Spiritual Kinship

By Peter Steinfels, "Reviving a Novel-Worthy Tale of War and Religion" - The New York Times - New York, NY
Friday, November 21, 2008

For more than 40 years he was a world figure, his renown stretching from the American Midwest to Moscow to the Middle East. As he neared death in 1883, The New York Times wrote that he “deserves to be ranked among the foremost of the few great men of the century.”

Earlier, he had received accolades and awards from France, Britain, Russia, the Ottoman sultan, the papacy and President Abraham Lincoln, who sent him not a medal but, in quintessentially American fashion, a matched pair of fancy Colt pistols.

The man being honored was Abd el-Kader, a learned and fervent Muslim, who for 15 years had organized and led a jihad against a Western power.

After he ceased hostilities, his four-year detention, in violation of a promise of safe passage into exile, became an international cause célèbre. Released and feted, even by his captors, he came to live in Damascus. There, in July 1860, el-Kader braved mobs and saved thousands of Christians from a murderous rampage through the city’s Christian quarter.

In this, the bicentennial of his birth, el-Kader’s name is known to only a tiny fraction of Americans. That fraction includes those knowledgeable about modern Algeria, where his resistance to French colonization places him among the founding figures of an independent nation.

And then there are the 1,500 residents of Elkader, a town in northeastern Iowa, founded and named in 1846 by a frontier lawyer who admired the freedom-fighting exploits of this “daring Arab chieftain.”

Anyone interested in learning more should turn to “Commander of the Faithful” (Monkfish Book Publishing Company), a new book by John W. Kiser.

Mr. Kiser had previously written “The Monks of Tibhirine” (St. Martin’s Press), about Trappist monks in Algeria whose quiet lives of prayer had bonded them with their Muslim neighbors but who were nonetheless taken hostage by Islamic extremists in 1996 and killed.

Mr. Kiser learned about el-Kader (the name is sometimes transliterated from the Arabic in different ways, like al-Qadir or al-Kadir) because the Tibhirine monastery stood on the slope of a mountain where el-Kader had led one of his battles and where a steep cliff face was named after him.

A book about a leader of jihad may seem like a strange sequel to a book about peaceful monks, but the more Mr. Kiser learned about el-Kader, the more he felt a spiritual kinship between the devout, ascetic Trappists and the pious, ascetic guerrilla leader. Both had found in their own religious codes and daily rituals the basis for a fraternity that defied religious boundaries.

As the son of a celebrated holy man, tribal leader and head of a Sufi brotherhood, el-Kader was taught to read and memorize the Koran, tutored in all the details of the tradition but also in philosophy, history and other fields.

At home and away, the young boy was also trained in horseback riding, public speaking and fighting skills. All would prove crucial. In 1832, with France increasingly encroaching on Algerian territory that was only nominally under Ottoman rule, the 25-year-old el-Kader emerged as the commander, the emir, of Muslim Arab resistance.

Because el-Kader was just over five feet tall, Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker, who took a great interest in Algerian affairs, called him a “puny Arab”; but Tocqueville also called him “a Muslim Cromwell.” Like Oliver Cromwell, he wielded strict religious beliefs to form a disciplined fighting force.

Mr. Kiser insists on the religious dimension of what might otherwise be read as a story of military and political maneuvering. But “Commander of the Faithful” is hardly a theological study. It is a dramatic story of quarreling tribes, of Sufi sects and brotherhoods, of treacherous Ottoman officials, rival French generals, secret negotiations, broken truces, terrible atrocities and new forms of insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare.

Any number of episodes could inspire novels, like the deep spiritual intimacy that joined the embattled emir and Antoine-Adolphe Dupuch, Roman Catholic bishop of Algiers.
It began in 1841 with the emir’s offer of a prisoner exchange, a humanitarian contrast to the scorched-earth policy being executed by French troops. A decade later, when el-Kader, with his family and entourage, was being held in confinement in France, Bishop Dupuch became a tireless champion of his liberation.

At the end of 1847, el-Kader decided that God did not want any more blood spilled in what had come to be a futile struggle. The emir agreed to lay down arms and expected French officials to honor their promise of exile in the Middle East.

In France, however, the reign of Louis-Philippe was tottering, and he feared public opinion. When the French ship transporting the Algerians arrived in Toulon, they were put under guard.
Little more than a month later, the Revolution of 1848 broke out, and politicians grew even more fearful of stirring public outrage at the idea of freeing the Algerian enemy. It took four years before the mood changed, and Louis Napoleon had the confidence to free the prisoner.

Mr. Kiser does not make undue claims for his book. He had ready access to sources in French and English but not Arabic ones, although he found plenty of guidance in Algeria and Damascus.
As it happens, a major source for the life of el-Kader, in any language, is the work of an eccentric Englishman, Charles Henry Churchill of, yes, those Churchills, who lived in Damascus and sympathized with the Muslim Arab subjects of Ottoman rule. For months throughout the winter of 1859-60, Churchill interviewed the emir daily and published the account in 1869.

Mr. Kiser has provided a “Chronology of Algerian and World Events” that provocatively reminds American readers that while France was launching its military campaigns against Algerian guerrillas the United States was sending troops to quell Native Americans.

But it is hard to read “Commander of the Faithful” without thinking of more recent events — and the author knows this well. Perhaps, he said in a phone conversation, the book might help people “to find in France’s adventure and its ultimate failure some lessons about the world we’re entering today”.