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Killing Post-Almohad Man: Malek

Bennabi, Algerian Islamism and the
Search for a Liberal Governance
Sebastian J. Walsh
Published online: 02 May 2007.

To cite this article: Sebastian J. Walsh (2007) Killing Post-Almohad Man: Malek Bennabi, Algerian
Islamism and the Search for a Liberal Governance, The Journal of North African Studies, 12:2,
235-254, DOI: 10.1080/13629380701235251

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 The Journal of North African Studies Vol. 12, No. 2, June 2007

Killing Post-Almohad Man: Malek

Bennabi, Algerian Islamism and the
Search for a Liberal Governance
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SEBASTIAN J. WALSH
ABSTRACT This article introduces Malek Bennabi (1905–73), an Algerian Islamist philosopher who
is little known in the Anglophone world. Bennabi’s principle ideas, in particular his reconciliation of
Algerian nationalism and Islamism, are briefly discussed. Then the article assesses his long-term
impact on Algerian Islamism, most particularly within the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) and its
Ja’zara grouping. Through interviews with onetime FIS members, both senior figures and lower
level activists, the author reveals the extensive influence of Bennabi on the group, from personal
contact with its future leaders at Algiers University as well as his published works. The author
concludes that the army’s justification of the 1991 coup, that if the FIS won it would cancel future
democratic elections, seriously misrepresented the nature of the organisation, the roots of which lay
in Bennabi’s Islamist nationalism rather than the pan-Islamism of the Muslim Brotherood. In tacitly
accepting this justification, western governments may have allowed a chance for the development of
genuinely liberal governance, compatible within an Islamist framework, to be extinguished.

Allah does not change the state of people unless they change what is within them-
selves. (Qur’an, 13:11)

This passage punctuates the corpus of works published by Malek Bennabi, Algerian penseur
and political philosopher, and it lies at the heart of his conception of what Islamic society
requires to better satisfy its spiritual and material needs. He argued that in order to
recover its former magnificence, Islamic society had to become an environment in which
individuals were empowered. A Muslim must feel that his creativity and industry would
find reward, that he would be able to shape his own destiny. Modern Muslims had been
denied this possibility by the ossification of their society. Marxists and radical secularists
also agreed that the current state of Muslim society was a brake on development.
However, whilst they advocated the reduction or removal of Islam within the state,
Bennabi argued that the key was to renew religion itself, to reconnect with the living
faith underneath the accreted laws and traditions that had distorted its natural condition as
an inspiration for progress. To do this required a greater freedom for the individual spirit.
This article aims to do two things. First, it will briefly introduce Bennabi, who has been
frequently overlooked by Anglophone scholars. Second, it will assess whether his ideas

Sebastian Walsh, Cambridge University (Sidney Sussex College), UK. The article derives from the author’s
MPhil thesis. The author would like to acknowledge the support of Yale University and the Fox International
Fellowship in the completion of this research.

ISSN 1362-9387 print=ISSN 1743-9345 online=07=020235–20 # 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080=13629380701235251
 236 S. J. Walsh

have exerted any lasting political impact within Algeria, most particularly within the Front
Islamique du Salut (FIS). Following the military coup of 1991, conducted to deny the FIS
victory in elections to the national legislature, successive Algerian governments declared
that Islamists sought to create an anti-modern, anti-democratic society, based on their con-
ception of the seventh century Muslim caliphate. The disastrous and bloody conflict which
disfigured the 1990s appeared to support this position, though it remains highly question-
able what proportion of the violence was conducted by the various Islamist armed groups,
and what by elements encouraged by the security services. Certainly, the argument for the
exclusion of Islamists from the legitimate political arena convinced the key western actors,
Washington and Paris, who tacitly condoned the coup. Yet the question is whether the
possibility for a form of Islamist-inspired democratic governance, based on the ideas of
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Bennabi, was actually present in 1991, and if it was this possibility that was destroyed
in the name of preserving pluralist society in Algeria.

