Peripheral traditionalism: Judeoislamic self‐help in Marseille's northern districts

Abstract

Through the synagogue‐cum‐community space of St‐X in Marseille's infamous peripheral northern districts, local urban‐invested intercommunal communication and solidarity are generated via self‐help initiatives that particularize humanitarianism. Because of their traditionalist Jewish and Muslim religious anchorings and the stranglehold of laïcité over the state and organized religion, post migrant North African life and shared experience in these districts are either co‐opted into the liberal realm of interfaith by the centre or pushed out as illiberal and dangerous because they live by other grammars of public reason. To analyse the reason of peripheral traditionalism and its attendant self‐help, I draw on the writings of Maimonides originating from the field, i.e. present in the discourse of interlocutors, and in particular ‘aql as a Judeoislamic philosophical and praxical touchstone.