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Finding the Umma: A Conceptual Exploration of Algerian-French Periodicals in the Interwar Period (1930-1939)

“The political becomes epistemological when any political alternative to the current state of affairs is credibly framed in the same way as fancy against fact or as falsehood against truth.” 

— De Sousa (2018, p. viii)

We have seen in the span of human history that the production of knowledge often reveals a skewed pattern, favoring certain narratives over others. Dominant European colonial perspectives have long overshadowed the rich, diverse intellectual traditions rooted in the Global South. My research seeks to unravel this hegemony by delving into the multifaceted concept of umma as it evolved during the 1930s. By examining its intersections with the Islamic discursive tradition, Western colonialism, and the currents of modernity within North African intellectual history, this study aims to contribute to the argument that knowledge production functions in a pluriverse setting. Through the lens of two newspapers that prominently bear the name umma, we can explore the epistemic spaces in which marginalized communities articulate their voices. This exploration contributes to a discourse that not only challenges prevailing paradigms but also enriches our global perspective by emphasizing pluriversality over universality of knowledge.

El-Ouma – organe national de défense des intérêts des Musulmans Algériens, Tunesiens et Marocains, editor: Si Djilani, founder: Messali Hadj, issue no. 58, 01.12.1937, Paris, BnF Gallica, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k67012909/f1.image , Accessed 11.07.24, Licence: CC-BY 2.0 Al-Umma – jarīda ʿarabīyya taṣduru kul yawm jumʿa, editor: Shaikh Ibrahim Aboulyakdane issue no. 170, 07.06.1938, Algiers, BnF Gallica, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k12603967/f1.image, Accessed 11.07.24, Licence: CC-BY 2.0

Exploring the Twin Newspapers: El-Ouma and Al-Umma in Paris and Algiers

My journey began with looking at the Algerian French-language newspaper “El-Ouma” on gallica.fr and stumbling on the Arabic newspaper “Al-Umma – jarīda ʿarabiyya” that was published in the same year in Algiers (1933). Was it the same newspaper, only translated, or were these different periodicals?

It struck me that two Algerian periodicals with the name Al-Umma had the same print run of six years, published and circulated in Algiers and Paris. Both were Algerian anti-colonial newspapers aimed at educating the masses on how to fight against French settler colonial occupation. As I was very interested in exploring epistemic spaces in which knowledge counter to the hegemonic Western spaces was produced as a form of assertion and resistance, these two newspapers seemed to be a suitable choice for a systematic study of how concepts of umma fashioned the idea of an Islamicate community in the colonial context.

While the “El-Ouma” published in Paris had socialist tendencies, the Arabic one had Islamic reformist tendencies. What connected them is the narrative of the umma, which I would like to analyze in more detail by looking at both periodicals as assemblages that exist inside and outside the actual physical medium; they embody social networks and communities and, beyond being shaped by their context, they actively shape their respective socio-political contexts, too. This new perspective that Jutta Ernst and Oliver Scheiding (2022) formulate challenges previous approaches that focused on periodicals solely as discourse or through the lens of editors, neglecting other contributors and contexts.

Al-Umma – jarīda ʿarabīyya taṣduru kul yawm jumʿa was published and edited by the former student of the Ibadite reformist scholar Muḥammad Attfiyash (d.1914), Shaikh Abu Yaqzan, in the ‘French’-Algerian capital Algiers in 1933. In metropolitan Paris, amidst the anti-colonial hub of the Latin Quarter—home to hundreds of diasporic activists and intellectuals from the Global South—the North-African student group Étoile Nord-Africaine (E.N.A.) established their own newspaper to advance their anti-colonial agenda and exhibit an Algerian, at times “North-African,” pan-national identity. El-Ouma – organe national de défense des intérêts des Musulmans Algériens, Tunesiens et Marocains, initiated and edited by the Algerian socialist activist Messali Hadj, was partly financed by the French Communist Party (PCF) and lasted from 1933 to 1939.

The Umma Concept: Bridging Tradition and Modernity in Anti-Colonial Discourse

Why has the concept of umma stayed a dominant narrative through which Islamicate scholars from diverse strands were pushing for anti-colonial resistance and unity of the colonized communities, despite the several attempts to create neologisms such as mujtamaʿ (society) that were supposed to become an equivalent to modern Western conceptions?

