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The veil or a brothers life: Frenchmanipulations of Muslim
womens images
during the Algerian War, 195462
Elizabeth Perego*
Department of History, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH,
USA
In the middle of the Algerian War of Independence, the French
military and government launchedan elaborate campaign to liberate
Algerian Muslim women. The timing of its inception indicatedone of
the strongest motivations behind this elaborate series of policies.
Indeed, Frenchpropagandists and officials, prompted by the
appearance on the international stage of modern-looking female
Algerian nationalist agents, scrambled to uphold the myth that
Algerian Muslimgender relations in the territory were backwards and
only they could rectify this shortcomingin Algerian society. They
consequently embarked upon the emancipation campaign mainly
inpursuit of convincing outsiders of Frances purported ability and
duty to make Algeriamodern. For this reason, the production of
photographic evidence capable of visuallydemonstrating that Muslim
women were becoming French and liberated under French guidancewas
one of the campaigns central aims. In order to obtain such
evidence, military agentsexploited and falsified representations of
Muslim women, a process this article examines. Thepresent work
additionally elucidates many of the hypocrisies inherent in the
French armysexploitation of Muslim women and their bodies through
their elaborate propagandist efforts;through their actions on the
ground in Algeria, French soldiers and military leaders,
includingindividuals directly implicated in the emancipation
campaign, were actually confining,abusing, and torturing Muslim
women rather than freeing them.
Keywords: Algerian War; French imperialism; Orientalism;
decolonisation; women
Introduction
On 26 May, 1958, in the midst of the War of Independence,
Monique Amziane addressed acrowd gathered in the Algerian city of
Constantine. In her speech, she expressed her desire tobecome
emancipated and then ripped off her veil. Amziane intended through
this symbolicgesture to convince other women to discard their
headscarves, a supposed sign of their will tobecome modern under
French tutelage.What the crowd and international journalists
gathered at the square did not see, however, was
the hand French officials had in this Muslim womans spontaneous
unveiling. French officials
*Email: [email protected]
2015 Taylor & Francis
The Journal of North African Studies, 2015Vol. 20, No. 3,
349373, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2015.1013942
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had tried for several days to find a Muslim woman willing to
demonstrate her allegiance to FrenchAlgeria by shedding her
headscarf in public, but to no avail; not a single woman they
approachedagreed to help them. Frustrated, they hatched another
plan. They entered the high school whereAmziane studied and
proceeded to offer her an ultimatum: either she took off a veil in
front of acrowd or they would kill her brother, whom they had
recently arrested for harbouring nationalistagents. Amziane had
never before donned a veil in her life.1
As the French archives reveal, Amziane was only one of
manyMuslim women the French usedas pawns in the latter part of the
war to show the world that they were emancipating these
women.MacMaster (2009), Sambron (2007, 2008), and Seferdjeli
(2004a, 2004b, 2004c) have traced howthe French launched a series
of reforms in the middle of the war aimed at liberating these
women.These scholars have likewise demonstrated how the need for
French administrators to presentFrance as a benevolent modernising
nation to the international community drove this campaign.Yet,
nowork has fully examined how, due to this need to visually show
foreign observers they weremaking Algerian Muslim women modern, the
emancipation campaign revolved around manip-ulating Muslim womens
images. Finally, as Amzianes case evinces, the ways in which
theFrench sought to make Algerian Muslim women appear emancipated
often clashed with the sup-posed goals of the campaign and French
intentions behind it to free Muslim women. Indeed,coercing women to
unveil or depicting them without their permission robbed these
women ofthe liberty to act as they chose and to represent
themselves, an aspect of the campaign whichmerits further scholarly
attention.This article will respond to this need for a more
thorough investigation of how the French
manipulated representations of Muslim women during the conflict.
It will argue that theFrench portrayed these women as helpless
victims of a patriarchal society in order to posit them-selves as
their modernising saviours. In doing so, it will undercut French
claims to havelaunched this campaign purely out of a desire to
assist these women. Furthermore, French por-trayals of Algerian
Muslim women distorted reality by obscuring the active role these
womenplayed in society, another facet of this history the present
work will explore.Additionally, I investigate how the French sought
to liberate Algerian Muslim women in the
context of one of the worlds longest and deadliest decolonising
conflicts. In doing so, it willdemonstrate that French military
propagandists drew upon dated, Orientalist ideas in a chargedCold
War climate to make it appear as though they were modernising
Muslim women and thushad an obligation to stay in Algeria.
Furthermore, the importance of international publicopinion to
French officials decision to start a campaign to liberate Algerian
Muslim womenhas been illustrated by MacMaster (2009, 69) but not
analysed in depth, a task this article willundertake. The current
work will contend that the timing of the French decision to
intensifytheir efforts to liberate Muslim women and their
propaganda towards them, which coincidedwith the revelation of
European-looking nationalist female fighters to the international
commu-nity, indicates that the true purpose of the campaign was to
show the world that they and notnationalists were the best-suited
to freemodern women by transforming them from backwardsMuslims to
chic French women. Although MacMaster has waged that the
radicalisation of thecampaign was triggered in part by the noise
female nationalist fighters made in the internationalpress, I
emphasise that the response of French officials was particularly
centred on alteringMuslim womens appearance to make it visually
seem as if these women were becomingmodern by adopting Western
dress, hairstyles, etc. with their assistance rather than that of
thenationalist movement. I will further highlight in ways that
previous scholarship on the topichas not entirely explored how
French officials skewed representations of Muslims,
oftentimesportraying Muslim women in ways they knew to be
distorted. The false notions French propagan-
E. Perego350
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dists concerning Muslim women will also be explored, most
notably the misguided idea thatMuslim women had been politically
inactive prior to the emancipation campaign, they constituteda
homogenous entity, were the prisoners of a retrograde,
male-dominated society while Frenchwomen were not, and secretly
yearned to become like their metropolitan and pied noir
counter-parts. Finally, this work analyses images of Muslim women
that the architects of French militarypropaganda diffused and their
significance.
Motivations behind the French policy of emancipating Algerian
women
A number of factors influenced the French government and
militarys choice to attempt to mod-ernise Algerian women in the
middle of the War of Independence. None of these proved
greater,however, than French administrators and military leaders
desire to show the international com-munity they were leading
Algeria into the modern era in the context of a decolonisation
warbrimming with moral ambiguity and marked by terrible violence.
The Algerian War was oneof the most brutal wars of the twentieth
century and arguably the deadliest decolonisationstruggle, pitting
a nationalist movement eventually monopolised by the National
LiberationFront (FLN) against local agents of French authority and
then the French military, includinglocal Muslim soldiers called
h.arks. It was also a war that international observers, in both
colonis-ing and colonised nations, watched intently; Algeria was an
integral part of France and home toone million settlers and stood
as Frances longest-held colony on the African continent.
Partici-pants and observers alike knew that its destiny could
easily set the pace for the future of coloni-alism or its demise
around the world.By the time of the War of Independence and well
into the conflict several realities coalesced to
incite French agents to reform statutes influencing Muslim
womens rights as a heavy politicalweapon in their arsenal of
propaganda. Up until the post-Second World War era, both
metropo-litan French officials and representatives of Algerias pied
noir settler community did little toimprove the condition of
Algerian Muslim women. At this time, Muslim women were the
onlyadult residents of the empire who could not vote, most were
illiterate, and very few had receivedformal education (Seferdjeli
2004b, 2124). Even the few Algerian Muslim girls who
attendedschools were subjected to the everyday forms of racism and
humiliation that were rampant inthe French territory well into the
post-Second World War era.Already before the war, the French
controllers of Algeria had confronted potential international
criticism for their failure to grant Muslim women rights and
educational opportunities comparableto those of French women. In
1947, the United Nations (UN) established the Commission on
theStatus of Women. The body was charged with ensuring that all
member states of the UN wereallocating better rights and privileges
to women residing in their countries. After failing togrant
Algerian women the right to vote following the Second World War,
French administratorsfretted over potential international
condemnation, particularly from American diplomats
andrepresentatives and the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW),
over their inaction onMuslim womens rights.2 That same year,
however, the pied noir lobby in Algerias parliamentblocked a motion
to enfranchise Muslim women, to the chagrin of many male Muslim
represen-tatives; the settlers had no desire to see the number of
individuals in the Algerian Muslim electo-rate double, even if such
a move would not have loosened their monopoly on power in
theAlgerian legislature and would have made them appear more
progressive in the eyes of the inter-national community. Regardless
of pressure from the CSW, French administrators allowed thequestion
of whether Muslim women should receive the right to vote to die in
the Algerian Assem-bly in the late 1940s.
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The French only appeared even more ill-apt to ensure the
betterment of Algerian Muslimwomen and their condition when Sultan
Mohammed V of Moroccos daughter and nationalistsupporter Lalla Acha
began speaking publicly about womens rights in the Muslim world
inthe 1940s. Through her actions, this female Muslim intellectual
demonstrated that the advance-ment of womens condition in the
then-French colony was not dependent upon the actions ofthe
European colonisers but could instead be put into motion through
the efforts of local actorssuch as herself. For instance, during a
speech in front of the camera in 1947, the princess unveiled.Up
until this point, a relatively small minority of women in the
Middle East and North Africaregion outside of Turkey had chosen to
unveil and never before had a highly mediatised publicunveiling
occurred in French-controlled North Africa (MacMaster 2009,
126127).Lalla Achas choice to shed her head scarf in front of the
lenses of the foreign press raises an
important question: what kinds of reforms or cultural changes
regarding Muslim women, theirrights, and their lifestyles were
international actors such as the members of the CSW lookingfor
states to make in the 1940s and 1950s? How did foreign observers
gauge the success withwhich nations were improving the lives of
women in this post-Second World War context andwhat kinds of
symbols did they consider progressive or, conversely, oppressive?
