The 1912 law forced Muslim originaires to renounce Koranic personal status for citizenship

Evidence

Under the Roume and Panty administrations, the assimile and evolue elements of the Four Communes received an unpleasant shock. After years of taking their French citizenship for granted, both groups suddenly learned that the new federal administration, though willing to admit that the originaires’ special electoral privileges gave them a legal status distinct from that of the federation’s other inhabitants, was not prepared automatically to recognize them as citizens of the Republic. Citizenship, according to the I 9 I 2 law on the subject, could be acquired only through an individual act of naturalization; this required, among other things, that Muslims renounce their “personal status” and accept French civil law. To add insult to injury, Dakar made clear that, despite the new rule that citizenship had to be acquired individually, it was prepared to naturalize the mulattoes and other assimiles of Saint-Louis, but not the evolues. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 521

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did the personal-status renunciation requirement compare to Algerian Muslim citizenship rules of the same era?
• XREF: This maps onto the classic colonial citizenship paradox elsewhere, especially the Crémieux Decree debates in Algeria.