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Al-Umma Al-Yaqzaniyya’s Self-Representation: A Key to Understanding Algerian Reformism 
Abstract
In 1933, Shaikh Abu Al-Yaqzan (d. 1973), a former student of the Ibadite reformist scholar Muḥammad Aṭṭfiyash (d.1914) and one of the first Algerian journalists, defied multiple attempts of censorship by the French colonial administration and launched a newspaper named “al-Umma” anew in Algiers. This publication went on to become his longest-lasting Mozabite periodical during the first half of the 20th century. Notably, "Al-Umma" served as a crucial mediator, fostering a sense of community and developing Ibadite conceptualizations of the umma in interwar French-Algeria. These conceptualizations ranged from local imaginings of a Mozabite umma to pan-African visions, such as the Maghrebian umma, and global perspectives like a pan-Islamic umma. This research aims to discern alternative political imaginaries, envisioned communities, and forms of resistance within Al-Umma al-Yaqzaniyya. A significant aspect to explore is how "Al-Umma" symbolized a robust form of epistemic resilience. This paper illustrates how periodicals, like "Al-Umma," served not only as a powerful form of resistance against French colonial occupation, it further served as a means of asserting Ibadite Muslim subjectivity that thoroughly challenged the dominant Eurocentric and colonial epistemological space that has been upheld by the French settler colonial state since the 1840s.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Algeria
Sub Area
None