Description

Journal article from Africa Today published by Indiana University press. Volume 46, Number 3/4. You purchase a copy of the entire journal from IU Press at: http://inscribe.iupress.org/loi/aft

France became a “Muslim power,” in the sense of an imperial
nation with Muslim subjects, over the course of the
nineteenth century. This practice and policy first emerged
in Algeria, and from the mid-nineteenth century it was also
deployed in Senegal and Mauritania, the initial core of
French West Africa. The process of conquering the bidan, or
“whites,” of Mauritania, an Arabic-speaking nomadic people
with a strong sense of racial superiority over the sudan,
or “blacks,” of Senegal, and the competition with Morocco
over claims to the Sahara encouraged the development of
this policy, which was codified in the early twentieth century
through the concepts of Islam maure and Islam noir,
concepts which remain influential today.