To beginwith, foremost among the goals and in the eyes of most of
international commentators and theFrench, governments around the
globe had to strive to make women, their status in society,and
their lives more modern and modernity meant adopting European or
American values,customs, and lifestyles, including the consumption
of European and American goods. One ofthe few efforts French
administrators undertook to try to assist Muslim women and girls
involvedforming a Muslim girls scouting group in the early 1950s. A
report on one of the Association ofMuslim Girl Scouts, arranged
trips lamented certain gaps in the training and upbringing that
madethese girls in need of such intervention from the state to
become modern. The writers of thisreport placed the veil in direct
contradiction with modern activities such as making a phonecall.
They also suggested that Muslim society imposed restrictions more
on those women whoveiled than those who did not veil. Above all,
the authors stressed that exposure to Frenchculture modernised
Muslim women.3 What is more, during the decades leading up to the
AlgerianWar of Independence, international womens organisations
identified a number of traditions theyassociated with Islam that
they considered harmful to womens rights.4 Of course, due to
theregional and personal diversity of interpretations of Islamic
religious tenants, not all Muslimsaccepted these customs as a part
of their religious duties. Yet, Orientalist interpretations ofIslam
obscured the religions diversity as well as that of different
Muslims ideas of appropriategender roles. Indeed, widespread
representations of Muslim women appearing in European cul-tural
productions for centuries such as lusty postcards from
nineteenth-century French-controlledAlgeria shaped international
actors beliefs about Algerian and Muslim women and society.
Forinstance, French artists sexualised the veil and used it as a
marker of Algerian societys Other-ness. International actors who
were overwhelmingly European or the elites of non-Europeannations
exposed to Western ideas perceived the veil as an instrument of
Islamic patriarchaloppression. The abandonment of this practice
thus marked for these observers a sign ofwomens advancement (See
Alloula 1986).Despite the negative attention the example of Lalla
Acha drew to the situation of Algerian
Muslim womens rights under French rule, in the early 1950s
French administrators still didnot move to change the legal,
social, and political status of Muslim women. Even the onset ofthe
conflict did not induce a shift in French administrators attitudes
on the subject. What thenprompted them to start modernising
Algerian Muslim women in the middle of the war?
E. Perego352
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The first signs of change regarding French administrators
attitudes towards Muslim womensrights came in 1956 and 1957 when
nationalist movements in neighbouring Morocco and
Tunisiasuccessfully negotiated for independence from France. Mere
months after becoming independentTunisia adopted a new legal code
that did away with customs international womens groups likethe CSW
considered deleterious for women, including polygamy and permitting
women to bemarried without their consent. The new government under
Habib Bourguiba ensured equal citi-zenship for men and women as
well.5 French-controlled Algeria, where such practices
remainedlicit and Muslim women still did not enjoy full political
rights, now drew a poor contrast withTunisia when it came to the
international communitys conceptions of womens rights.6
In light of reforms in Tunisia, then Algerian governor general
Robert Lacoste asked experts inhis administration as well as
academics to start designing a new law code for Muslims in
Algeriathat would purportedly lessen patriarchal constraints upon
Muslim womens lives. These bureau-crats and scholars looked at the
changes Bourguiba and the nationalist government in Tunisia hadmade
to pre-existing tenants of family law (MacMaster 2009, 83). At this
time, though, Frenchadministrators did nothing to publicise these
initial efforts at reform and it would take almosttwo years for the
French to implement the changes.7 As mentioned above, Algerian
Muslimwomen were still unable to vote at this time, a problem the
French did not address during thefirst few years of the war. In
1956, deputy director of political affairs Villeneuve wrote to
thedirector general of political affairs about including Muslim
women in the electorate, explainingthat their exclusion is
completely temporary. Yet, this missive contained not a single iota
ofthe sense of urgency to extend the right to vote to Algerian
Muslim women French officialsexpressed as few as 18 months
later.8
If Bourguibas progressive measures towards Tunisian women
prompted fears on the part ofFrench government agents, the rise to
global fame of modern-looking Algerian nationalistfemale fighters
persuaded them that they had to act on the womens issue or face not
only inter-national scrutiny but potentially the loss of Algeria.
As Matthew Connelly has explained, both theFrench and nationalists
fought the Algerian War of Independence on the international stage;
theconflicts two belligerents recognised that the support or
condemnation of foreign nations andleaders would prove the tipping
point in determining who won and who lost the war (Connelly2002).
Although international scrutiny of Frances actions in Algeria
certainly existed prior tothe war, with the latters outbreak it
skyrocketed and greatly constrained both sides actions.Members of
the international press reported from Algeria throughout the
conflict. The French con-trolled the movement of foreign
correspondents stationed in Algeria but restricting their access
tocertain areas only raised further criticism (Connelly 2002, 132).
During the war, various Asian andAfrican countries gained their
independence and began forming their own anti-colonial block in
theUN, a union that repeatedly supported FLN delegates efforts to
get the General Assembly to con-sider Algerian independence as an
issue. America also had not hesitated to bare its teeth during
theSuez Crisis late 1956 to buck European imperial interests in
North Africa. As a result, French del-egates, diplomats, and
leaders were highly aware that the UN, with the backing of
Americans andformer colonies across the globe, could impose
sanctions. Furthermore, in 1958 FLN representa-tives at UN
headquarters in New York began pushing to be recognised as
delegates of an indepen-dent Algerian people. As a result, France
stood to lose much clout as well as real economic anddiplomatic
interests if it failed to persuade the international community that
French officialswere doing all they could to improve the lives of
Algerian Muslim women.The increased international focus on French
conduct in Algeria meant that, when journalists
caught wind of the French armys use of torture during
interrogations of FLN militants,France found itself facing a crisis
that its officials could only dig their way out of by resorting
The Journal of North African Studies 353
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to intense propaganda measures, in which, as will be seen below,
the emancipation campaign fea-tured centrally. In the middle of the
war, members of the French community and AlgerianMuslims began
recounting harrowing stories of suffering at the hands of French
soldiers. Forinstance, French soldiers during so-called
interrogations forced Algerians they suspected of col-lusion with
the nationalist movement to drink water until the point of vomiting
and shocked themwith a small electrical instrument called the ggne
at various points on their bodies. Throughoutthis procedure,
suspects, male and female, were typically naked. These methods were
so severe,moreover, that French soldiers killed an unknown number
of the Muslim community (Branche2001). Bouhired depicted her
treatment during 17 days of her interrogation, the
appellationFrench military agents designated virtually all such
torture session, in an account that went onto be printed in Time
magazine (March 17, 1958):
They stripped me naked and tied me on a bench, taking care to
put damp cloths under the cords thatbound me. They then fixed
electric contacts to my sexual organs, my ears, my mouth, the palms
of myhands, my nipples, and my forehead. At 3 in the morning I
fainted. Later, I became delirious. Everytime, while one of the
paratroopers worked the machine, the others took notes.
