During the First World War, the French Army deployed some fi ve hundred thousand colonial subjects as soldiers, known as troupes indigènes , on European battlefi elds. More than half of these men-many West African troops and nearly all North Africans (Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans)—were Muslim. Islam was, then, one of the social and cultural facts that Europeans had to confront during the war. The presence of Muslims in the French Army on the Western Front meant that Europeans had to cultivate an approach to Islam in Europe, as well as in the colonies or as a geopolitical and imperial fact. In other words, Europeans had to confront the ‘Muslimness’ of these men. 2

This chapter will address two key questions about the religion of ‘aliens in uniform’ in Europe during the twentieth century. First, how and why did Europeans accommodate the religious beliefs of soldiers from the colonies? Second, what role did the religious faith of these soldiers play in motivating or justifying their service, and did calls for or against ‘holy war’ play a role? The case of North African Muslims in the French Army between 1914 and 1918 sheds light on all of these issues. Accommodating the religious beliefs of North African soldiers was a key aspect of French military policy during the war, and the army took measures designed to respect Muslim burial rites, allow Muslim troops to observe holy days, and provide these troops with the ministration of religious fi gures, all designed to help maintain morale and ensure loyalty. German and Ottoman propaganda sought to call morale and loyalty into question by promoting a ‘jihad’ against the Entente powers. A key component of these efforts was the attempt to convince North Africans to do their alleged duty as ‘good Muslims’, to take up arms against, rather than for, their French colonial masters. French fears about these efforts, and about the reliability of North African Muslims, had important effects on policy, for instance preventing North Africans’ deployment to the Dardanelles to fi ght against fellow Muslims in the Ottoman Army.