US University “steals” Algerian researcher’s work on French Orientalism in Algeria

Algerian scholar Ben Ibrahim Tayeb hailing from Ouled Cheikh in the city of Al Bayedh in eastern Algeria was flabbergasted when surfing on the Web site of the US University of Michigan to discover the posting of his book entitled “Orientalism and the multiplicity of its functions especially in Algeria”, which was adopted by the Supreme Islamic Council, as a key reference in the study of Orientalism in Algeria.

The Council took in charge the publishing of this reference book for its Second Edition in the year 2009. The posting on the Michigan University website was carried out by unknown persons without the Algerian researcher’s prior permission.

The webmasters of this US University are preparing a Digital Edition with a view to marketing the first book Edition, published in 2004, in blatant violation of the ownership laws or without the prior authorization from the Algerian research worker himself who had compiled this major document through thick and thin.

The latter told “Echorouk” that it had taken him over ten years to write and put together this widely-recognized research work about the ins and outs of French Orientalism in Algeria throughout the French colonial yoke in the country.

In his outstanding book, Ben Ibrahim Tayeb dwelt extensively and with solid arguments about the close relationship which existed between colonial rule and Orientalism.

This close relationship between them was mainly geared to distorting and belittling the true religion of Islam and stamping out the Ancestral identity of the Muslim Algerian people.

“The French colonizers were betting on their Orientalists and their prominent deviation role as they were betting on their armies”, he underscored.

He quoted late French writer Auguste Bernard as saying: “we didn’t come to Algeria to bring security and harmony, but rather to spread Christian civilization, the French language and French ideas… Algeria is not a colony like India or China…”

Mr Ben Ibrahim Tayeb said in his writings that the French Orientalism was more Western Orientalism by turning into types of cultural invasion and “missionary” drives, and France waged on all fronts its main domination conflict with the East, in the military or religious or cultural or economic fields, and invested in its major ally of Christianization, ie: colonialism and the francophone culture to subdue unjustly other foreign peoples.