2019 Chapters (Layout Features)

Erasing the Ketchaoua Mosque: Catholicism, Assimilation and Civic Identity in France and Algeria

Ghoche, Ralph

The book chapter looks at the French policy in colonial Algeria of forcibly converting Muslim religious buildings in relation to recent debates around multiculturalism and the building of mosques in Europe. It is focused on the case of the Ketchaoua mosque in Algiers, which was seized by French officials in 1832 and rebuilt into a cathedral over the next decades. The essay looks at the resulting arabizing forms of the cathedral and relates them to the assimilationist aims of the Catholic Church and its effort to employ outward expressions of Algerian culture as a clandestine means of destroying Algerian religious identity.