Contenu de l'article

Titre Islam, pureté et modernité : Les « innovations blâmables » en débat au Maghreb, 1920-1950
Auteur Augustin Jomier
Mir@bel Revue Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales
Numéro vol. 73, no 2, avril-juin 2018 Écrire l'histoire de l'islam moderne et contemporain – Biologie et sciences sociales
Rubrique / Thématique
Écrire l'histoire de l'islam moderne et contemporain
Page 385-410
Résumé anglais From the 1930s to the 1950s, various polemics shook the Mizab region in the north of the Algerian Sahara, then under French rule. Islamic scholars were arguing about the consumption of European goods, raising a number of questions about their lawfulness. Historians typically analyze these polemics as a form of cultural resistance to colonization, or as a sign of the allegedly difficult adaptation of “Islam” to “modernity.” They single out two types of reaction: that of self-professed “reformist” scholars, and that of “conservatives” lampooned as the buttresses of a barren tradition. Based on the case of Mizab and on a wide range of Islamic legal documents, this article opens up a new perspective on the relations between Islam, modernity, and colonialism, demonstrating that other logics were also at work. For the Islamic scholars involved, the most important issue at stake was the purity of their community and the means of preserving it in a context of cultural and political uncertainty. Using the tools of Islamic law, the advocates and detractors of these “innovations” were trying to control and delineate the community they led. By bringing together colonial and Islamic sources, Colonial Studies and Islamic Studies, this article challenges a reading of the modern history of Islam based on notions such as modernity and reform, which were largely instrumental to these debates. It also moves away from a historiography that is blind to the internal complexity of these societies, drawing attention to the different rationalities at work in colonial North Africa.
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