The Slain Identities

Although Amine Maalouf’s book In the Name of Identity, published in French in 1998, analyzes the concept of identity in its individual, ethnic, and sectarian dimensions—focusing on conflicts between religious communities in Lebanon and the Middle East—without distinguishing it from nationality, profession, neighborhood affiliation, sports team allegiance, or religious currents (notions entirely unrelated to the collective identity of peoples, nations, states, and homelands, such as Amazigh identity in Morocco and North Africa), the intellectual authority of the writer, a member of the Académie Française, has turned his book into a quasi-reference. It is thus invoked by opponents of identity claims to demonstrate that these aspirations risk generating “deadly identities” due to the tensions, conflicts, and even ethnic and racial clashes they might provoke. Better yet, we find in Morocco an intellectual claiming Amazigh heritage who warns against the “deadly identities” likely to arise from Amazigh political and identity-based demands when they go beyond a purely cultural and linguistic framework, according to his viewpoint. One can thus assert that the concept of “deadly identities,” which gave its title to the work in question, has become a modern-day “Berber Dahir” whose “Latif” is brandished against Amazigh identity under the pretext of curbing discord, division, and sectarianism, in accordance with the allegations put forward by the instigators of this new “Latif.”

However, where there is an executioner, there is always a victim. And if “deadly identities” exist, there are consequently assassinated identities. The “deadly identities” evoked by Amine Maalouf are identities that clash to ensure the elimination of their prey, namely assassinated identities. Political Islam, which the author examines in detail in a chapter entitled “When Modernity Comes from Elsewhere,” aims to impose Islam, in its political iteration, as a single and universal identity. To achieve this objective, it is imperative for it to annihilate all other religious beliefs foreign to Islam—that is, to eradicate Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, secularism, and atheism. Political Islam thus constitutes, truth be told, a deadly identity. Conversely, other religious beliefs, such as Christianity among Egyptians, Iraqis, or Syrians, form an assassinated religious identity, as put into practice by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq during its hegemony over these regions between 2014 and 2017.

Yet alongside this Islamic and deadly religious identity stands its twin: Pan-Arabism. This nationalist movement also represents a deadly identity, inasmuch as it aspires, in the same manner, to impose an Arab-centric identity on all non-Arab peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. For Arab nationalism to achieve this end, it had to suppress the original identities of these non-Arab peoples. Thus, it set about destroying Phoenician, Chaldean, Assyrian, and Pharaonic identities in the Middle East, as well as Amazigh identity in North Africa.

However, the gravity of this elimination of non-Arab identities was multiplied by the alliance sealed between the nationalist current and the Islamist current upon the holding of their first unionist congress in 1994, dubbed the “Islamic National Congress.” This convergence between the two forces is actually nothing new; it constitutes a return to their original matrix, summed up by the conventional formula: “Arabism and Islam.” The novelty lies solely in the conscious, deliberate, and concerted combining of their efforts to dissolve non-Arab identities by forcibly absorbing them into Arab identity. Consequently, Islam is instrumentally used politically, as it has always been, to serve the cause of Arabism and propagate it in its name, with the non-Arab identities of the Middle East and North Africa thereafter perceived as heterodox in relation to Islam. This is why they must be eliminated and supplanted by Arab identity so that the Islam of the bearers of these identities may be accepted, after they have converted into Arabs and abdicated their original identities.

This symbiosis between Arab nationalism and political Islam found in North African countries the most fertile ground to test its effectiveness, as evidenced by the policy of identity-based Arabization that damages Amazigh identity. Thus, Islam is mobilized on political and identity fronts, here in Morocco and throughout North Africa, to stifle Amazigh identity under the pretext that it disrupts the language of Islam, namely Arabic, as soon as this Amazigh identity demands its right of access to schools, administration, and all state institutions. As for nationalism, it “combats” Amazigh identity because it views it as a threat to illusory Arab unity. Although an apparent antagonism opposes Islamists and nationalists in Morocco—the latter being labeled secular by the former—this rivalry vanishes as soon as Amazigh identity is concerned, giving way to an Arabizing coalition dedicated to the extermination of Amazigh identity. If Arab nationalism and political Islam constitute two deadly identities in Morocco, the sacrificed victim invariably remains Amazigh identity. And for this destructive enterprise to prosper on a large scale and take on the aspect of an identity-based genocide, the Arabist and Islamist currents enlist, to execute this misdeed, individuals whose Amazigh identity has precisely been pulverized by these very movements. Deprived of their original Amazigh identity, the latter become the most zealous partisans of the eradication of the vestiges of this same identity, seeking through their subservience to win the favors of the sponsors in order to obtain in return membership in their purported Arabism, out of fear of remaining “bastards” devoid of identity attachment after the spoliation of their original roots. This explains why the executioners of Amazigh identity, whether claiming allegiance to Arab nationalism or Islam, are originally Amazigh people whom destructive Arabization has metamorphosed, making them swing from their Amazigh condition to a fictitious and usurped Arab identity, similar to victims of a gender, national, and identity transition that disfigures their belonging and mutilates their identity.

Consequently, discoursing on “deadly identities” actually conceals a distressing and bitter reality: the victims of these “deadly identities” are indeed assassinated identities. The display of the bogeyman of “deadly identities” has the sole purpose of prohibiting these flouted identities from claiming their right to exist once again. This is why we observe that the main obstacle hindering the serious and effective realization of the official status of the Amazigh language emanates from Arabist and Islamist parties, who perceive the resurgence of Amazigh identity as a fatal threat to their Arab-centric, illusory, and fictitious existence. Therefore, what deserves our attention does not lie in “deadly identities,” but rather in their victims, composed of assassinated identities calling for resolute defenders to restore life to them, as authentic and legitimate identities of original and genuine peoples, like the Amazigh people in North Africa. Amazigh identity has never been known to be a “deadly” identity against any other identity, nor has it nurtured the slightest desire to annihilate the authentic Arab identity of the genuine Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula. What it aspires to dismantle is the counterfeit Arab identity in Morocco and North Africa, which genuine Arabs themselves refute, judging it to be mendacious and usurped. It is precisely this putting to death of artifice and imposture that terrifies nationalists and Islamists, who are terrified at the idea of being what they truly are, in accordance with their essence: Amazigh people through their collective identity, rooted in their land and in the original language of this country, which is none other than the Amazigh language.

But lies have short legs, as the saying goes. The imposture is beginning to be brought to light, and the truth is finally bursting into the open.

Arabic version | French version