In the spring of 1957, the foreign press picked up on horrendous
stories such as Bouhireds ofsoldiers brutal treatment of Algerian
Muslims in French custody (Le Sueur 2001, 155162).The torture
scandal shocked the world as France was signatory to a number of
international con-ventions banning its use.9 With the revelation
that French soldiers were torturing Algerian nation-alists and
civilians they accused of assisting the latter, to try to keep
Algeria French, more thanever the French needed to prove that they
constituted a modernising and not fascist-like force.Such
discoveries also threatened to bring the full weight of the UN down
on the French fortheir conduct in Algeria. 1957 also marked the
earliest revelation of the French armys use ofrape as a weapon of
warfare during the conflict. An organisation affiliated with the UN
reportedlate that year on the tales of torture and rape they had
received from female Algerian refugees inTunisia. French officials
carefully detailed these allegations in their records.10
The publicisation of the French armys use of torture coincided
with the emergence in themedia of European-looking Algerian female
nationalist fighters. In late 1956, young womenincluding Zohra
Drif, Djamila Bouhired, and Samia Lakhdari dressed as French
settler womento pose bombs in restaurants and cafes in Algiers
European neighbourhoods. The French militarydid not arrest Drif,
Bouhired, and Lakhdari, though, until late spring 1957. The capture
of thesewomen and their subsequent trials signalled to the French
and the international community thateducated Algerian Muslim women
who had adopted European dress and habits, supposedmarkers of
modernity, were supporting the nationalist mission. One of these
women, Bouhired,went on to become a cause clbre among European
intellectual circles and internationalfigures such as Lalla Acha
(Le Sueur 2001, 228230; New York Times, December 31, 1957).From a
middle-class Algerian family, Bouhired was one of the educated,
urban-dwellingwomen who joined the FLN and was later asked by the
nationalist movement to place bombsin the European sector of
Algiers to respond to ones that unknown European agents hadplaced
in the Muslim neighbourhood, the Casbah. She was arrested for her
participation in theinsurgency on 7 April 1957. During her trial,
her lawyer decried the torture army soldiers had sub-jected his
client to and used the trial as a forum for denouncing Frances use
of excessive violencein the conflict. Global media outlets followed
the cases development and included details ofBouhireds torture as
outlined above in their articles (Le Sueur 2001, 228; MacMaster
2009,318). Her modern appearance garnered her sympathy and
attention with international journal-ists, moreover, and a survey
of their writings on her demonstrates the extent to which the
press
E. Perego354
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narrowed in on Muslim female combatants appearance in their
descriptions of the latter. Forexample, the Time piece on Bouhired
referred to the young revolutionary as pretty and doe-eyed.11 Like
the majority of urban female combatants during the Battle of
Algiers, Bouhireddid not veil and wore European-style
clothes.Revealed years after the war but illustrating the kind of
prowess on the part of Algerian nation-
alist women to exploit European stereotypes of Oriental and
Occidental women, the accountof nationalist female combatant Malika
Ighalihriz demonstrates the extent to which some femaleFLN fighters
embodied contemporary international observers notion of modern
women. In theprocess, they challenged earlier Orientalist ideas
regarding the static nature of Muslim culturesand the inability of
Orientals to adapt to modernity. In an interview with historian
Amrane(1994, 148149), Ighalihriz described how she altered her
appearance to smuggle lettersbetween the Casbah and Europeans
neighbourhoods according to her location:
I had my hair to the wind To return to the Casbah, I would park
on Victory BoulevardOne couldsee me getting out the car in French
style, I would enter my apartment where I put on my veil
andhandkerchief, I would come out veiled and head to the Casbah. I
would deliver what I was supposedto drop off and pick up what was
supposed to go out of the Casbah, messages, weapons. And I wouldgo
through the same whirlwind of motions. In the hallway of an
apartment, I took off the veil, put mylipstick and my sunglasses
back on, went out and climbed back into my beautiful car.
The image of unveiled mujhidt such as Ighalihriz and Bouhired
threatened to unravel Francesjustification for continued presence
in Algeria.12 Their engagement on the side of the FLN, whenviewed
through the eyes of French officials, shattered the latters
rationale for conducting the war.French authorities posited the war
for foreign observers as a clash between civilisation and
reli-gious fanaticism (Connelly 2002, 33, 8788, 128, and 137140).
The FLN female combatantslevel of education and European-style
appearance challenged the myth of Muslim backwardness,as Western
agents had historically constructed it by pointing to the
purportedly retrograde char-acter of Muslim gender relations, and,
hence, the justification for Frances continued presence inAlgeria.
With modern-looking Muslim womens rebel activity a reality, Frances
reputation asboth a colonial and international power was at stake;
if nationalists succeeded where theFrench had failed, then why
should the international community allow France to retain
Algeriaand the rest of its colonial possessions?What is more, by
this time and perhaps as a response to the mediatisation of
Algerian female
nationalist combatants, Lalla Acha solidified her role as symbol
of a free, modern Muslimwoman in a newly liberated Morocco. Indeed,
the princess of the newly independent neighbourof Algeria garnered
so much international attention as the epitome of a modernMuslim
womanthat Timemagazine featured her on their cover in November 1957
under the title, The Emancipa-tion of Moslem Women (Time, November
1957). Other publications around the world dedicatedarticles to her
at an earlier period as well (New York Times, November 9, 1947 and
September 6,1955). Lalla Achas actions proved to the international
community that Muslims were capable ofadvancing womens rights
without the intervention of European powers such as France.Fretful
French administrators responded quickly to the emergence into
public view of
European-looking nationalist women. From April to June 1957,
Lacoste issued calls to hiscabinet members to complete the plans to
reform womens personal status at the shortestdelay.13 From mid to
late 1957, French military film propagandists shot a documentary
aboutincluding French women helping locals, including Muslim
women.14 Furthermore, in laterinternal reports on Frances
propaganda, the FLN pointed to April 1957 as the moment theFrench
began their campaign to win Algerian women over to their side.15 It
should be mentioned,
The Journal of North African Studies 355
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though, that as early as 1955 and throughout 1956, French
soldiers uncovered evidence thatAlgerian Muslim women were not only
taking part in nationalist movement but fulfilling essentialtasks
in the uprising (MacMaster 2009, 9899; CAOM 7G 1143A). MacMaster
even points to therevelation of nurses in July 1956 as an impetus
for the French to intensify the emancipation cam-paign. What is
more, a number of young colonels highly interested in propagandist
methods cameto the fore of French military power around this time
(MacMaster 2009, 69). Despite these dis-coveries, however, only
after modern-looking nationalist women became the object of
inter-national attention in April 1957 did French military leaders
and propagandists set aboutattempting to convince Algerian Muslim
women and the international community that theFrench could best
help these women to become modern by encouraging them to unveil.
Thismoment marked a tactical shift in the emancipation
campaign.
Once the French began their campaign to incite Muslim women to
appear as though they werebecoming modern with the assistance of
metropolitan culture, further revelations convinced theFrench to
continue with these efforts. In April 1958, a woman sent a letter
to the military expres-sing her delight that the local radio
station, Radio Casbah, was decrying veiling. BrigadierGeneral
Jacques Massu, the infamous leader of the French paratroopers
during the Battle ofAlgiers, wrote in a letter to the Prefect of
Algiers and Inspector General of the Administrationin Extraordinary
Mission:
I have already had the opportunity to express my fear to see us
surpassed on this issue (Muslimwomens unveiling) by the FLN who
could advocate for a similar evolution of customs with
greatsuccess, betting on assured impunity and a general desire for
emancipation It appears indispensableto me that the order of
unveiling be given now with clarity and with force.16
This letter evinces that not only that some of the highest
French military leaders of the conflictconcerned themselves with
the supposed need to liberate Algerian Muslim, but that they
specifi-cally feared that the FLN would beat them in this task.
Massu uses the term see here most likelyout of concern that the FLN
would visibly win over Muslim women to their side. His word
choiceillustrates his recognition that Muslim women unveiling for
the nationalist movement could provefatal to the French side
because of the visual impact it produced.Admittedly, some military
concerns drove the French campaign. The French feared any space
into which they could not penetrate, including the veil, and
this most likely pushed them to encou-rage Muslim women to discard
this garment.17 What is more, as Ighalihrizs account aboveevinces,
nationalist men and women modified veiling patterns to fulfil their
aims, occasionallyusing headcoverings or the absence of a veil to
stealthily sneak weapons, packages, or lettersthrough areas or to
infiltrate European districts. Furthermore, when French
paratroopers arrestedZohra Drif, they discovered plans she had for
the creation of a womens corps within the FLN(SHAT 1H 2582). This
finding may have shocked French officials into realising that, if
theydid not move quickly, the nationalist group would succeed at
persuading Algerian Muslimwomen to support their cause. Involvement
of women in the nationalist camp thus not onlydamaged French
officials credibility in the international arena, but also hindered
their effortsto keep Algeria French through a military victory.
Muslim women made up half the population;without their support, the
French had no way of successfully thwarting a rebellion that relied
onsubterfuge and popular support for its survival.Yet, as the
timing of the French decision to launch the campaign to emancipate
Muslim women
shows, the emergence of modern-looking Algerian Muslim women
militating for the nationalistcause incited the French to launch
their emancipation campaign vis--vis Muslim women; theysought
through this operation to make it appear to the international
community as if they and not
E. Perego356
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the nationalists were liberating these women. The French did not
serve then as the unquestion-able beacons of modernity they
fashioned themselves as in propaganda. Rather, they
embroiledthemselves in a close competition with nationalists over
who could prove to outsiders that theywere best able to care for
Algeria and its people. Thus, in the midst of the war and
heightenedinternational scrutiny, the French had to prove to the
world that France had a legitimate reasonfor maintaining control
over the territory the need to modernise and thereby save
AlgerianMuslim women.
