Bel Hadj El Maafi (in Arabic: بَلْحَاجّ ٱلْمْعَفِي), sometimes called Bel Hadj Ben Maafi (October 25, 1900-February 22, 1999), was a French-Algerian imam, marabout, resistance fighter and mufti born in the oasis of Lichana, near Biskra. He practiced in the city of Lyon from 1923 until his death.
As a privileged intermediary between the French authorities and Algerians in Lyon, he engaged in the Resistance and saved numerous Jews during World War II.
Before and during the Algerian War, El Maafi chose to collaborate with the French authorities and remained opposed to Algerian independence. His ties with the French authorities made him a target, and as part of the Café Wars between the National Liberation Front (FLN) and the Algerian National Movement (MNA), he was targeted in an attack by the FLN from which he survived.
Despite the different political currents during the Algerian War, Bel Hadj El Maafi remained highly appreciated by the Muslim community in Lyon until his death. This was mainly due to his longevity and his visits to prisoners, the sick, and Muslim soldiers. However, he left a mixed impression among some former FLN militants.
He was the first imam in Lyon and the first Muslim cleric to have a mosque in the city.
Youth and Interwar Period
Bel Hadj El Maafi was born on October 25, 1900, in the oasis of Lichana, ten kilometers from the city of Biskra, in French Algeria. He came from a family of imams, his father Maafi was also an imam, and his brother, who shared the same name, was a military chaplain who was Mort pour la France on April 28, 1918, in Verona, Italy, during World War I at the age of 21. His mother's name was Salam Khadouje.
After studying the Quran, he moved to metropolitan France in 1923. He was sent to Lyon by the Rahmaniyya Sufi brotherhood to which he belonged, and which was the largest brotherhood in Algeria at that time. More precisely, it was the leader of the zawiya of Tolga, Hadj Ben Ali Ben Othman, who sent him to Metropolitan France. He was a sufi marabout, meaning a sufi religious leader of Northern Africa.
Upon his arrival, his knowledge of the French language was very poor, but he gradually learned. In 1923, he became a military chaplain for a regiment of tirailleurs.
In 1933, with the assistance of Lyon's mayor, Édouard Herriot, and the prefect of Rhône, Achille Villey-Desmeserets, he requested the opening of the first Muslim place of worship in Lyon. However, this request was denied by the Minister of Interior, Camille Chautemps, who stated :"These so-called mokkadems seek, under the cover of religious proselytism, purely temporal advantages, notably gifts of money extorted from their Muslim coreligionists."From the 1930s onwards, El Maafi collaborated with the French authorities. He became the assistant secretary of the Committee for the Protection of North African Workers and also served as an auxiliary for the North African Services of the Rhône Prefecture. One of his tasks was to monitor the Algerian community and identify individuals involved in the independence movement. In this capacity, he assisted Julien Azario, a civil servant in the prefecture who was a French resistance member and recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, in his surveillance work.
In addition to these connections, during the interwar period, El Maafi served as a military chaplain. He also visited Muslim inmates on death row from 1931 onwards, including Abdelkader Rakida, who was sentenced to death for shooting two police officers during his arrest. El Maafi was actively involved in providing spiritual support to the sick, often visiting hospitals.
French Resistance
During the occupation of France, El Maafi joined the resistance and appeared to have various roles. Firstly, he provided information to the French internal resistance about Muslim resistance fighters to prevent infiltrators and collaborators from penetrating the resistance. In this capacity, he is believed to have recruited Djaafar Khemdoudi to join the resistance, as expressed in a letter to the military governor of Lyon in 1946. He affected sympathy, with Julien Azario, towards the collaborationist authorities, but resisted in secret. Thus, he sacrificed a sheep at the Maison des Africans in Saint Antoine street on December 8, 1943, the day of Eid al-Adha, in the presence of Alexandre Angeli, collaborationist prefect of the Rhône, Julien Azario and the head of the Lyon's Milice. He also participated in such a ceremony in 1942.