histoire 10

Kasserine: The Forgotten Cemetery of Spanish Republicans

In the aftermath of General Franco’s victory in Spain’s civil war, an ally of Hitler and Mussolini, nearly half a million Spanish Republicans were compelled to flee their homeland starting in February 1939. This mass exodus, known as the Retirada, saw hundreds of Spanish Marine officers seeking refuge in Bizerte, Tunisia, from May 1939 to June 1940. They found themselves in work camps, particularly near Mount Chaambi in Kasserine, where despite enduring hunger and illness, most remained for 17 years, from 1939 to 1956, with some staying until the early 1980s. Only about 20 of them died there between July 1941 and October 1949, and were laid to rest in a now-forgotten cemetery.

Are Arabs “Behind”?

“We Arabs, we are behind” we have sighed to ourselves for more than a century. Streams of powerless tears flood our newspaper columns. A veritable fountain of tears spewing from our tear ducts. And we ask Europe, who quietly laughs at us, to give us a hand. “We Arabs, we are behind. Let’s be modern!” We’re spending our time running to catch a train that is behind us. Europe is not our future; it is our past.

History Is Not the Past

Submitted by Suffet De Carthage : That history is not a thing of the past is a general truth, of which I simply want to remind the reader. History is not the tale of bygone days, but the present we dwell in.11 It is part and parcel of a nation; it constitutes its memory, its consciousness, its ambitions. It is what is everlasting in its geography and demography. It is the mirror of the nation’s […]

Let Us Be Moors: Islam, Race and “Connected Histories”

“Seamos moros!” wrote the Cuban poet and nationalist José Martíí in 1893, in support of the Berber uprising against Spanish rule in northern Morocco. “Let us be Moors…the revolt in the Rif…is not an isolated incident, but an outbreak of the change and realignment that have entered the world. Let us be Moors…we [Cubans] who will probably die by the ha […].

The experience and doctrine of love in Ibn Arabî

By God, I feel so much love that it seems as though the skies would be rent asunder, the stars fall and the mountains move away if I burdened them with it: such is my experience of love…” If I attributed this quotation to Rûmî or to Ruzbehân Baqlî, no one would be surprised: they are both unanimously acknowledged to be among the most illustrious represent […].

The Rise and Fall of Political Islam

Porsesh : What is your interpretation of concepts such as Islamic fundamentalism and political Islam ? What is the difference between the two ? Mansoor Hekmat : I do not use the expression Islamic fundamentalism because I believe it is a calculated Right wing interpretation, which deliberately presents a misleading image of contemporary Islam and Islamic […].

My Encounter with Sartre.

Once the most celebrated intellectual, Jean-Paul Sartre had, until quite recently, almost faded from view. He was already being attacked for his ’blindness’ about the Soviet gulags shortly after his death in 1980, and even his humanist Existentialism was ridiculed for its optimism, voluntarism and sheer energetic reach. Once the most celebrated intellect […].