French fabrication of images of Algerian Muslim women
The French employed two tactics through their emancipation
campaign to reconfigure the wayMuslim women, and by extension the
French, appeared to the international community. Theywanted to
convince outsiders that French culture was liberating Muslim women,
therebyproving Frances success in its modernizing mission (Connelly
2002, 89). For the first tactic,French officials concocted
imaginary representations of Muslim women through staging eventsor
creating images and texts supposedly reflecting reality but in
actuality skewing it. They thensent these contrived representations
to the international and French media distributors. Thesecond
consisted of trying to transform Muslim womens actual appearance by
cajoling theminto abandoning local forms of dress, particularly the
veil. Military photographers could thensnap photos of these women
who had unveiled or whom French agents had convinced toappear as
though they were becoming twentieth-century French women, images
the French con-trived in a different sense, through subtle coercion
rather than outright fabrication.None of the French attempts to
change how Muslim women appeared in the eyes of the inter-
national community would have come to fruition without the aid
of a well-oiled propagandamachine. Luckily for French leaders, they
controlled information flowing out of Algeria duringthe war. In
addition to restricting foreign journalists movement within the
territory, the Frenchbegan fabricating its own propaganda. The
international communitys criticism of Francesconduct in the
conflict, especially after the scandal surrounding the armys use of
torture on sus-pected FLN combatants, meant that international
observers and audiences were loathe to believestories and photos
hailing from the French army. For this reason, French officials
made sure todissimulate their hand in the work they produced.In
January 1957, in the middle of the Battle of Algiers, the military
created the Fifth Bureau to
take charge of propaganda aimed at both the Muslim population
and international audiences.18
The French devoted two-thirds of the organisations mission to
studying local populations anddesigning works capable of winning
the latters allegiance to the colonialist cause. The otherthird
created propaganda for both metropolitan French and international
consumption. Thissection of the organisation proved capable of
turning out enough materials to dominate the inter-national press;
between 50% and 75% of global media images of the war hailed from
the armyscameras (MacMaster 2009, 153154, 162).Who were these
individuals in the Fifth Bureau who carved out images of Algerian
Muslim
women in the midst of the war? All were French Algerian-born
settlers or metropolitan Frenchand male. Very few had extensive
experience in Algeria prior to the outbreak of the warexcept those
of settler background (MacMaster 2009, 152154). They thus had very
littlecontact with local Muslim culture and did not possess the
knowledge necessary to represent itaccurately. Some propaganda was
based, however, on studies that ethnographers more familiarwith the
territory, but still French or settlers, produced. And it appeared
none could escape along heritage of Orientalist thought.19 Indeed,
the propaganda they produced recycled older Euro-
The Journal of North African Studies 357
-
pean notions of Arab and Muslim populations.20 Like
international observers, moreover, Frenchofficials equated modern
women with housewives and they demonstrated this equation
thoughtheir propaganda.Before examining the depiction of Muslim
women and society the Fifth Bureau contrived for
the international media, it is necessary to note the audiences
that consumed Fifth Bureaupropaganda. The propaganda agency sent
their work directly to metropolitan France, someLatin American
countries, the USA, and certainly a number of other countries. It
also distributedimages to international media agencies (CAOM 81 F
1450; CAOM 81 F 454; Connelly 2002,216; MacMaster 2009, 160 and
174, note 26).One myth these propagandists forwarded was the notion
that Muslim women had never been
involved in politics and public life until France intervened and
granted them political rights in1958. Following De Gaulles return
to the presidency that year, French officials accordedMuslim women
the right to vote, a right they first exercised in the September
1958 referendumon De Gaulles proposed new constitution.21 The
bestowal of political rights on these women fea-tured centrally in
the Fifth Bureaus international propaganda. For example, a Fifth
Bureau bro-chure declared,
But the referendum (in which women voted for the first time) had
even more significance for Algeria.For the first time in the
history of that country, the Moslem [sic] women took part in a
demonstrationof the popular will.22
Finally, a pamphlet entitled The Revolution of May Has
Emancipated the Algerian MuslimWomen explained how the new Algeria
would permit both men and women to engage in poli-tics together, an
insinuation that Muslim men and women had never before collaborated
in thecivic sphere.23
Despite these assertions, Algerian women had participated,
albeit in small numbers, in politicalgroups such as Algerian
Communist Party and the PPA-MTLD (Parti du people algrien
Mou-vement pour le triomphe des liberts dmocratiques, Algerian
Peoples Party Movement for theTriumph of Democratic Liberties)
prior to the start of the war (Sai 2002). French police at
leastrecorded the activities of these groups and noted womens
presence at Messali Hadjs MTLD-PPAmeetings, evincing that these
women had already prompted a bit of concern on part of the
colonialpower.24
Continuing in the trajectory of French propagandists logic
vis--vis Muslim women, FifthBureau officials similarly divulged
that, perhaps due to their exclusion from public life, Alger-ian
Muslim women were apathetic and inactive prior to the emancipation
campaign. In a film,The Falling Veil, that the Fifth Bureau created
for American audiences the narrator describesthe effect De Gaulles
visit to Algeria in June 1958 had on Algerian Muslim. He
declares,His confidence in the women acted almost as electric shock
which jolted them out of theirold attitude of apathy into a new
awareness of themselves.25 The movie thus painted thelatter as
disinterested creatures that only jump to life because of De
Gaulles presence andwords. For this reason, according to Fifth
Bureau pamphlets, the best remedy for Muslimwomens listlessness was
their continued exposure to French culture and people. Worse
still,the allusion here to shocking women appeared ironic in light
of French torture methods, anissue which will be elaborated upon
further below.26
Propaganda also depicted Muslim women as so stifled by their
society that they possessed noindividuality. In the pamphlet The
Revolution of May Has Emancipated the Algerian MuslimWomen,
propagandists penned the following about statement about Muslim
womens partici-pation in the September 1958 referendum:
E. Perego358
-
There is a sign (in women exercising their right to vote) of the
very clear evolution of their state infavor of their emancipation.
For an Algerian Muslim woman, to vote is to affirm her
personalityas well as her citizenship. It is often to accomplish an
act of faith, it is to believe in the newAlgeria, which will see
equality between men and women, in the familial as well as the
civiccontext.27
Through the material they published surrounding the May Days and
subsequent referendum, theFrench described women as secretly
yearning for emancipation and to become more like theirsisters in
the metropole. Although, as has been seen, propagandists claimed
that AlgerianMuslim women did not possess fully developed
personalities, they stated in propaganda thatthese women were aware
enough of their situation and status to want to be like
Frenchwomen. The expression Kif, Kif les franaises! or Lets be like
French women filled the cap-tions of army photographs officers had
taken of women. This cry supposedly encapsulatedMuslim womens
longing to metamorphose into modern French women.28
The three Algerian women who became representatives at the
French National Assembly epit-omised the image of Muslim women
French officials wanted to show the world.29 While thesewomen ran
for the position of delegate and were elected, most likely the
European-controlledwomens groups such as theMouvement de Solidarit
Fminin (the Movement of Feminine Soli-darity or MSF) in which these
women were involved prompted them to enter politics.30
Indeed,French officials had a great hand in these Algerian Muslim
womens rise to prominence and inter-national fame.31
The way French politicians and observers depicted the female
Algerian delegates to the FrenchNational Assembly following the
extension of the right to vote to Algerian Women in 1958 putinto
relief how essential their image and not their words was to the
French cause of remaining inAlgeria. The deputy Rebiha Kebtani was
one of the women who unveiled in the Algiers Forum, aclear sign of
the connection between Frances desire to show the international
community thatAlgerian Muslim women were becoming modern and the
ascension of these Algerian femaledelegates to the higher echelons
of political power. Little is known about her life before shebecame
a French representative. She was married at the age of 15, had 3
children, and hailedfrom the Northern Algerian town of Bjaa.
Kebtani joined a local womens group MadamesSalan and Massu
organised and probably through these connections decided to run for
represen-tative in the French National Assembly. She won a seat.
Despite her political victory, the Frenchpress did not say much
about what she planned to do while in office. Instead, they limited
theiranalysis on Kebtani to her family and physical appearance. The
metropolitan daily Le Figarodescribed her as an attractive
housewife and mother of three children while the newspaperAurore
reported that other representatives in the National Assembly
referred to her as the pin-up. It is entirely possible that
officials asked her to run as they had Sid Cara; her ascent
fromanonymity to the halls of French power would perfectly
illustrate how France modernisingforce could transform an ordinary,
backwards Muslim woman into a modern French one. Herimage as a
beautiful Muslim woman loyal to French Algeria could rival pictures
of FLNfemale combatants, moreover (Seferdjeli 2004b, 4849).The most
famous of the three Muslim female representatives, though, was
Nafissa Sid Cara,
whom the French did not hesitate to show off to diplomats and
the foreign press as theepitome of an assimilated Muslim woman. As
Seferdjeli (2004b, 50) writes,
In 1959, Nafissa Sid Cara became a curiosity, to repeat the
phrase of her chief of cabinet Roger Ben-mebarek, who pointed out
how journalists from as far as Japan came to see the first Muslim
womanappointed a Secrtaire dEtat (secretary of state) in a French
government,
The Journal of North African Studies 359
-
a treatment her male counterparts were spared. Yet,
administrators did not always greet her sug-gestions or welcome her
engagement in the male-dominated sphere of French politics.32 At
onepoint during a state trip to Algeria with Debr, she had to ask
to participate in major meetings andevents; up until that point in
the voyage, French officials had only assigned her the task of
visitinga kindergarten. When French officials acquiesced and
allowed her to speak in front of a crowd atAlgiers, she read the
speech they had prepared for her. Indeed, in an interview with
historianSeferdjeli (2004b, 52), Sid Caras niece admitted that, at
times during the war, her aunt feltused. Her niece stated that:
She (SidCara) had the feeling that she had been chosen because
ofwhat she represented and that shewasbeing used.Her
speecheswerewritten for her, but shewould re-write them. Sheknew
shewasbeing usedsince she was well accepted by the population in
Algeria. French officials treated this educated, Franco-phone elite
Muslim woman as the poster child of their campaign to
modernizeMuslim women ratherthan a politician and colleague. It is
telling that the French gaze signaled in on Sid Caras
appearancemuch more so than her words and actions, a further sign
that the French military and governmentwere then engaged in a
campaign to contort Muslim womens images to fit their
interests.
