God and Caesar

Chapter two sketches out the realities of missionary and colonial administrator conflict in Algeria, especially where Jesuit missionaries were concerned. The chapter traces the history of several Jesuit attempts to evangelize Algerian Muslims, perhaps inspired by the philo-Islamic optimism of Veuillot and other French conservatives. Jesuit attempts to proselytize among Muslims were galling to laic administrators. The military administrators of the Arab Offices wanted to convince their colonial subjects that religion was an internal matter and that they could thus accept the benefits of French civilization, medicine, or governance without compromising their religious belonging. The Jesuits, on the contrary, wanted to preserve the all-pervasive religiosity of indigenous society, yet to transfer that theocratic religious loyalty to themselves, the Christian marabouts.