A Thin Line Separating Islamism from Nazism? An Interview with Algerian Novelist Boualem Sansal

From World Politics Review

By Grégoire Leménager

A former official in the Algerian civil service and the author of four previous novels, the Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal has recently published a new book titled Le village de l'Allemand: "The German's Village." Via the reflections of two brothers of Algerian origin living in the Parisian banlieues, it tells the story of the brothers' father: Hans Schiller, a hero of the Algerian war of independence as a member of the National Liberation Front (FLN) -- and, as so happens, before that an officer in the dreaded Nazi paramilitary force, the SS. For Boualem Sansal, "the line separating Islamism from Nazism is a thin one." Grégoire Leménager spoke with him for the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. The interview appears in English for the first time in World Politics Review.

Le Nouvel Observateur: Your novel takes its title from the story of a Nazi war criminal, a former member of the SS, who went into exile in Algeria, where he trained FLN fighters and became a hero of the Algerian war of independence. . . . Is this a real story? How did the novel come about?

Boualem Sansal: "The German's Village" comes from a real story and the flood of questions that it inspired. One day, at the beginning of the 1980s, while I was on a business trip in the Sétif region of Algeria, I stopped in a small town [identified as Aïn Deb in the novel] whose exotic "look" intrigued me. It didn't blend in to the local landscape, it had a certain feel of "somewhere else." I had a coffee in the town and then when I arrived at my destination, I asked the people who were waiting for me there about it. I barely was able to say "On my way here, I stumbled upon a strange town that made me think of [the French comic book character] Astérix the Gaul" and they proudly exclaimed, "Oh! That's the German's village." They explained to me that the village was "governed" by a German man: a former SS member and former mujahideen, who was a naturalized Algerian citizen and who had converted to Islam. He was regarded as a hero in the region: as a kind of saint who had done a lot for the village and its inhabitants. I sensed that my interlocutors felt real admiration when they talked about the man's Nazi past. This didn't surprise me: the Hitler salute has always had its partisans in Algeria, like in many Arab and Muslim countries - and undoubtedly even more so today by virtue of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the Iraq war. In order really to impress me, they underscored that this German had been dispatched by [Egyptian president Gamal Abdel] Nasser to serve as an expert advisor to the general staff of the ALN [Armée de libération nationale -- the armed wing of the FLN] and that after the war he taught at the prestigious military academy of Cherchell. He was "somebody," in effect. . . .

Since that time, I've often thought of his story. I find that there are lots of interesting aspects: the romantic and adventurous side of this European coming to Algeria to fight for its independence, his retirement in a small town in the middle of nowhere, his conversion to Islam, the esteem he came to enjoy in the eyes of the locals. And then there is the dark side of the story: that of an SS officer who served in the death camps.

N.O.: How could this latter aspect remain hidden?

B. Sansal: In thinking about that, I came to reflect on something of which I was somehow aware, but to which I had never attached particular importance: the Shoah was never spoken about at all in Algeria -- or if it was spoken about, then it was presented as a sordid invention of the Jews. I was shocked when I realized this. The fact is that to this day Algerian television has never shown a film or documentary on the subject, no Algerian official has ever said a word about it and, as far as I know, no Algerian intellectual has ever written on the topic. . . .

N.O.: Your novel presents a new and extremely dark vision of the relations between "the crescent and the swastika" (as the title of a book that appeared in 1990 [in French] put it). Especially inasmuch as in the background one can make out the role played by the Egyptian secret services of Nasser. . . . This aspect of the past is largely unknown, if not indeed purposely obscured, and it takes us far away from the Manichean visions of the process of decolonization that are so common. Doesn't this amount to a new way for you to deconstruct the history of Algeria's national liberation?

B. Sansal: When I decided to make the history of this German man the guiding thread of the novel, I found that I was confronted by numerous questions without answers. . . . I gathered some testimonials here and there and I dug into the historical literature, in order to reconstruct the possible trajectory of this man and, more generally, of the Nazi war criminals who found refuge in the Arab countries.

As I progressed in my research on Nazi Germany and the Shoah, I more and more had the feeling that there is a substantial similarity between Nazism and the political order that prevails in Algeria and in many other Arab and Muslim countries. One finds the same ingredients, and we know just how powerful they are. In Germany, they managed to transform a cultured nation into a narrow-minded sect devoted to the extermination of the Jews; in Algeria, they led to a civil war that attained extremes of horror -- and we still don't know everything about what happened. The ingredients are the same in both cases: a one-party state, the militarization of the country, brainwashing, the falsification of history, the exaltation of the race, a Manichean vision of the world, a tendency to claim victimhood, the constant assertion that there is a conspiracy against the nation (Israel, the United States, and France are invoked one after another by Algerian authorities when they find themselves in trouble -- and sometimes too our neighbor Morocco), xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism elevated to the status of dogmas, a cult of the hero and of the martyr, glorification of the supreme leader, omnipresence of the police and of police informants, inflammatory speeches, highly disciplined mass organizations, large public demonstrations, religious indoctrination, incessant propaganda, the generalization of a wooden repetitive public discourse [langue de bois] that is deadly for thought, gargantuan projects that exalt the sense of power (for example, [Algerian President Abdelaziz] Bouteflika's plan to build the third largest mosque in the world in Angers, whereas we already have more minarets than schools), verbal attacks against other countries concerning anything and nothing at all, the resuscitation of old myths for current purposes. . . .