Bennabi’s Life and Philosophy

Malek Bennabi was born in Tibseh, Algeria, in 1905, and received both a traditional
Qur’anic and French education. It was upon entering secondary school in Constantine
in 1921 that the Salafiyyist writers Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849 – 1905) and Jamal al-Din
al-Afghani (1839 – 97) were first brought to his attention.1 Like ‘Abduh and Afghani, he
developed an extensive knowledge of western philosophy, as well as personal experiences
of western civilisation. Leaving for France in September 1930, he studied engineering in
Paris, developing in this onetime law student a fascination with modern science. In Paris
he also became involved with a Christian youth group, attempting to act as a link between
it and the North African Muslim community, an early indicator of the genuine ecumenic-
alism that runs through his work.
He returned to Algeria for a time in 1947, and shortly afterwards his first major works were
completed and published: Les Conditions de la Renaissance and Vocation d’Islam, in 1949
and 1954, respectively. However, amidst the violence of the FLN (Front de Libération Natio-
nale) campaign for Algerian independence, he left for Cairo in 1956.2 Now a thinker of some
prominence he was welcomed by the Nasser regime. Up to this time his works had appeared
only in French, Bennabi’s first language, and were therefore only accessible to Europeans and
francophone North Africans. Thus in Cairo he spent much time learning the literary Arabic in
which he would write his later works. He returned to Algeria in 1963, and was appointed by
President Ben Bella as Director of Higher Education, in what appears to have been an attempt
by the latter to deflect accusations that his Marxist policies were betraying the Islamic strand
of the wartime FLN’s manifesto. He maintained his position under Boumediene until early
1967. From then until his death in October 1973, Bennabi chose to concentrate on his
work at the University of Algiers’ Central Faculty. There he organised weekly seminars,
in which he discussed his ideas with Islamist-minded students. Many of these young men
would later become active in anti-government protests during the 1980s. The ideas they dis-
cussed, the mature philosophy of Malek Bennabi, is outlined below.

Post-Almohad Men
This was Bennabi’s shorthand for the condition of every contemporary Muslim. Modern
society had left the post-Almohad man hollow, his spirit and mind decayed by a stultifying
lack of aspiration. Bennabi believed that the underlying cause of this was the fact his religion
 Killing Post-Almohad Man 237

had ossified into rituals without meaning, and was no longer a guide to living. Originally,
Muslims had been led by the spirit, in what Bennabi considered the first stage in its civilis-
ation’s development, beginning with the Prophet Mohammed’s revelation at Hirā. Yet the
advent of faith did not cause the pre-Islamic, or ‘natural’, condition of the human being
to disappear. Rather it was reformulated, with the spirit focussing the natural energies of
the human being in a more positive manner. For Bennabi, it was this new ‘spiritual relation-
ship between God and Man that creates and determines [the] social bonds which link every
individual with his fellow humans’ (Bennabi, 2002, p. 64). Islamic civilisation entered its
next stage, the ‘rational’ period, following the Battle of Siffin (Bennabi, 1992b, p. 25).
Religion continued to be important in society. It allowed social bonds to thicken and
Islam to spread geographically, creating new challenges which stimulated society’s creativ-
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ity. Historically, Bennabi identified this stage with the Ummayad period, when the arts and
sciences reached their glittering height in the Muslim world. However, he argued that reason
was not enough, without the spirit, to control the ‘natural’ aspect of human beings, and thus
society’s cohesion began to decline. The final stage saw the spirit fall away entirely. Con-
sequently, the individual broke his links with society, instincts dominating his existence.
Venality and weakness left civilisation bereft of progressive ideas: ‘[w]hen the spirit is
lost, the civilization falls, for who loses his ability to ascend could not help but plunge
due to gravitation’ (Bariun, 1992, p. 328). Bennabi believed this corresponded to the
period following the end of the Almohad dynasty. It was in this condition of torpor that
modern Muslims remained, still post-Almohad men.
His writings therefore were concerned with how to overcome this ‘problem of civilis-
ation’, how to end the post-Almohad period and relocate the creative root of Muslim faith.
He repeatedly attacked those whom he termed apologists for Islamic decline, who blamed
colonialism for all post-independence problems, and thus obfuscated their own failures:

Le virus politique a succédé au virus maraboutique, le peuple qui voulait des amul-
ettes et des saintes barakas, veut à présent des bulletins de vote et des sièges. Il veut
ceci dans le même espirit qu’il voulait cela, avec le même fanatisme, sans le moindre
sens critique, sans le moindre effort de transformation de son âme et de son mileu
(Bennabi, 1992b, p. 19).

