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Prince of Brotherhood - Amir Abd el-Kader:
A farming community in the American Midwest is an unlikely place to celebrate the life of an Algerian born 200 years ago, but Amir Abd el-Kader was more than an ordinary man of the North African desert.
During his lifetime, Abd el-Kader, tribal leader and scholar of the Qur’an, became world-famous as both a freedom-fighter and an advocate for religious tolerance and cultural openness. President Abraham Lincoln thanked him for saving lives. French priests praised him from their pulpits. British readers admired him as they read his autobiography. And Algerians today regard him as a founder of modern Algeria and a symbol of its future. This May, the people of Elkader, Iowa (population less than 1400)—the only town in the United States named after an Arab—invoked his legacy when Algeria’s ambassador to the us helped school officials honor the teenage winner of the town’s high-school essay contest on the topic of religious understanding.
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A farming community in the American Midwest is an unlikely place to celebrate the life of an Algerian born 200 years ago, but Amir Abd el-Kader was more than an ordinary man of the North African desert.
During his lifetime, Abd el-Kader, tribal leader and scholar of the Qur’an, became world-famous as both a freedom-fighter and an advocate for religious tolerance and cultural openness. President Abraham Lincoln thanked him for saving lives. French priests praised him from their pulpits. British readers admired him as they read his autobiography. And Algerians today regard him as a founder of modern Algeria and a symbol of its future. This May, the people of Elkader, Iowa (population less than 1400)—the only town in the United States named after an Arab—invoked his legacy when Algeria’s ambassador to the us helped school officials honor the teenage winner of the town’s high-school essay contest on the topic of religious understanding.
[Read more]