Commentator Armelle Choplin did a real service in pointing out that while Mauritania was the locale of several acts of terrorism, there is no evidence that Mauritanians, including home grown Islamists, support terrorism. That is an important distinction in light of claims by others that Mauritania has become a country of terrorism. Similarly she did well to wonder if the combination of festering social unrest and well funded promotion of Islamic fundamentalist teachings by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf donors may yet produce genuine Islamist domestic terrorism.

There is a serious shortcoming, however, in the her summary of the country's socio-religious evolution since independence. Attributing the early decision to become an Islamic Republic as a move to unite the country's social communities under the banner of Islam was true in its use as a public justification but largely false as to its actual purpose.

First, the major political factions of the dominant white Moors were animated by purely local clan competitions and the then widespread, emphatically secular Arabization movements. Syrian-Iraqi Baathism (which made a point of including Arab Christians) and Egyptian Nassirism (enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood) were the most attractive to the ruling white Moors. Second, being an Islamic Republic was useful in fending off actual "intégristes" (religious fundamentalists) by gaining tight control over the mosques. Third, Mauritanians were already Muslims, so Islam as such required no promotion. Yet unlike Arabized black Moors (Haratins), black Mauritanians remain oriented by language and culture to sub-Saharan Africa and in religious practice to the unique Muslim brotherhoods of Senegal and Mali. So black Mauritanians understood the dominant white Moors were launching an Arabization, not Isalmization, campaign to marginalize their own status and end the use of French in public education, the bureaucracy and military. This struggle became a key feature of Mauritanian political life as the Arabization campaign moved ahead and periodic acts of civil war and suppression occurred, with black Mauritanians steadily losing ground until this came to major crisis with the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of black Mauritanians in 1989. Any lingering pretense of unity under the banner of Islam was discarded in favor of a naked political power play and land grab. So yes, religious practice in Mauritania has always been tolerant of diversity within Islam but not so its use as a political facade to mask other purposes by the dominant white Moor elite.