Similarly, he was scathing of post-independence politicians, who attempted to reproduce

western or Soviet heavy industries as a path to development. He described the absence of
such ‘things’ as automobiles as merely the surface by-product of a more fundamental
problem. It demonstrated that independence had not actually liberated post-Almohad
man, who remained dedicated to choseisme.3 It was this decadence, what Bennabi
termed colonisabilité, which had originally made him and his civilisation susceptible to
European colonisation: ‘colonialism [past and present] finds its best allies in our own
mental and psychological attitudes and traditions’ (Bennabi, 2002, p. 104). The Algerian
Muslim had to be liberated from colonisabilité to recommence the development of society
and find true independence. This had to be achieved through a profound cultural revolu-
tion, drawing on the concept of greater jihad, the effort of overcoming the self ( fi sabil
Illah) in order to gain salvation (Roberts, 1994, p. 22). It was a controversial position to
take in post-independence Algeria. As Ahmed Zaoui, later a leading figure in the FIS,
related to the author, most other thinkers and politicians at the time preferred to say
‘that colonialism was the sole cause of all of Algeria’s ills’.4
 238 S. J. Walsh

Bennabi and the ‘Foreign’

Bennabi’s attitude to the world beyond his homeland had two principal aspects. First, he was
hostile towards those who denied that Algeria possessed a distinct identity. Like others who
had been influenced by Ben Badis, he rejected the French narrative of Algerian history,
‘nothing but a heap of dust’ prior to their own arrival.5 In addition, again like many other Isla-
mists, he was hostile to the Marxist policies of Ben Bella, and Boumediene after 1970.
However, he was also convinced that Algeria was a distinct nation within the Muslim
world, rejecting the pan-Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as the radical ideas
of Sayyid Qutb and Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi. In effect, he was an Islamist nationalist, a
unique position in the post-war decades, when Muslims seemed to face a choice between
the secular nationalism, with leftist aspects, of Nasserism or Ba’athism, and the pan-Islamism
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of the Ikhwan. Bennabi’s position grew out of his belief that a society could never deny its
particularity, and answer problems it might face by importing answers from other civilisations.
It was not that Bennabi considered foreign societies fundamentally flawed. Rather, ideas and
methods that had been successful historically for one nation would not automatically be appro-
priate for another. Algerian economic backwardness could not, for example, be remedied by
copying Soviet plans for development through heavy industry, as Algeria possessed none of
the underlying forces which led to those same developments. As he put it, a ‘civilization can
not sell its spirit, ideas, tastes, intimate wealth or the accumulation of untouchable notions and
meanings’ (Bariun, 1992, p. 330). Whilst Muslim societies possessed fraternal bonds with
their co-religionists elsewhere, they did not exist in the same environment. For example,
Mashriqi Islamism had strong associations with Arab identity, whereas Algeria also had a
substantial Berber population, which had played a leading role in the 1954–62 war, the defin-
ing moment for the Algerian nation. Thus Algerian Islamists, Bennabi believed, could not just
echo the Arabo-Muslim creed of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers. This was an important
development for Islamism, and would be taken on by members of the FIS.
The second aspect of Bennabi’s attitude to the foreign was a remarkable ecumenicalism.
A corollary to Islam being the necessary foundation for Algerian society was that he
believed ‘all contemporaneous civilizations’ were founded ‘in the cradle of a religious
idea’. To the outrage of many Islamist thinkers, he both recognised the validity of these
spiritual archetypes, and argued that foreign societies developed most successfully
when individuals lived close to them. Japan, for example, had ‘succeeded in reducing
all the problems of underdevelopment, thanks to the organization of a society on moral
bases so that it could face all its tasks with the means all too small’ (Bennabi, 1992a,
pp. 62– 5). It was with this idea that he would counter secularists who cited the West’s
advanced condition as an argument for the divorce of religion and government:

The major mistake when evaluating Western civilization is that we think of it as a

mere produce of sciences, arts, and industries. We forget that all this could not have
materialized without the presence of certain social bonds which form the moral basis
of Western civilization . . . the initial religious ties that created it; and this is true of
all ages and all civilizations (Bennabi, 2003a, p. 56).

