn't disarm Muslims, meanwhile, humble and loyal are cast as restrained, serving as victims and peacemakers, right in conjunction with the narratives of historical Muslim Jewish symbiosis, it's difficult not to see this, not only as a sort of promotion of Islam as a salutary social force, but a criticism of how French colonial order fundamentally transformed Jews from a deeply rooted component of Algerian Muslim society of which binbadas was obviously considers itself very much a Part and representative of to something threatening, not only to Muslims, but even to public order under the French so So Bin bodies is writings on Jews in the interwar period can thus be read both as a critique of colonial racial hierarchies as well as a facet of his brand of Islam At the time, it serves as a reminder of the of the problems we face when centering the Muslim, Jewish, quote, unquote relationship as a unit of scholarly analysis, while muting direct criticism of France, He also pledged to pledge loyal to his publication showed how in Palestine and Algeria, European powers were enforcing colonial policies that empower Jews and encourage them to advance their interests at the expense of Muslims. In doing so, these policies dramatically change the very meanings of Muslim and Jew, placing elements of a historic shared Islamic culture into contemporary conflict, perhaps paradoxically, his vision of the modernist of the modern Islamic subject was distinct from yet loyal to France. So casting modern Jews as disloyal or haughty towards manifestation of French authority constitute part of his critique of contemporary Jews, what the French created. Essentially, nonetheless, his vision of Islamic civilization was often, in the end, very, quite inclusive and more so than many of his nationalist rivals at the time. In this light, I think we ought to take the writings that he published, however idealized of a shared Jewish Muslim past, as serious, or as Dr Abu Ali, one of the Brooklyn based interlocutors that he published in Al Shahab, put it, if we interrogate this history, we find it tells us the Jews placed precious stones in the edifice of the civilization whose light radiated from the Maghreb. From among the Jews came poets and intellectuals and philosophers, and they had collections of poetry and other books in Arabic, testifying to the fact that they worked in his Arab minority civilization, and they were part of it. It was their civilization. Thank you.

Speaker 2 42:54

Thank you so much. My pleasure. It's really engaging and interesting the talk and and we'll probably, we're gonna end it here. Thank you very much. Thank you.

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