ALGERIA: History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria

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ALGERIA History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria, by James McDougall. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xiv + 238 pages. Bibl. to p. 260. Index to p. 266. $85.

Reviewed by Clement M. Henry

James McDougall has accomplished a remarkable deconstruction of the Islamic Reformist narrative of Algerian nationhood. His central figure, Tawfiq al-Madani (18991983), born in Tunis of an Algerian exile family and expelled to Algeria in 1925, was hardly the greatest luminary of the Association des 'ulama musulmans algériens (AUMA), but he helped 'Abd al Hamid Ben Badis found it in 1931 and lived on to serve as independent Algeria's first Minister of …