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The French colonial power believed that sorcery & belief in magic was particularly widespread in the Maghreb. The jurist Louis Milliot, for example, wrote in his 1910 dissertation on the "Condition of the Muslim Woman in the Maghreb" that "Islam condemns witchcraft & the occult sciences but, in reality, witchcraft & magic have always found adepts there & at each stage of the history of Muslims we meet soothsayers, sorcerers or magicians." #FrenchColonialism #Orientalism #History
He added that from the point of view of sorcery "the Maghreb occupies a truly privileged place in all of Islam".
The French conviction that the belief in sorcery was particularly widespread in the Maghreb, was also connected to notions of asynchronous developments between Europe & "Islam", i.e. the conviction that colonised Muslim countries should be compared to medieval Europe.
Renée Lacascade, for example, wrote in her 1922 medical dissertation on "Childcare & Colonisation" that her study on Morocco, "although set in the time we agree to call the 20th century", concerned "the heart of Islam [...] a period similar to our Middle Ages". She added that, armed with that understanding, people "will no longer be surprised at the naivety of popular beliefs, the way of life of Arab women, feminine superstitions & the practices of magic or witchcraft [...]
that accompany the various acts of family life in Morocco."
#FrenchColonialism #Orientalism #History #Maghreb #Magic
Ref: Milliot, Louis. Étude sur la condition de la femme musulmane au Maghreb. Leg. Diss., University of Paris 1910, p. 31; Lacascade, Renée. Puériculture et colonisation. Étude sur la puériculture au Maroc. Med. Diss., University of Paris 1922, p. 11.