A paper that's admittedly shorter than I'd prefer, but a decent one that I had fun researching. I hope you like reading about the long-term results of colonialism!
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Under the French, Algeria’s Islam was considered indigenous subversion against colonial rule. In French Algeria, religious uniformity was used as a qualifier for avoiding the eye of the colonial authorities. Abandonment of indigenous (or in the Protestant case, non-French) creeds also bestowed the ability to apply for French citizenship – an essential step toward participating in France’s progressive republican system of governance. French restrictions upon Islamic symbols, such as the popular veiling of women according to Qur’anic law, led to the use of colonial tactics such as the forced unveiling of Algerian women as punishment for practicing the tradition. The religious structure, too, was restricted in its behavior. The French actively persecuted the rural Algerian mystics known as marabouts due to their potentially subversive and rebellious nature ; the urban ulama were stripped of their societal influence by the forcefully secular colonial authorities. These anti-Islamic, and indeed anti-religious actions, would have a deep impact upon Algeria’s future.
The independence of Algeria in July of 1962, achieved after a long and costly war between various factions hoping to gain control of the collapsing colonial entity, occurred in part due to religious factors. One of the major factions, the revolutionary Algerian group known as the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), incorporated members of not only secular Algerian society but also members of an emerging reformist bloc within the generally powerless urban religious class. This “Reformist Ulama” derived its beliefs from the teachings of the modernist Algerian theologian Ben Badis (1889-1940), a conservative Muslim who disavowed the Islam of the Sufi-oriented marabouts and founded the conservative and anti-colonial Association of Muslim Algerian Ulama. His views gradually gained popular adherence as the public began to identify with the reformists, moreso than with the weakened urban ulama or the quietist rural Sufis who no longer represented the best interests of the Algerians. Islam acted as a unifying force among the resistant Algerians, and the “Reformist Ulama” functioned as a sort of lightning rod of resistance against the French. Thus, at the turn of Algeria’s rebirth, its religious traditions gained resurgence through conservatism.
Algeria’s new government, led by and large by former members of the Front de Libération Nationale, immediately elevated Islam to the level of state doctrine. Both the Algerian Constitution of 1964 as well as the second Algerian Constitution of 1976 declared Islam as the official religion of the Algerian Republic – a far cry from the secularism of the French colonial period. Islamic courts were utilized in family matters, and the Constitution detailed the illegitimacy of any state policies or legal rulings which violating the rules of the Qur’an. The one-party FLN-based government acted quickly, monopolizing their control of the new state’s religious establishment: mosques were built with state funding, Islamic schools were founded to train officials who favored the ruling party, and the FLN even distributed mandatory weekly prayers to imams across the country. The views of the Reformist Ulama were utilized by the FLN in reforming national religious institutions, and the views of Ben Badis contributed – on a noteworthy yet state-friendly note – to the modernist FLN government.
Left out of the new state’s arrangement of power were the actual members of the conservative Reformist Ulama. The more secular FLN had effectively taken control of the new state – leaving other organizations, including the conservative modernist Muslims who had actively fought alongside the FLN against the French and the pieds-noirs, without much influence in the direction taken by the post-colonial government. The initial response to this political maneuvering was the1963 foundation of Al-Qiyam Al-Islamiya – “Islamic Values” – an early Islamist organization composed of both reformist theologians and conservative FLN members who called for the FLN to overhaul the new government to fit into an Islamic state framework. This organization’s ideology was indicative of the changing face of Algerian Islam: while incorporating the views of Ben Badis, it also drew influences of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) – a prominent Islamic modernist writer who functioned as the primary ideologue for the ultraconservative Egyptian Islamist group known as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al-Qiyam did not last long in any official capacity; similar ideals, however, were soon co-opted by the government. Houari Boumedienne (1932-1978), the military leader who led a coup against the presidency of Ahmed Ben Bella (1918-), advocated a policy of both Arabization and Islamization of the state – a move which led to the official recruitment of exiled members of the ultraconservative Islamist Muslim Brotherhood faction. On a lesser note, Boumedienne also utilized the youth of Al-Qiyam to combat leftist and Marxist student groups at state educational facilities – a precedent which would have grisly repercussions – before dissolving the group and pushing the Islamists underground.
While new elements were introduced to Algerian Islam, more familiar aspects of the region’s religion began to fall out of favor with both these new groups as well as the authoritarian government. This new conservatism gained adherence not only among urban Muslims, but also among rural Muslims – at the cost of abandoning a prominent historical aspect of Algerian Islam. The mystic thought of the Sufi marabouts, while still popular in urban areas, came under criticism from Al-Qiyam due to their non-conformist views and, according to the Islamists, their collaboration-through-inaction in favor of the French colonial government. The FLN-led government, too, began to act out against the marabouts for their lack of adherence to the state’s attempts at modernizing both society and religion. In 1968, sporadic violence occurred around the port city of Mostaganem involving Sufis; instead of addressing the dire social issues impacting the locale, including poverty and crime, the government readily blamed the chaos on the rebellious behavior of subversive mystics.