Kebtani and Sid Cara were not the only Muslim women whose
appearance the French fixated onwhile ignoring their thoughts and
opinions. French propagandists focused on ordinary AlgerianMuslim
womens looks rather than their voices as well. Specifically, they
targeted the veil. Inthe captions to photographs of the fraternity
parades that occurred in the wake of the May 8thcoup dtat, the
French referred to Algerian Muslim women as unveiled (MacMaster
2009,139). This purposeful lacuna in details (many women were
veiled) demonstrates the potencyof the term unveiled for them.Also,
the only Muslim womens words from these protests that these
captions captured was the
ubiquitous slogan supposedly shouted by these women, Kif, kif
les franaises (let us be likeFrench women), a phrase which served
their propagandist purposes. As was the case for represen-tations
of the delegates, these photos singular focus was on the womens
physical appearance.Yet, through the attribution of solely this
phrase with the images, Fifth Bureau propagandistssilenced the
voices of Algerian Muslim. These women must have uttered other
words andslogans during the demonstrations. However, the latter
have been lost to history in part as aresult of French elision.The
French attention to Algerian Muslim womens outward appearance and
the accompanying
lack of focus given to their words reflected the French
militarys desire to obfuscate Muslimwomens heterogeneity. Women
invariably called out different words and meanings,
perhapsreflecting the multiplicity of their attitudes and positions
on public affairs. Yet, the French hadno interest in showing the
diversity of Algerian Muslim women; admitting the complex natureof
Muslim society would have undermined their ability to make gross
generalisations aboutthe Algerian Muslim population. Thus, the
propaganda architects of the French armed servicescollapsed
Algerian Muslim women, who came from different regions, played
different economicand social roles, and even spoke different
dialects and two distinct local languages into a singularentity the
Algerian Muslim woman. But for this discursive innovation, which
they had used his-torically, the French could not as easily have
made blanket statements about Muslim womensattitudes, desires,
habits, and characteristics. In a similar vein, the French also
used the termveil to describe the multitude of head scarves
Algerian Muslim women wore at this time.33
Finally, the Algerian Muslim woman French propagandists
presented the world coweredbehind veils and inside prison-like
homes because Algerian men brutally confined them tothese spaces.
Connelly notes of The Falling Veil that, If there is a villain in
the piece, it is notspecifically the FLN, which is not even
mentioned, but rather Many Moslemswho insist
E. Perego360
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on total control and total obedience, whose wives are treated
little better than chattel (Connelly2002, 216). French
propagandists depicted Algerian Muslim society through this film as
stiflingMuslim womens existence. According to the film, traditional
society overburdens Muslimwomen and refuses to advance their
rights. The French depicted gender relations amongMuslims in this
way to imply Muslim women needed assistance to avoid lifetime of
mistreatmentat the hands of Muslim men.The title of this film also
touches on another overarching theme of French propaganda
regard-
ing Algeria Muslim women. It evokes how, in the French militarys
view of things, patriarchalAlgerian societys has employed the veil
to keep its women shrouded in darkness andsteeped in tradition as
to thereby keep these women distanced from modernity. Most likely
toreinforce the association of veiling with backward, cruel
repression, the French propagandistsbehind the movie emphasised how
the veil kept women inside of their homes and away fromthe
benevolent effects of contact with French culture.34 Quite
ironically, French Orientalistshad previously eroticised these
areas and therefore, during this early period, had not
questionedthe existence of these spaces. In the context of the
armed struggle, with international attentionhoned in on Algeria,
the case was different. Previous Orientalist rhetoric likewise
eroticisedthe veil. Yet, as mentioned above, in the decades
preceding the Algerian War, Western nationsincreasingly considered
veiling a backwards custom given the fervour against Islamic
head-scarves, especially in Muslim Turkey and the Soviet
Union.Thus, the French narrowed in on the veil as the symbol of the
repressive nature of Muslim
society vis--vis Muslim women because it served as a visual sign
that international observerswould easily recognise. All the French
needed in the context of the war was visible proof AlgerianMuslim
women had become modern with their assistance and no change could
be produced moresimply than the lifting of a garment. This
persuasive mechanism would also cost a great deal lessand involve
fewer administrative headaches than more substantive alterations
such as beginningto educate Muslim women.35 Finally, versed as many
of the Fifth Bureau agents were in theoriesabout behavioural
psychology, they were confident that they could condition Muslim
women toshed their headcoverings (MacMaster 2009, 152154).
Arent you pretty? Unveil!: French attempts to alter Muslim
womens physicalappearance
The mass unveilings in May 1958 also represented the second
means by which the French recon-figured Muslim womens images during
the war. Instead of merely tailoring a particular portrayalof these
women through their control and spread of discourse, the French
tried to change the wayreal Algerian Muslim women looked by
encouraging them to change their appearance.To begin with, French
military agents staged events where they forced women to behave
as
they desired and never far from the camera lens of army
photographers. Arguably, AlgerianMuslim womens public unveilings in
the wake of the May 13th coup constituted the greatestof these
arranged events.36 In the days following the militarys overturn of
the Algiers governmentin the midst of a legislative crisis in
France, Psychological Action agents of the French militarysFifth
Bureau organised the fraternisation events. They designed the
latter, typically pro-FrenchAlgeria marches and meetings, to
convince both the outside world of the righteousness of themilitary
officers Gaullist coup by showing the Muslim community would rally
to the cause ofFrench Algeria with De Gaulle at the helm of the
French state.37
Thus, the citys police and French military forces initially
orchestrated a great deal of the pro-peace demonstrations by
compelling Muslim men to come out for these protests. After
Muslim
The Journal of North African Studies 361
-
men, the turn fell to local women to be included in these
purportedly impromptu shows of loyaltyto French Algeria. Given that
the police and military rounded up men for these events, it is
entirelypossible that they did the same for women. On 17 May 1958,
a group of 12 Algerian womenappeared in the Forum. The Algerian
Muslim men who participated the fraternisation activitiesthat had
been taking place on the Forum since the coup on the 13th had not
adjusted theirattire as part of the manifestation of their
allegiance to France. These women, however, symbo-lically removed
the large white veils they were wearing and proceeded to burn
them.Not much is known about the women who participated in the
unveilings that occurred on 17
May. Most likely, some of them came from well-to-do Muslim
families and had either neverreally veiled or had veiled when they
were younger and then stopped. As MacMaster observesfrom the
surviving photographs of the events, two of the women seemingly
belonging to thelocal educated elite look as though they encouraged
other women to unveil that is, to takeoff their haks off their
heads and drape them over their shoulders, if not to remove them
comple-tely. MacMaster also comments that two of the women wear
clothing and hairstyles that suggestedthey belonged to the urban
Muslim elite (MacMaster 2009, 128). Like Amziane, they may haveonly
taken up the veil at the command of French officers, another
attestation of the theatrical andstaged character of this
spur-of-the-moment spectacle.What is known, however, is how the
French used the images of these women to forward their
own agenda of keeping Algeria French. Fifth Bureau agents
circulated photos in which formergovernor general of Algeria
Jacques Soustelle congratulates unveiling local women on their
sup-posed entry into modernity (CAOM 81 F 88). Photos of Muslim
women unveiling in the Forumalso circulated the international media
thanks to the efforts of the Fifth Bureau (SHAT 1 H 2504).They also
appeared in brochures given to global news distributors and foreign
governments likethe one in which these two images
appeared.Regarding the content of these images, military
photographers tended to show Algerian women
who did not share the appearance of modernity that some Algerian
women such as MoniqueAmziane and French women supposedly possessed.
For instance, in the photo of Soustelleencouraging the Muslim women
to drop their headscarves, the Muslim women who have purport-edly
just unveiled and who are smiling at the likewise beaming Soustelle
are not wearing makeupor European clothing or other contemporary
markers of beauty in Western nations. Other imageswhich eventually
made their way into the French press likewise showed Europeans
eitherencouraging or directly assisting in unmodern looking Muslim
womens shedding of head-scarves, although it is difficult to
determine whether these images came directly from militarycameras.
Le Figaro, for instance, published on the front page of its 20 May
1958 an image ofa European woman with her hair pulled back, made
up, and sporting pearls holding a veil thatshe has presumably just
lifted off the head of the Muslim woman standing to her right.
Thiswoman, wearing no makeup and ostensibly local clothing, is
holding her hands up as if tryingto while perhaps marvelling at the
sight of her uncovered arms, a clear sign that the woman isnot
accustomed to being unveiled in public. This representation of the
unveiling events, whichis presented to readers as a photograph but
appears to perhaps be an illustration, is indicativeof the type of
images pro-French Algeria newspapers and agents published, although
this exactphotograph may have not come from the armys cameras. Many
other images that appeared inthe press following the May 1958
unveilings showed similar manifestations of Muslim and Euro-pean
solidarity tended to display women who did appear European-like.
There were exceptionsto this rule, however; as mentioned above,
some of the women who unveiled in the Forum werewearing
Western-style clothing and had a well-to-do appearance and images
of women unveil-
E. Perego362
-
ing on the Forum show such modern-looking female Muslims clad in
heels, handbags, andbutton-down blouses tossing headscarves into
fires (SHAT 1 H 2504).Most likely the French military propagandists
hoped by displaying Algerian Muslim women
who did not look like Europeans in terms of dress, makeup, and
hairstyle to underline the longway Muslim women still needed to go
before they would be on par with European women interms of their
modernity.During the many unveiling ceremonies that occurred across
Algeria in the weeks following the
May 13th Revolution the Fifth Bureau organised parades and
demonstrations and the army-organ-ised medical social services and
feminine groups (Equipes medico-sociale itinerants or EMSI
andSections administrative spcialise or SAS) brought out women.