The word umma has formed a popular imagination among Islamicate societies throughout history. Its usage is variable and widespread—the term umma goes beyond the borders of Arab-speaking societies, and the invocation of the umma appears to arouse emotions of trust, acceptance, a sense of belonging, and at times nostalgia to the global Islamicate audience/readership. For hundreds of years, a famous hadith has been circulated and known around the majority of Islamicate societies that, according to scholars ranging from Muqatil Bin Sulaiman (d.767) up to Yusuf al-Qaradawi (d.2022), denotes the condition of the “Muslim umma” as “resembling one body, so that if any part of the body is not well then the whole body shares the sleeplessness (insomnia) and fever with it.” (Bukhari, 1997, vol. 8, no. 6011)

This hadith—and the way its reference to a “united umma” was spread within Islamicate societies—discloses a history of entangled emotions (Pernau, 2021) closely tied to the conceptualization of umma and, as Reinhart Koselleck calls it, its “experience,” which saves the image of the concept in the minds of the respective community or society. However, the meaning of umma continues to be ambiguous; its conceptual history stretches back to invocations in the Quran, and even before the emergence of Islam, there are traces of the word umma meaning al-qāmma (stature) in pre-Islamic poetry. Since the emergence of Islam, the term has ensured a strong presence in Islamicate literature. Early Muslim lexicographers have related its meaning to the word qaṣad (intention) and defined the umma as either religion, a time, a role model or an ideal, a righteous and virtuous community, a milla, or the origin of something (umm al-shay). All these categories are premised on the basis that this group of people gather because of at least one uniting factor or intention (Al-Isfahani, 2009, p.86; Ibn Faris, 1925, pp.25-27).

Aims and Scope of the Research

The purpose of my study has therefore developed to be threefold. On the first level, it aims to explore the conceptual history of umma in interwar French-Algerian print. The various usages of umma between 1930 and 1939 and epistemological implications for the field of modern Islamic political thought will be at stake. The choice of the term umma is justified given its pertinent nature in modern Islamicate history. However, it particularly serves for a decolonial paradigm in which the focus is on concepts that developed and transformed themselves in the Global South and had a further impact on the European colonial enterprise. Umma has continued to exist and develop in modern Algerian writings by the likes of Bin Badis (d.1940), Attfiyyash (d.1965), Abu Yaqzan, Al-Thaʿlabi (d.1944), and thus offers itself as a decolonial ‘option’ that competed with other modern concepts that evolved in the 19th century.

On the second level, this study would like to draw attention to North African Islamicate scholars who played a central role in Algeria, North Africa, as well as France, and serve well for a decolonized entangled history approach. In numerous previous studies focusing on Egyptian intellectual history and knowledge production, they are mentioned as marginal actors with no further relevance for a study in itself. However, Algerian Islamicate scholars such as Malik Bennabi (d.1973), Bin Badis (d.1940), Muhammad Saleh Bin Jalul (d.1986), Tayeb al-Okbi (d. 1960), Abu Yaqzan, and Ibn Ishaq played a formative role in Islamicate societies and the French diasporic communities through the use of print. This study attempts to demonstrate that they were part of a more comprehensive Islamicate intellectual network that peaked during the interwar period and was establishing one of the possible counter-discourses to the existing Western hegemonic discourse of the time.

On the third level, the project aims to follow the epistemological discussion on entangled histories in the field of Islamic studies, highlighting a re-examination of existing discourses on modernity, religion, and nationalism from the perspective of the Global South. The umma concept, which unites and connects Islamicate Societies from different places and backgrounds, challenges previous Western-centric notions of community and identity. How do the Arabic and French Al-Umma periodicals function as epistemic spaces for articulating Muslim subjectivity? And what role do they play in transforming societal and political perceptions through the concept of umma? This study will thus contribute to a more pluriverse understanding of intellectual history and the production of knowledge within colonial and post-colonial contexts.

First insights

So far, a look at the archival documents and the available issues of the al-Umma newspapers revealed an interplay between local, national and global dimensions of the concept of umma in the struggle for independence. Abu Yaqzan’s “Al-Umma” (Algiers) focused primarily on the local Mozabite community, intertwining the religious and the political, presenting an Islamic narrative that resonated deeply with the Mozabite and broader Algerian population. However, his newspaper did also discuss Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt’s role within Algeria’s resistance movement and it reached to a wider north-African audience, as some documents reveal; it circulated in Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco. The newspaper included critiques of French colonial policies and Orientalist writings, calls for educational reform, and the promotion of a unified Islamic identity that transcended regional divisions. The Mozabites are Ibadite Muslims, they belong to the religious minority in Algeria, nevertheless the theological discussions did not feature in the newspaper. Notably, the unity represented in the periodical was not merely a rhetorical device but a lived reality for many who engaged with it; the umma materialized through the newspaper.

