Language:
English
Year of publication:
2012
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish Quarterly Review
Angaben zur Quelle:
102,2 (2012) 256-287
Keywords:
Benghabrit, Kaddour,
;
Mosquée de Paris
;
Islam Relations
;
Judaism
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Jews History 1945-
;
Jews
;
Judaism Relations
;
Islam
;
Jews History 1500-
Abstract:
In the 1990s-2000s, the story of the activities of the Grande Mosquée de Paris and its rector Si Kaddour Benghabrit, a Muslim Algerian by birth, who in 1942-44 helped to shelter numerous Jews, gained popularity in the French mass culture. The story has been mythologized in films, publications, etc. Examines debates regarding the Grand Mosque, as well as the historical evidence for and against this story. The attitudes of the debating sides vary from hagiographical depictions of the mosque as a site of valiant resistance and rescue to full disregard of the story in accordance with their attitudes toward three long-standing historical debates: on the "Vichy syndrome", on Jewish life under Muslim rule, and on Muslims and the Holocaust. Argues that the story neither supports myths of historical Jewish-Muslim harmony under Islamic rule and Muslims as fellow victims of European racism, nor countermyths of perennial Jewish-Muslim conflict and the Muslims as collaborators with the Nazis. Historical evidence shows that Benghabrit and the mosque acted in 1940-44 as agents of, by turns, resistance, collaboration, and accommodation with the ruling regimes, both of the German occupation and Vichy. For instance, while they indeed were instrumental in the rescue of some Jews, resistance fighters, Allied parachutists, etc., Benghabrit also consulted with race experts of the Commissariat Générale aux Questions Juives. Although this mythologized story of rescue offers promise for Muslim-Jewish reconciliation, it can also impede their mutual understanding and obscure a more complicated historical reality.
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