N.O.: What is especially striking in reading your novel is clearly this mirroring of the Nazism of the past and the Islamism of today. In his journal, Rachel insists on the specificity of the Shoah. But his brother Malrich, who sees the imam of his banlieue as a sort of SS, goes so far as to write: "When I see what the Islamists do here and elsewhere, I say to myself that if they ever come to power they'll outdo the Nazis." To what extent do you share this point of view?

B. Sansal: We live under a "National-Islamist" regime and in an environment that is marked by terrorism. We know well that the line separating Nazism from Islamism is a thin one. Algeria is perceived by its own children as an "open-air prison," as some say, or a "concentration camp," as others say who die little by little in its ghettoes. One doesn't only feel imprisoned by walls and impenetrable borders, but also by a shadowy and violent political order that leaves no place even for dreams. . . .

N.O.: How does one fight against the terrorist threat? Your book poses the question repeatedly, but it hardly gives any response. . . .

B. Sansal: The struggle against Islamism, which is the matrix of terrorism, requires the engagement of Muslims and of their theologians. It is up to them to save their religion and to reconcile it with modernity. If they don't, Islam will end up being nothing but Islamism. But the danger in the Arab and Muslim countries is that no theologian dares to undertake this necessary labor of itjihad. And the intellectuals who are engaged in this sort of work in the Western democracies (Soheib Bencheikh, Malek Chebel, Mohamed Arkoun, Abdelwahab Meddeb. . .) are barely heard in our countries. My humble opinion is that Islam has already suffered too much under the influence of Islamism and of Arab-Muslim nationalism. I don't see how it can resume the path of Enlightenment that was once its own. . . .

N.O.: The only solution that is indicated by your novel . . . is language, the word: the care taken to say the truth in defiance of forgetfulness, lies, and silence. Do you think that writing can be a political weapon? When September 11 occurred, you were one of the very first and one of the rare Muslim intellectuals to denounce the fanaticism involved. Do you feel less isolated today?

B. Sansal: The word is everything. It can kill and it can bring to life again. Of course, I'm not saying that I can do that. I write in order to talk to people: to brothers, to friends, to calm passers-by -- and even, if they want, to those who dream of destroying humanity and the planet. . . .

September 11 was a terrible shock for all of us. On that day, we began to understand that Islamism was engaged in an undertaking that is far more radical than we had imagined: We thought its project was to fight against tyrants in the lands of Islam and to institute the sharia. But its real aim is the extermination of the other: the "crusader," the Jew, the atheist, the secular Muslim, the emancipated woman, the democrat, the homosexual -- the list gets longer and longer. It is only limited in carrying out its project by the fact that it lacks weapons of mass destruction. The mobilization in face of such madness has been notably timid. Worse still: here and there one has come to an arrangement with Islamism, one has made concessions (concerning the headscarf, the management of mosques, education, televised sermons, the closing of schools teaching in French), one has abandoned whole geographical areas to its influence (in the cities and in the banlieues). Very few people nowadays dare to confront the question of Islamism head-on and still less that of Islam itself, which has been taken hostage by Islamism. In Algeria, in carrying out the government's policy of national "reconciliation," the very word "Islamism" -- like the word "terrorists" and many others -- has simply disappeared from the official vocabulary. One speaks instead of "those who have gone astray" and who have "been manipulated by foreign influences." One always comes back to this idea of a conspiracy against the Algerian nation.

N.O.: The narrator of your book notes that the book contains "dangerous parallels that could cause him problems." Don't you worry about having problems yourself? You had to retire from your official functions in 2003. And in 2006 your previous book, Poste restante: Alger, was banned in Algeria. Do you think your new book will be authorized? And, more fundamentally, why do you stay in Algeria, when many others have preferred to go into exile?

B. Sansal: The censors are legion in our countries and they are very vigilant. They monitor every word and comma and attitude. Poste restante: Alger was banned even before it got to Algeria. "The German's Village" will certainly be banned too. . . .

Like many other Algerians, young people and less young people, I'm constantly nagged by the desire to "escape" from the camp. And just when I'm about to pack up my bags and get on my way, I always say to myself that it's more intelligent, after all, to disrupt the camp than to leave. Algeria is a big and beautiful country that has come a long way: It has a long and highly interesting history, having rubbed shoulders with all the peoples of the Mediterranean. Algeria was not born with the FLN: It has nothing to do with its culture, its camps, its apparatchiks and its kapos. One sunny day, Algeria will rediscover its way and its land will turn green again. I would like to be there to see it happen.

Grégoire Leménager's interview with Boualem Sansal first appeared in January in the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. The above English version has been abridged. The English translation is by John Rosenthal. The full French version is available here on Bibliobs.com, the literary site of Le Nouvel Observateur.

Photo: Boualem Sansal in conversation with Le Nouvel Observateur (video here).