Possibly, a number of womenwho took off their veils at these events
and spoke in favour of a French Algeria did so becausethey actually
adhered to the French cause. However, others such as Amziane had
only partici-pated because the French military, EMSI, or SAS had
forced them to do so.Although getting Muslim women to unveil in
their everyday lives could not inspire the same
media frenzy the public shedding of headscarves could, the
French pursued more subtle meansof persuading Muslim women to
unveil. French efforts at promoting Muslim womens unveil-ing dated
earlier than the summer 1958 demonstrations. Around the time, the
French were dis-covering Muslim womens participation in the
nationalist movement, the Fifth Bureau beganprinting tracts to
convince Algerian women that they should unveil. Propaganda
posters(posted exactly where, the archives do not reveal) attempted
to persuade Muslim women toshed the veil. One such image shows
Muslim women side by side. The women on the leftand, significantly,
to the rear still wear the veil while the woman to the right has
partiallytaken off her veil and revealed her face. The phrase above
the image queries, Arent youpretty? and then the one below firmly
commands Unveil! as though it were the answer tothe question (SHAT
1 H 2504).French propagandists clearly wanted to appeal to Muslim
womens supposed sense of vanity
to persuade the latter to cast aside their headscarves and prove
to the world that they were infact beautiful. Most conveniently,
their unveiling would also allow French men to view them,perhaps
thereby fulfilling deep-seated Orientalist fantasies (Clancy-Smith
1998). Anotherposter has a similar set up, only this time the
answer is not only to unveil but to be awoman like the others (SHAT
1 H 2504). The architects of this propaganda focused on
theappearance of women and tried to make them feel as if they had
to unveil in order to provetheir beauty as well as their
femininity. The message to women rang clear unveil andprove you are
beautiful and a woman; stay veiled and show that you have no beauty
andare not a real woman. Most significantly, as the women in these
posters discard their veils,they reveal made up faces and sparkling
earrings, a sign of their integration into French con-sumer
community.38
One message among many Fifth Bureau headquarters spread among
Muslim women was thefollowing, taken from an internal directive on
propaganda to circulate among this population:Assuredly the veil
that hides faces is a barrier between the two communities: it would
be agreat step towards integration to take it off.39 Here the veil
is taken as a sign of the lack oftrust between the European and
Muslim communities. Only by doing away with it will they over-come
their differences to form a unified nation. In portraying the
fierce divides between the Euro-pean settler and Algerian Muslim
communities as hinging onMuslim womens veiling, they madeit appear
as if the responsibility for the ending the war fell upon them.One
of the French strategies for coercing Muslim women into abandoning
the veil included
making a religious notable appear in public assure women that no
Islamic principle mandated
The Journal of North African Studies 363
-
the veil. Before Monique Amziane gave her address on 26 May in
Constantine, local immCheikh Lakhardi Abdelali delivered his own
speech to the crowd in which he announced, Theimaginary and
exaggerated veil has nothing to do with the Muslim religion.40 By
having this reli-gious figure dissociate headcoverings from Islam,
the French tried to convince Algerian womenthat unveiling would not
jeopardise their status as good Muslims. While doctrinally there
wassome basis for this statement, in practice the covering of
womens hair and modest dress forboth men and women alike was
associated with Islam.41
French propagandists were also not above bending the truth to
Algerian Muslim in their ownwork to incite them to take off their
veils. In a European-created and -distributed journal, anauthor
advised women that she resolved the problem of trying to get Muslim
women to unveildespite veilings religious connotations by (1)
insisting that Islam did not require Muslimwomen to veil and (2) by
informing them that women across the Muslim world (and especiallyin
neighbouring Tunisia and Morocco) had stopped veiling. This writer
clearly lied to AlgerianMuslim women by telling them they were the
last women in the Muslim world to wear the veil.42
French pamphlets intended for the French leaders of the womens
groups provided detailedinstructions on how to pressure Algerian
Muslim women to unveil.43 One of the pamphletsstated the
following:
At the first meeting, do not require women to take off their
veils, or rather their hack44[sic]Butfrom the second meeting on,
invite the women to lower their hack under the pretext that you do
notrecognize them, that you cannot speak only to eyes but (instead)
to real friends. To be veiled is alack of confidenceLittle by
little, bring them to go out without the hack in the street, in
groups first, not alone. Theywill feel stronger if they are many.
They will get used to it quickly, finding for themselves the
comfortsof an uncovered face. Two months later they will find it
totally normal to go out in the street unveiled,even alone.
(original emphasis)
Officials behind the womens groups developed almost a formula
for persuading Algerian Muslimwomen to abandon Muslim head and face
coverings. It is telling that this document, which thearmy
possessed, has the paragraph on convincing women to go out into the
streets unveiledmarked with a red pen. Thus, the real interest the
army had in the EMSI getting Algerianwomen to unveil lay in
prompting these women to enter public spaces while looking more
Euro-pean.Of course, all of these efforts by French propagandists
did not go unperceived by Algerian
nationalists and their sympathisers. In his 1959 work on
decolonisation, A Dying Colonialism,Martiniquais philosopher and
psychiatrist Frantz Fanon recognised that the unveilings of May1958
constituted a calculated French effort to stem the participation of
Algerian women in thenationalist movement (Fanon 1967). Residents
of Algiers including nationalist militantsdenounced the women who
took part in the organised burning of veils on the Forum on 17May
1958. By November 1958 at least, the FLN had developed plans for a
series of measuresto check Frances emancipation campaign that
included convincing Muslim women that theFrench were acting to
infiltrate Algerian society and break the will for independence
ratherthan acting out of altruistic concern for them. In addition,
the FLN authors of a tract outliningstrategies for limiting the
impact of the French emancipation campaign upon women notedthat the
French militarys desire to convince the international community of
the humanitariantask towards the Algerian people that France was
accomplishing drove the campaign.45
Nevertheless, despite their attempts to pose as liberators of
Algerian Muslim women, throughtheir actions behind the scene the
French showed themselves to be anything but advocates forMuslim
womens freedom of action and political choice.
E. Perego364
-
Hypocrisy of positive images of liberation campaign
French measures to liberateAlgerianMuslimwomen proved
hypocritical in more ways than one,yet perhaps the most
contradictory aspect of the emancipation campaign revolved around
Frenchofficials representations of these women, their own efforts
as supposed liberators of the latter,andMuslim gender relations
conflicted with actual circumstances. As stated above, the French
pro-pagandists depicted women in the wake of May 13th Revolution as
entering public spaces for thefirst time. The French were aware,
though, that Algerian Muslim women had been active in publiclife
long before this moment; the French administration kept tabs
onMuslimwomens participationin nationalist groups prior to the
start of the war.46 At one point in 1956 as well, intelligence
officerswrote, The women, despite their strongly modest condition,
are better prepared by their daily con-tacts to receive the rights
of the modern world.47 Some French agents thereby voiced their
beliefthat womens everyday encounters made them more apt to accept
modernisation and thus thatwomen possessed rich existences outside
the home or so-called harem. While the French pro-claimed to be
ushering Muslim women into modernity and thus the public stage for
the firsttime, as the first section of the present work revealed,
it was womens engagement on the nationalistside of the war that
incited the French decision to undertake the emancipation campaign
vis--visthese women. The French knew that at least some Algerian
women had a personality and politicalopinions and were opting to
lend their skills to the nationalist movement rather than the cause
ofFrench Algeria.The French likewise overstated the notion that
they were emancipating Algerian women in a
way that local Muslim men were not and could not and the
favourable response of Muslimwomen to these efforts. Through
information they gathered on the FLN French military officialsand
officers were aware that the nationalist movement had adopted more
progressive marriagepolicies than Muslim marriage customs under the
local French/settler-dominated government.Their claims then to
enact the marriage reforms of 4 February 1959 in order to free
womenfrom the clutches of unprogressive local men were bunk.48
Also, French officials stood by idlyas leaders of the settler
community actually thwarted efforts to grant Muslim women the
rightto vote in the late 1940s and early 1950s in spite of Muslim
leaders earnest support for themeasure (Seferdjeli 2004b, 2126).
All the brouhaha that French propagandists made, therefore,about
Muslim women voting for the first time with the assistance the
French elided the historicalpart European settlers and French
officials had played in keeping the right to vote out of
Muslimwomens hands. Additionally, the need for the French to
orchestrate elaborate events such as the17 May unveilings meant
that Algerian women were on the whole quite resistant to
Frenchattempts to manipulate them and their images for propagandist
purposes. This was anotherreality French propagandists purposefully
hid through contortions of images of women such asAmzianes,
although some evidence suggests that a few women who unveiled
during the MayDays earnestly supported the continuation of French
control over Algeria.49
What is more, the French knew that some Algerian Muslim women
such as Amziane did notveil. This was the case among women who
served as domestic servants in European householdsor were single
women or students in French high school. All in all, these women
typically inhab-ited urban spaces and made up a small minority of
the Muslim female population. Their existencecontradicted French
claims that all Muslim women veiled (MacMaster 2009, 137138).