Messali Hadj’s “El-Ouma” (Paris) addressed a broader North African mainly diasporic audience, incorporating socialist and anti-colonial rhetoric that appealed to a diverse readership. The newspaper’s articles often highlighted the interconnectedness of the struggles of Algerians, Tunisians, and Moroccans, emphasizing a pan-Maghrebi identity that sought to dismantle colonial structures and divisions through collective action. This was reflected in the content that ranged from reports on labor strikes and political demonstrations to some theoretical articles on Islam’s moral importance in this context. “El-Ouma”’s publication in Paris also meant that it was at the heart of the anti-colonial network, engaging with other diasporic communities and international socialist movements, which added a global dimension to its anti-colonial discourse.

Navigating the Archives

Last year, I accessed archival material from the national archives of Tunisia in which I have collected scans of several issues of the “Al-Umma Al-Yaqzaniyya” and some other archival documents about the Khalduniyya school and Mozabite student’s political activism in Tunis. All these materials are instrumental for two chapters I have drafted around mapping the intellectual network of Sheikh Ibrahim Abu al-Yaqzan and understanding the role of the Arabic “Al-Umma” periodical in epistemic anti-colonial resistance in interwar north-Africa.

During the past two months in France and in the upcoming month, I am going through intelligence files and police reports in French Archives and trying to look for some missing issues of the French “El-Ouma” newspaper, that were not digitized on Gallica. I had already used the newspaper collection of the French National Library, focusing on the Algerian-French newspaper “El-Ouma” before travelling to France. Some issues were available on the Gallica platform, but many issues are not digitized, so I had to access them in the archives in Paris. The documents I am going through in the “overseas” archives in Aix-en-Provence (Archives nationales d’outre-mer), particularly centre on the content of the issues of both “Al-Umma” periodicals that were published and distributed in Algeria. It also includes reports about Shaikh Abu Al-Yaqzans and Messali Hadj activities in Algeria and the movement they were involved in as well as the intellectuals and activists they were in contact with. I am also consulting documents that reveal the nature of the political affairs of the Algerian population during that particular time, especially in Wadi Mzab, including the surveillance of their press and propaganda activities.

I greatly benefited from the interdisciplinary environment at DHIP, particularly during the session where I presented my research project. Engaging with scholars from various disciplines provided me with diverse perspectives and valuable feedback that enriched my work. The constructive discussions and insights from experts in different fields helped refine some parts of my methodology and include concepts from Media Studies, that might be useful in my project.

After finishing my research stay in Aix-en-Provence I will be able to draft a chapter about the French “El-Ouma” and the Arabic “Al-Umma” newspaper. However, for a final draft it is still necessary to have another research stay in Algeria (planned for the end of this year) to gather further documentation such as personal correspondences between Messali Hadj and Shaikh Abu Al-Yaqzan and further issues of Abu Al-Yaqzan’s newspapers that I could not access in France.

Select bibliography

Al-Bukhari, M. (1997). The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih Bukhari (M. Khan, Trans.) Vol.8. Riyadh: Darrusalam.

Al-Iṣfahānī, R. (2009). Mufradāt Alfāz al-Qurʾān. Dar al-Qalam.

De Sousa, B. (2018). The End of the Cognitive Empire. The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham: Duke University Press.

Goebel, M. (2015). Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the seeds of Third World Nationalism. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Ernst, Jutta and Scheiding, Oliver (2022) “Periodical Studies as a Transepistemic Field” in Periodical Studies Today, vol.1. Ebook: Brill.

Ibn Faris, A. (1925). Muʿjam Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr.

Pernau, M. (2021). Emotions and Temporalities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Nagat Emara (15. Oktober 2024). Finding the Umma: A Conceptual Exploration of Algerian-French Periodicals in the Interwar Period (1930-1939). Dialog und Austausch. Abgerufen am 23. Mai 2025 von https://doi.org/10.58079/12hi0


Nagat Emara

Nagat Emara is a PhD student at the Berlin Graduate School for Muslim Cultures and Societies with the focus on Islamic conceptual history. She has graduated from the Faculty of Islamic Studies, Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, and has obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Islamic and African Studies at the University of Cologne in April 2017. Her MA thesis: “Beyond the Nation: A Conceptual History of the Qur’anic Concept Umma in Tafsir and Political Thought” explores and traces the historical, political and social transformations that the concept of umma has undergone from the 9th century until the contemporary modern world of Nation-States. Currently she is working on her dissertation on envisioned communities and forms of resistance in the two Algerian French periodicals titled al-umma (community/nation), that were published during the interwar period.

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