Link Salad, the Je Suis Daoud Edition
-- The Daoud Affair - Adam Shatz, The London Review of Books, Mar. 4, 2016
"Valls has also been behind the increasingly punitive security measures in France, such as the extension of the emergency law - he told an interviewer on the BBC that it should remain in effect indefinitely, or until the Islamic State is completely liquidated - and the ‘décheance de la nationalité’, an amendment to the Constitution that would strip binational French citizens implicated in terrorism of their nationality. Not only does the décheance create two categories of citizenship - something not seen in France since Vichy - but it implies that the blame for French jihadism, which is very much homegrown, a product of the banlieues and provincial towns, can be shifted onto countries that France once ruled on the other side of the Mediterranean. Valls, it seems, would like to exonerate France of responsibility for ‘its’ Muslims, while adopting the cause of North African critics of Islamism like Kamel Daoud, as if the Mediterranean separating France and Algeria were ‘like the Seine running through Paris’, in the words of an old colonial slogan."
-- Stranger Still - Adam Shatz, The New York Times Magazine, Apr. 1, 2015
"He might have been describing the Islam that he knew as a child in Mesra, a village in northwestern Algeria. The Daouds, he said, “were sure of their faith, so they didn’t feel they had to defend it, unlike the Islamists today, who are incredibly fragile.” The same was true of his family’s attachment to the land: They were patriots who lived through the War of Independence but felt no need to deny “the complexities of life under colonialism.” In school, he learned “a single story,” a black-and-white tale of infallible mujahedeen battling evil French settlers. At home, though, his grandparents told him about the impoverished French they knew in Mesra; about the Catholic priest who fed the family in times of shortage; about French soldiers who deserted their posts, rather than torture and kill. Later he would learn that his father’s first great love was not his mother but a Frenchwoman with whom he was involved during the war."
"Valls has also been behind the increasingly punitive security measures in France, such as the extension of the emergency law - he told an interviewer on the BBC that it should remain in effect indefinitely, or until the Islamic State is completely liquidated - and the ‘décheance de la nationalité’, an amendment to the Constitution that would strip binational French citizens implicated in terrorism of their nationality. Not only does the décheance create two categories of citizenship - something not seen in France since Vichy - but it implies that the blame for French jihadism, which is very much homegrown, a product of the banlieues and provincial towns, can be shifted onto countries that France once ruled on the other side of the Mediterranean. Valls, it seems, would like to exonerate France of responsibility for ‘its’ Muslims, while adopting the cause of North African critics of Islamism like Kamel Daoud, as if the Mediterranean separating France and Algeria were ‘like the Seine running through Paris’, in the words of an old colonial slogan."
-- Stranger Still - Adam Shatz, The New York Times Magazine, Apr. 1, 2015
"He might have been describing the Islam that he knew as a child in Mesra, a village in northwestern Algeria. The Daouds, he said, “were sure of their faith, so they didn’t feel they had to defend it, unlike the Islamists today, who are incredibly fragile.” The same was true of his family’s attachment to the land: They were patriots who lived through the War of Independence but felt no need to deny “the complexities of life under colonialism.” In school, he learned “a single story,” a black-and-white tale of infallible mujahedeen battling evil French settlers. At home, though, his grandparents told him about the impoverished French they knew in Mesra; about the Catholic priest who fed the family in times of shortage; about French soldiers who deserted their posts, rather than torture and kill. Later he would learn that his father’s first great love was not his mother but a Frenchwoman with whom he was involved during the war."