Finally,women living in particular regions of the country did not
veil at all. Specifically, some womenliving in the Kabylia region
did not don head covering. The French had known that thesewomen
abstained from veiling; their claim, then, that the Algerian Muslim
womanwas naturally
The Journal of North African Studies 365
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veiled and further their insistence that Muslim women acted as a
homogenous, singular entityobfuscated a reality that they were
familiar with after 120 some years of occupying the
territory.50
Perhaps the most disturbing way the French campaign to
emancipateMuslim women provedhypocritical consisted of how the
French soldiers and officials treated women when out of thepurview
of propagandist camera lenses. At the same time, they claimed to be
acting toimprove their lives, some French soldiers and officials
committed horrendous acts of both sym-bolic and physical violence
against these women and violated what many people today
considerbasic human rights. Just as it did Algerian men, the French
army subjected Muslim women sus-pected of collusion with the
nationalist movement to elaborate and sometimes lethal forms
oftorture. In a highly perverted way, torturers reproduced the
purported clash of French and Alger-ian Muslim cultures while
tormenting prisoners. As mentioned above, torturers
frequentlyemployed instruments of modernity (running water and
electricity) against a population that pur-portedly resisted this
influence by participating in the nationalist movement.51 Indeed,
it was as ifthe French yearned to forcefully subdue the Muslims
they held in custody by literally shovingmodernity down their
throats and sending bolts of it through their bodies. Oftentimes,
the mod-ernising torture methods took on sexual overtones. For
instance, French soldiers would pass theggne over their victims
genitals. Most disturbingly, in their interrogations of Muslim
womenpost-1957 and post-1958, elements of the emancipation campaign
came into play. As they weretelling women to think of the welfare
of their children by electing to keep Algeria French
andtransforming into modern housewives, French soldiers were
torturing pregnant women bysitting on their stomachs.52 At the same
time, they were attempting to get women to unveil,some French
soldiers used veils to tie up women in the torture chambers.53
Nationalist femalecombatant Djamila Boupacha likewise incited
global outrage when she publicly accusedFrench soldiers of raping
her with a coke bottle. The use of a product of modern
consumptionin French torture chambers further attests to how this
torment adopted modernising overtones.54
In June 2000, former FLN combatant Louisette Ighilahriz came
forward with her harrowingstory of being raped repeatedly in the
very building that housed Massus office. Indeed, Ighilahrizclaimed
to have seen the then-colonel passing by the room in which she was
held and tortured inlate 1957. According to her account, Ighilahriz
heard Massu give orders for her to be tortured(Le Monde, June 20,
2000). He may have thus known that his own soldiers were
rapingMuslim women. Massu denied this, though, in an interview
later in 2000.55 Yet, Massus dis-avowal of any knowledge of torture
prompted his former colleague, General Paul Aussaressesto step
forward with his own version of what Massu knew. He stated that
Massus claim toonly have had limited information on the use of
torture was utterly false. As Aussaresses revealedin a 2000
interview, during the Battle of Algiers, in the morning after
evening torture sessionswith suspected nationalist sympathisers,
Aussaresses supplied reports to Massu among othersdescribing the
interrogations. According to Aussaresses,
Sometimes I told Massu, We have brought in so and so (referring
to a suspect) and I looked him inthe eyes before adding, Were going
to kill him tomorrow.Massu would grunt and I would take thatas a
yes.56
If Massu knew more than he admitted in 2000 and Aussaresses was
supplying detailed reportsabout torture, it is possible that he was
aware his soldiers were raping women in Frenchcustody like
Ighilahriz.Thus, Massu, one of the officials involved with the
liberation campaign, also possibly
oversaw the rape of Muslim women. Jacques Massus wife Suzanne
helped to found the Move-ment of Feminine Solidarity. No evidence
exists to suggest, though, that Massu admitted to his
E. Perego366
-
wife the unsavoury work in which he was engaged. Most
ironically, one half of this marriedcouple engaged in a crusade to
improve the lives of Algerian Muslim women while the otheroversaw
the torture and rape of some of these women.57
Besides rape and torture, French soldiers participated in other
activities that conflicted with thesupposed goals of the campaign
to emancipate Algerian Muslim women. While declaring to theworld
that they were liberating local women, to try and cut FLN forces
off from the local popu-lation, the French forced millions of
Muslims to leave their homes and villages and relocate tocamps
during the war (Sutton 2007). To better control these communities,
the French adminis-tration began requiring late in the war that
Algerians have identity cards. The creation of thesecards meant
French photographers would have to force women to unveil. These
women didnot passively accept this affront to their customs; many
of the photographs army soldier MarcGaranger took in the region of
Kabylia show the women glaring disdainfully into the
camera(Garanger 2002; MacMaster 2009, 209220).In summary, while
declaring to the international community that they were
revolutionising
Muslim womens lives and advancing their status, the French army
at least engaged in anumber of activities that violated the bodies,
liberties, and rights of these women. At times, thedepiction of
Algerian women propagandists painted for the world or tried to
persuade Muslimwomen to present themselves stood in contradiction
with realities of which they were wellaware. Through their efforts,
however, the French succeeded at propagating the notion that
Alger-ian women had never entered public spaces and been involved
in politics prior to the start ofFrances emancipation campaign
although they had knowledge to the contrary.
Conclusion
In the middle of the Algerian War of Independence, the French
military embarked upon an elab-orate campaign to liberateMuslim
women. Yet, because their objective was to prove to the
inter-national community that they were modernising Algerian Muslim
women, a good deal of theirefforts focused on altering Muslim
womens appearance or producing fabricated images of themthey could
then distribute abroad. The images of Muslim women they created,
moreover, oftenclashed with reality and thereby perpetuated false
notions of Muslim women and society.Additionally, at the same time
as they were ardently attempting to posit themselves as thesaviours
and modernisers of Muslim women, French officials and soldiers
robbed thesewomen of many of their basic human rights. French
soldiers employment of modernisingforms of torture, some
gender-specific (sitting on pregnant stomachs, binding women
withveils) highlighted the hypocrisy underlying this campaign to
demonstrate to the world howadvanced Muslim women were becoming
with French assistance. French military and govern-ment leaders
such as Massu who had helped shape the emancipation campaign knew,
further-more, about these atrocities and in some cases ordered them
to be carried out. This paper hassought to elucidate an important
mechanism the fabrication and manipulation of Muslimwomens images
by which the French tried to make it appear as though they were
liberatingMuslim women while sometimes resorting to odious means to
accomplish this end.Over the past two decades, France has begun
re-examining its colonial legacy. In the course of
this reconsideration of past events, officials and scholars must
not look to superficial evidence likea photo pulled from the
archives of Monique Amziane tearing off her veil to prove that
Francebenevolently led the populations of its former colonies into
modernity. Instead, they must delvefurther to understand exactly
how images came to be produced for they are sometimes no morethan
mere creations of colonialist subterfuge.
The Journal of North African Studies 367
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Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the
author.
Funding
This work was supported by the Newcomb-Tulane College and the
Newcomb College Institute of Tulane University.
Notes
1. This description is based on MacMaster (2009, 133135).2.
Documents from the colonial archives reveal that the governor
general along with many of this colleagues worried
about the reaction of the UN and its CSW to the reality that
Algerian women still did not have the right to vote inthe early
1950s. Debates on the Womens Condition at the Economic and Social
Council, letter 12 March 1952from Roger Lonard to Minister of the
Interior, CAOM 10 CAB 22.
3. In the summer of 1952, the Association of Muslim Girl Scouts
Summer Camps took 178Muslim 15-year-old girlson a trip to France.
The report on the trip noted that
Some of the girls (the minority) are from rich and bourgeois
families but most are from modest or impover-ished neighborhoods.
Some live veiled while some have not yet taken up the veil due to
their young age andstill others have received from their families,
often after some struggle, permission to not wear the veil. Someof
the more mature young girls have for many years already been
leading a life that requires them to take ongreat responsibilities,
but the majority leads a primitive existence; they have never
learned how to budget,plan a trip, take out money, send a money
order, or use a telephone.
4. These included polygamy, the right of a husband to repudiate
the wife, the veil, and exclusion of women frompublic spaces.
5. For instance, this code outlawed polygamy and marriage of
anyone under the age of 15 and made consent necess-ary on the part
of both spouses for marriage, among other measures (MacMaster 2009,
83).
6. Several American newspapers reported favourably on Bourguibas
reforms. See, for instance, Special to theNew York Times
(1957).
7. French administrators made no announcements to the
international community about their intention to get rid ofthe
Muslim personal status at this time. It seems that those in charge
of the project kept it secret out of fear that theMuslim community
would react violently and perceive it as an attack on their
faith.
8. CAOM 12 CAB 207 (1 December 1956) letter from Villeneuve to
the Director General of Political Affairs.9. At this time, though,
French officials denied that a war was underway in Algeria. They
thus argued that prisoners
they captured were outlaws and exempt from rules applying to the
treatment of prisoners of war. For more on this,see Reid
(2005).
10. The group was the Democratic International Federation of
Women, CAOM 81 F 903.11. The Time magazine article referred to
Bouhired as pretty and doe-eyed (Tac-Tac-Tac, 1958, 27).
