The French daily newspaper Le Monde is perpetuating the denial of self-defining Kabyle fact. Is this just ignorance or manipulation?

In its April 15th, 2006 edition, the French daily paper Le Monde published an article written by Xavier Ternisien (a journalist moreover known for his Islamic sympathies, for which we wonder what he is doing in the editorial staff of such a prestigious newspaper).

This article concerns the name to be given to a secondary school being built in Nanterre, in Hauts-de-Seines. Mr Ternisien reported that an association of this locality asked that this school be called with the name of the Kabyle sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad, whose origins (Low Kabylia) were even reminded by the journalist. Up to here, nothing is astounding, or shocking.

What is more astonishing and shocking is the title of the article which recalled the “Arab name” of the sociologist. This Kabyle-Arab confusion is maintained throughout the article till the end, where a “personality of Arab origin” is recalled.

Certainly, etymologically, both the name and the forename of Abdelmalek Sayad are Arab. But does it mean that this sociologist, an eminent specialist of the Kabyle society (that he decoded for Pierre Bourdieu) is Arab? The Malaysian prime minister is called Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Would the correspondent of Le Monde in South-East Asia therefore consider him as a “personality of Arab origin” ? It does not seem as well that Haitian leaders as Jean-Bertrand Aristide or Gérard Latortue are described in the columns of Le Monde as “personalities of French origin” Do they?

This article is only perpetuating the unbearable amalgam which transforms automatically every North African into Arab, even when he himself does not claim to belong to this language and this culture. The Kabyle fact, the Amazigh (Berber) fact is once more disclaimed, in the columns of a paper which considers itself as a reference for the French printed press. Persisting in error (or dishonesty), Xavier Ternisien held up as an example of another “personality of Arab origin”, the medieval scholar Avicenna who, as everyone knows, was Persian!

One is forced to conclude then that the cultural hold up committed by the Arabo-Islamism allies against anything that is Kabyle and Amazigh, finds in France a good number of complacent intermediaries, including (and perhaps especially) among the intelligentsia auto-proclaimed “immigrants’ friend”.

Let us therefore clear things up to Mr Ternisien and his fellows: if, as you say it yourselves, Abdelmalek Sayad was Kabyle (and even a specialist of Kabyle customs and traditions), he could not then necessarily be Arab, nor could he be Tibetan, Uzbek or Latvian. The Arabity and the Kabylity are not two identities that can be combined like bunk beds, the first one covering the second, but simply two different identities.

It is not so difficult to understand though…

By: Yidir Achouri
April 16th, 2006
Translation: D. Messaoudi