As official policies toward liberal religious thought hardened, so did the religious practice of the Algerians themselves – just in time for nationwide tumult. A massive government campaign toward creating jobs in the cities, as well as a general trend toward urbanization during the 1970’s and 1980’s, led to a swelling of the population in places such as the national capital at Algiers. The factor which lent fuel to this development was the discovery of both oil and natural gases on Algerian territory. These developments occurred as the state of life in Algerian worsened due to the constantly-tightening grip of the one-party government, which violently struck down protests and culled any emergent organizations – religious or otherwise – which emerged without their consent.
Those within the Islamist structure who hoped to achieve unity with the government were pushed aside by the growing bloc of hardline Islamists who espoused ultraorthodox views, claiming that their views were indicative of real Algerian virtues despite their recent foreign influences. Underneath the economic development of the 1980’s, the simmering ire held by the common Algerian toward his or her government began to fall prey to the influence of this subtle Islamism. Urban men and women began to “Islamify” themselves to keep up with these standards of Algerian value, donning traditional religious clothing such as the hijab for women as well as the thawb and kufi for men. In accordance with the Islamists’ Arabizing ideals, men began to wear beards as a sign of piety – a decision which was critiqued by Sufi figures, a historically weakened demographic which the government began to court in the 1980’s as an ally against Islamist influence, as indicative of the “alien” Wahhabi influence which was infecting the country’s religious atmosphere. Regardless of these views, the Algerian adoption of orthodox Arab-Islamic practices continued, and intensified, through the 1980’s.
As unrest increased and an adherence to conservative Islam emerged in popular Algerian society, the Islamist structure was revived. The Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), led by Muslims bred by a Muslim Brotherhood-styled education system, was founded in the early 1980’s but splintered quickly. The Mouvement Islamique Armée (MIA), a successor group led by former FLN official Moustafa Bouyali, courted and employed fundamentalist Muslims who had participated as mujahideen against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan only months beforehand. The MIA endorsed its own uniformity at universities to compete with government attempts to enact the same policies; this led to the 1982 murder of a University of Algiers student as conducted by MIA operatives. The organization called openly for jihad against the Algerian government, branding it as an apostate regime and laying claim to the true legacy of the Algerian Revolution. Religion, once the glue that kept Algeria unified, began to push the state into instability. that had emerged amidst the government’s reconciliatory period.
Most pertinent to the state of Islam in Algeria were the results of the 1991 election. Prior to them, the growing influence of Algerian Islamists – as well as subversive state-employed former Muslim Brotherhood figures – led to a conciliatory approach by the government, who passed restrictive new family laws in 1984 to appease the Islamists. A resurgent Front Islamique du Salut, led by the populist Ali Benhadj (1956-) and funded by the Saudi-linked former FLN minister Abbassi Madani (1931-), gained admittance to the elections and, after an initial round of voting, seemed poised to gain control of the government. The authoritarian party-in-power, however, disavowed the results and banned further elections in the name of preserving democracy. This spark lit the fire which would become the Algerian Civil War – a conflict that would for eleven years and end in a government victory, a continued low-level insurgency, and a splintered sense of religious unity.
Contemporarily, the government still deals with the threat of Islamism. While the older blocs have weakened, new ones – including the infamous Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – have gained power and societal influence, which are utilized to commit acts of terrorism against a state which fundamentalist Muslims still consider an apostate entity. The semi-authoritarian state still regards itself as adhering to Islam, but has taken steps toward secularization – a move which, within the Algerian religious sense, is both despised and understood.
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Works Cited
Burgat, Francois. Face to Face with Political Islam. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003.
Burke, Edmund. Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Cudsi, Alexander S. and Ali al-Din Hilal. Islam and Power. London: Croon Helm, 1981.
Deeb, Mary Jane. “Islam and the Algerian State,” in Algeria (Country Study). Library of Congress: Federal Research Division, 2003.
Kepel, Gilles and Anthony F. Roberts (translator). Jihad: the Trail of Political Islam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley. Islamic & Politics in the Contemporary World. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004.
Vatin, Jean-Claude. “Popular Puritanism versus State Reformism: Islam in Algeria,” in Islam in the Political Process by James P. Piscatori (editor), 98-121. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Winter, Bronwyn. Hijab & the Republic: Uncovering the French Headscarf Debate. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008.
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If only the professor hadn't put a page limit on it!
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