Translation
of Bouhireds statement is taken from the article.12. Mujhidt is
the Arabic term for female fighters used to describe Muslim women
who fought with the FLN.13. CAOM 12 CAB 144. Letter from Robert
Lacoste, then governor general of Algeria.14. This film was The
Nurses of the Bled (MacMaster 2009, 9098 and 161).15. A document
entitled, FLN Directive on the subject of Propaganda and
Counter-propaganda to carry out vis--vis
the Muslim woman that the French military found on a political
adjunct for the nationalist movement killed inNovember 1958 gave
April 1957 as the date when the French began their propagandist
efforts towards Muslimwomen, SHAT 1 H 2461.
16. 26 April 1958. General Massu to the Prefect of Algiers, the
Inspector General of the Administration in Extraordi-nary mission,
CAOM 14 CAB 162.
17. At one point, army officers expressed dismay that they could
not monitor public bathhouses as efficiently as theywould like.
Intelligence officers also uncovered FLN documents showing that the
nationalist movement was usingwomen because of French police and
military hesitancy to search Algerian Muslim women. This revelation
like-wise may have prompted the French to want women to discard
veilings and headcoverings and thus may haveincited them to
persuade the latter to unveil CAOM 7G 1143A.
E. Perego368
-
18. The Indochina war, in which communist forces used
psychological techniques on French prisoners of war, con-vinced
French military officers of the need to persuade the population
through methods to which they themselveshad been subjected. The
rise of communism and fascism in the 1920s and 1930s as well as
SecondWorldWar alsostressed to the French military the usefulness
of propaganda for population control and advancing political
causes(MacMaster 2009, 8688).
19. This thought derived from ethnographers and scholars
imagined ideas about the Middle East. Typically, theybelieved
Muslims to be lascivious. They fetishised local gender and marriage
practices such as veiling and polyg-amy. For examples of such
works, see the postcards from Alloula. For instances of how this
work weighed heavilyon the works of Fifth Bureau propagandists, see
MacMaster (2009, 7078 and 8990, 154160) and SHAT 1 H2460 and SHAT 1
H 2461. MacMaster also makes the point in his work about the
influence of Orientalist ideas onthese propagandists. The term
Orientatlism is Edward Sads. See Sad (1978). Another work which
closelylooks at European views of Muslim women, including Algerian,
from an earlier period is Taraud (2003).
20. Algerians were not at this point in an economic position to
be supporting such costly institutions. For instance,Horne cites
the 1955 Masptiol Report stating that one million Algerian Muslims
were totally or partially unem-ployed, and that another two million
were seriously underemployed (Horne, 1977, 6263). For example,
propa-gandists referred to harems in a way that highly replicated
Orientalist ideas about Muslim society. A documenttitled Condition
of the Muslim Woman in Algeria dating to 2 April 1957 stated of the
Algerian Muslimwoman, constrained to wearing the veil, she lives
cloistered in a harem (CAOM 81 F 74).
21. This referendum, which took place in France as well as
across the empire, was on the new constitution De Gaullehad
offered; if the majority of citizens voted yes to the referendum,
then the constitution would go into effect(Horne, 304305).
22. CAOM 81 F 439. In document entitled, Dossier on Algeria:
From October 1958November 1959, under sub-heading of Referendum:
the Response of Algeria, 67.
23. CAOM 81 F 1450. The section of the pamphlet with the heading
MuslimWomen Voted declared that for womento vote is often to
accomplish an act of faith, it is to believe in the New Algeria,
that will witness equality betweenman and woman, in the field of
the family as well as in the civic field.
24. CAOM 10 CAB 155. This file contains police reports about
womens involvement with the MTLD.25. Connelly (2002, 216), citing
Robert W. Shofield, dir., The Falling Veil, Tangent films, circa
1960, CAOM.26. Connelly makes the link between the use of the term
electric shock and the French use of electricity in the torture
of Algerian Muslims during the war. See Connelly (2002, 216).27.
CAOM 81 F 1450. The Revolution of May Has Emancipated the Algerian
Muslim Women sent to ministry of
foreign affairs, French newspapers abroad liaison and diffusion,
pro-Gaullist French political party UNR (Unionpour la nouvelle
rpublique) La peyronnie, and Chilean journalists.
28. Many of the photos from these events located in CAOM 81 F 88
have captions with women crying kif kif .29. Scholars have
elaborated elsewhere the story of how and why the women came to
serve as delegates as well as
details of their personal background, such as their regional
origins, how they became involved with the cause ofFrench Algeria,
etc. The concern here is to delineate the meaning French
propagandists attached to their electionand their subsequent
inclusion in the National Assembly and the political field. Khedira
Bouabsa and Nafissa SidCara were members of Algerias small urban
Muslim elite. Both spoke French fluently and had been educated.What
is known of Rebiha Kebtanis life will be described further below
(Seferdjeli 2004b, 4754).
30. The Mouvement de Solidarit Fminin was one of the
European-led womens groups that supposedly sought toassist Muslim
women during the war. Lucienne Salan and Suzanne Massu created this
association in May 1958after the generals coup. For more on this
organisations, see MacMaster (2009, 178208).
31. Although all of the women were voted into power, at least in
the case of one, Nafissa Sid Cara; then Interior Min-ister Michel
Debr and De Gaulle approved her running for office well in advance
of the elections. As Debrpenned in his autobiography,
I mentioned in front of the General my wish to include at least
one woman in the government. The Generalsaid neither yes, nor no
and asks me which woman? I suggested Nafissa Sid Cara who is the
sister of a deputyof Algeria who was made a Minister by the Fourth
Republic. She has just been elected deputy of the suburbof Algiers.
She would be the symbol of a transformation and advancement that we
wish for Algerian society.The General considers my initiative odd
but did not resist. If you suggest her to me, I will accept.
Thus, Sid Caras nomination appears to have been decided by the
higher echelons of French power. Quotation ascited in Seferdjeli
(2004b), Muslim Womens Emancipation, 51, note 139. This is not to
suggest, however, thatonce these women were in power that they did
not act to effect change. Sid Cara certainly proved that these
The Journal of North African Studies 369
-
women had a certain level of agency in the state when she
promoted the reforms of the Muslim personal statuslaws (Seferdjeli
2004b, 5152).
32. Men made up the majority of delegates in the National
Assembly from 1958 to 1962. See for a list of delegates.See Liste
alphabtique des dputs de la Ire lgislature 19581962. Also, the fact
that Kebtani could be publiclynicknamed the pin-up attests to the
misogynist culture that reigned in Frances legislative body at this
time.
33. Women in Algeria wore different types and styles of
headscarves. Some of the women Amrane interviewed dis-cussed the
variety of veils and veiling practices. For instance, women from
the Mzab in the northern Sahara woreveils that covered one of their
eyes at all times. See Amrane (1994). Her interviews also contain
details about howMuslim women belonged to different socioeconomic
classes and how womens customs and roles varied fromregion to
region. The French were highly aware of this diversity in local
female attire and veiling patters;Frantz Fanon rightfully points
out in his essay, Algeria Unveiled that the French used the absence
of headscarvesamong the Imazighen in order to depict the population
as being superior to its Arab counterpart as part of theirdivide
and rule policy there. See Fanon (1967, 36, note 1). As for
linguistic divides, Algerian dialectal Arabic doesvary from region
to region and the Amazigh, who make up about one-third of Algerias
population today, do notspeak Arabic.
34. In a booklet titled, Evolution of the Algerian Muslim Woman
sent to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Latin Amer-ican press, French
newspapers abroad, and the French militarys liaison and diffusion
offices asserted,
Everything started in May 1958. Those days, in Algiers, some
Muslim women rejected their white veil, thehak, a symbolic gesture
that translates the immense hope to shake the yoke of constraints
and traditionsthat have deprived them for centuries the most
elementary rights.
This pamphlet was also printed in Spanish, CAOM 81 F 1450.35.
The French actually did start education Muslim girls in the 1950s,
but in 1954, only 10.7% of girls received any
form of education (MacMaster 2009, 155).36. On 13 May 1958,
former governor general of Algeria Jacques Soustelle along with the
Generals Salan and Gra-
cieux and Colonel Massu overthrow the government in Algeria and
called for, the dissolution of Frances FourthRepublic, in disarray
at this point, the creation of a French Fifth Republic, and the
return to power of GeneralCharles de Gaulle. The political
instability in France made the French army in Algeria and the
European settlersfeel that the government in Paris could no longer
ensure French victory in the territory. For this reason, the
gen-erals launched the coup that European settlers overwhelmingly
supported.
37. The Fifth Bureau particularly wanted to combat the idea the
international press was putting forth at this time thatthe generals
were acting in the style of General Franco in 1936 Spain and thus
represented a Fascist movement(MacMaster 2009, 115116).
38. Propaganda posters located in SHAT 1H 2464.39. SHAT 1 H
2504, 28 August 1958. Document from General Delegation of the
Government, Commander in Chief
of forces in Algeria, Command Superior of the Interarmies for
the 10th military region. This appears to have beena list of
messages to be propagated among the female Muslim population.
40. CAOM 12 CAB 207 document 10 page F.41. Concerning the
textual and historical bases for veiling practices,