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rfmcdonaldSeveral weeks after I read that provocative article on Ukrainian Muslims, I read, at Christianity Today, Agnieszka Tennant's article "The French Reconnection: Europe's most secular country rediscovers its Christian roots". One passage in particular caught my attention.
Is there a growth of evangelical Christianity in Kabylia? There certainly is a strong Kabyle particularism reflected in the Algerian region's Berber language and substantial European diaspora. It seems within the realm of possibility that Christianity could be making converts, given the general brutality and Arabization favoured by Islamic militants in Kabylia in the 1990s and--perhaps--a nationalist response that tried to reconnect with a pre-Arab/Muslim past. Certainly, evangelical Christians are interested in making conversions.
Is this actually going on? Again, I can't come to any conclusions owing to a paucity of data (thanks to the human rights situation, in Algeria's case). It's worth pointing out that there exists (identified by Patricia Lorcin) a "Kabyle myth", "a body of beliefs, beginning almost as soon as General Louis Auguste Victor Bourmont's expeditionary army had captured Algiers [holding that] the mountain-dwelling Berber-speaking sedentary peoples, particularly those of the Kabylie region of north-central Algeria, were somehow "superior" to the Arabic-speaking "nomadic" peoples of the plains; the former were more like the French themselves than were the latter; and they could therefore be more easily assimilated to French culture than the Arabs." Wishes reveal more about their makers than their subjects.
Just look at the members of the Christian and Missionary Alliance church Eglise Protestante Evangélique, located in a storefront in La Défense, a progressive business suburb of Paris. Last October, wearing a tie with international flags, pastor Jean-Christophe Bieselaar began the service by reading a passage in Revelation that describes all nations worshiping the Lord. This heavenly diversity marks the congregation.
When Bieselaar asked how many among those attending are indigenous, Caucasian French, only ten people raised their hands. Forty are African immigrants—some naturalized, some legal, and some illegal. When he asked them to say the names of their motherlands aloud, they mentioned Gabon, Ivory Coast, Congo, South Africa, Togo, Nigeria. Several are from Asia: Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Japan. Several are from Iran. Two are from Canada; a couple from the States. Some are from Colombia, Brazil, England, Spain.
[. . .]
Ali Arhab is an Algerian émigré who converted from Islam and who now heads Channel North Africa, a TV station that broadcasts Christian programming by North Africans for French immigrants from North Africa in Algerian Arabic. There are no statistics available on the number of converts from Islam to Christianity in France, but he speculates the number may be close to 5,000, adding that "it's growing rapidly."
One reason for the uncertain number may be that some converts keep their Christianity a secret. A lot of them live in the "Communist-belt" suburbs around Paris and Lyon, which have become centers of radical Islam, says Siemon-Netto. "They attend prayer services on Fridays at the mosque and call themselves names like Mohammad. But on Sundays they attend services at churches where they are known as Jack or John." All this because "you have cases in France where Muslims obviously have been harmed or killed for apostasy."
A veteran missionary to French Muslims who I'll call Steve Adams, speaking on condition of anonymity, says he knows of about 17 support groups for Muslim converts to Christianity in France; all have formed in the last 10 years. "We're on the threshold of major breakthroughs with Muslims," Adams says. "God is saving religious leaders from Islam, like the two former Islamic terrorists I met." He and other sources say the revival going on in Kabylia in northern Algeria—the area that gave us Tertullian and Augustine—is likely to spill over into France.
Is there a growth of evangelical Christianity in Kabylia? There certainly is a strong Kabyle particularism reflected in the Algerian region's Berber language and substantial European diaspora. It seems within the realm of possibility that Christianity could be making converts, given the general brutality and Arabization favoured by Islamic militants in Kabylia in the 1990s and--perhaps--a nationalist response that tried to reconnect with a pre-Arab/Muslim past. Certainly, evangelical Christians are interested in making conversions.
Is this actually going on? Again, I can't come to any conclusions owing to a paucity of data (thanks to the human rights situation, in Algeria's case). It's worth pointing out that there exists (identified by Patricia Lorcin) a "Kabyle myth", "a body of beliefs, beginning almost as soon as General Louis Auguste Victor Bourmont's expeditionary army had captured Algiers [holding that] the mountain-dwelling Berber-speaking sedentary peoples, particularly those of the Kabylie region of north-central Algeria, were somehow "superior" to the Arabic-speaking "nomadic" peoples of the plains; the former were more like the French themselves than were the latter; and they could therefore be more easily assimilated to French culture than the Arabs." Wishes reveal more about their makers than their subjects.
