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To: ScaniaBoy
In Algeria, authorities have tried to appease the radical Islamists as well as using them as weapons against the left. This strategy has been just as effective as a similar plan adopted in early 20th century Europe - namely in the case of the German democrats and businessmen who tried to deal with the Nazis in a similar fashion.

A lot of the (North) African Muslim refugees seeking political asylum under the Geneva Convention (as amended by the New York Protocol) in Europe belong to radical Islamist movements consisting of fanatics who are even ‘too Muslim’ to function in a fundamentalist Muslim society.

From Wikipedia;

“After independence the Algerian government asserted state control over religious activities for purposes of national consolidation and political control. Islam became the religion of the state in the new constitution (Article 2), and was the religion of its leaders. The state monopolized the building of mosques, and the Ministry of Religious Affairs controlled an estimated 5,000 public mosques by the mid-1980s. Imams were trained, appointed, and paid by the state, and the Friday khutba, or sermon, was issued to them by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. That ministry also administered religious property (the habus), provided for religious education and training in schools, and created special institutes for Islamic learning. Islamic law (sharia) principles were introduced into family law in particular, while remaining absent from most of the legal code; thus, for example, while Muslim women were banned from marrying non-Muslims (by the Algerian Family Code of 1984), wine remained legal.

Those measures, however, did not satisfy everyone. As early as 1964 a militant Islamic movement, called Al Qiyam (values), emerged and became the precursor of the Islamic Salvation Front (Islamist party) of the 1990s. Al Qiyam called for a more dominant role for Islam in Algeria’s legal and political systems and opposed what it saw as Western practices in the social and cultural life of Algerians.

Although militant Islamism was suppressed, it reappeared in the 1970s under a different name and with a new organization. The movement began spreading to university campuses, where it was encouraged by the state as a counterbalance to left-wing student movements. By the 1980s, the movement had become even stronger, and bloody clashes erupted at the Ben Aknoun campus of the University of Algiers in November 1982. The violence resulted in the state’s cracking down on the movement, a confrontation that would intensify throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

The rise of Islamism had a significant impact on Algerian society. More women began wearing the veil, some because they had become more conservative religiously and others because the veil kept them from being harassed on the streets, on campuses, or at work. Islamists also prevented the enactment of a more liberal family code despite pressure from feminist groups and associations.

After the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won the 1991 elections, and was then banned after the elections’ cancellation by the military, the tensions between Islamists and the government erupted into open fighting, which lasted some 10 years in the course of which some 100,000 people were killed. However, some Islamist parties remained aboveground - notably the Movement of Society for Peace and Islamic Renaissance Movement - and were allowed by the government to contest later elections. In recent years, the Civil Harmony Act and Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation have been passed, providing an amnesty for most crimes committed in the course of the war.”

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Algeria#After_independence

15 posted on 08/14/2007 1:38:33 PM PDT by WesternCulture
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To: WesternCulture
The movement began spreading to university campuses, where it was encouraged by the state as a counterbalance to left-wing student movements.

No matter how bad the alternative, it's not that hard to get a mass movement going against left-wing movements. To Islamic countries, Western democracy needs to be presented as "the third way."
17 posted on 09/20/2007 4:34:08 AM PDT by RogerFGay
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