 In “Algeria Unveiled”, Fanon explores the relationship between Islam, tradition, colonial rule, and revolutionary consciousness. The veil puzzles Fanon and challenges his deepest political commitment: postcoloniality means an embrace of the new. Revolution is absolute and radical, marking a break with the past rather than a return to a different version of the past. The future is the future, and so full of the unprecedented. What does that mean for traditions that have been suppressed by colonial rule, for example the veil in Islamic cultural practice? In his work on blackness, Fanon was quite clear that a return to African civilization—the imperative of the Négritude movement—represents a mirage and only doubles the loss of the past by losing black people in an illusion. But that is not the case with his treatment of Islamic traditions in Algeria and other parts of the Maghreb. The suppression of those traditions, on Fanon’s account, marginalize or push tradition into secret—or, perhaps, keep the tradition in the open, but always as backward, abject, and contrary to modernity. This means tradition is still alive, not a mirage, and as alive also valued deeply by communities resisting colonial rule. Such traditions can be instrumentalized for the sake of revolutionary action, only to be evaluated after colonialism for their suitability in a postcolonial nation and culture. The same logic is elaborated in “The Algerian Family”, where Fanon explores the traditional structure of families in Algeria, in particular how those families set gender identity, power, marriage, and reproduction in fixed roles. Revolutionary families, he argues, identify these fixed roles and break with them while also maintaining a conviction that their practices are Algerian—that is, Algerian in the new sense.