Thus the ‘inveterate imitators’ within Arab elites had systematically failed to properly
understand the foreign civilisations they sought to learn from, and thus had ‘no idea of the
creativity of those whom they set out to emulate’ (Bennabi, 2003b, p. 73).
 Killing Post-Almohad Man 239

The Necessary Freedom of the Individual

Whilst many Islamists consider democracy an undesirable western import, subverting the
sovereignty of God with a secular notion of popular sovereignty, Bennabi had a different
interpretation. For him, democracy stemmed from the development of sentiments, ideas
and reflexes that created the foundations of democracy within the consciousness of a
people and its traditions; democratisation requiring the slow destruction of despotic ten-
dencies in the cultural consciousness. However, he argued against careless borrowing
from western democratic constitutions without integration with Algeria’s Islamic charac-
ter: ‘if there exists a democratic tradition in Islam, it ought not to be sought in the letter of a
constitutional text, but rather in the spirit of Islam in general’. What would distinguish an
Islamic democracy from the western system or the Communist ‘democracies’ was that
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Islam conferred upon man a sacred value, superior to any political or social one. Whilst
these other systems saw in man the presence of humanity and society, Islamic democracy
must recognise the presence of God in him. Islamic democracy therefore would bestow on
man superior social guarantees. Whilst western democracy offered freedom from political
dictatorship, it did not purge society of other forms of slavery. Though socialist countries
bestowed social rights, they denied men political freedom. Thus Islam could offer the only
genuine democracy, as it combined political and social democracy. For example, Islamic
civilisation demanded the duty of zakat, or alms giving, whilst western democracy let
people be destroyed economically by capitalist elites. Such ‘an order which bestows
upon man a ballot and allows him to starve is not a democratic order’.
Nevertheless, a form of democracy was what Bennabi was arguing for, but carefully
built from Islamic precepts, rather than the classical Greek root of the western system.
He consistently chose passages from the Qur’an that stressed individual freedoms, such
as the right to work and travel. Moreover, he argued forcefully that Islam guarantees
freedom of speech, noting that even the Prophet Mohammed encouraged his companions
to debate his decisions. In addition, he made it clear that Islam respected the rights of min-
orities, contradicting some Islamists’ hostility to a pluralistic society.6 In his view, Islamic
democracy had existed before, in the Rashidun period, when shura prevailed between
rulers and ruled, and there existed a ‘democratic consciousness shaped by Islam’.
It was when democratic thinking disappeared from the individual Muslim’s consciousness,
and with it his sense of morality, that society regressed into absolutism. Thus Islamic democ-
racy passed ‘when it lost its foundation in the psychology of the individual, as soon as the
latter lost definitively the appreciation of his own worth and the value of others’. Muslim civi-
lisation then began to stagnate, as it was no longer based on the active participation of the
individual—a constant theme for Bennabi. The path to renaissance lay in the rediscovering
of this vital energy through a process of democratisation, but ‘only Islam could undertake this
re-evaluation in the countries where social tradition has been shaped by the Qur’anic notion’.7
The freedom of the individual was not incongruous in Bennabi’s Islamism, but absolutely
necessary to the achievement of a true Muslim state in Algeria.

Bennabi’s Afterlives: The Ja’zarists, the FIS, and the Democratic Strategy
Malek Bennabi’s passing in 1973 caused relatively little comment at the time. He had
slipped from the public eye, having been ‘steadily marginalised by a regime who did
not accept his theories and his liberal intellectual approach’—that being the increasingly
 240 S. J. Walsh

leftward leaning Boumediene government—four years previously.8 However, his ideas

would be taken on by a number of young Islamists in the 1970s, who would go on to
be involved in the most significant challenge ever faced by the military/FLN combine
which has ruled Algeria since independence. The key aspect of this challenge was its
democratic nature. Before sliding into the civil war that scarred the 1990s, a brief flower-
ing of democracy occurred in Algeria. The FIS sought to govern within this short-lived
democratic system; it was the government which first retreated into the use of force.
What was lost in the concern to prevent Islamist rule in Algeria was critical, sober analysis
of what the FIS was. ‘One man, one vote, one time’ was the claim of the coup’s leaders,
who cancelled the elections on the verge of FIS victory in January 1991, positing that the
Islamists were using the elections as a trojan horse; once voted into power, democracy
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would be discarded and FIS rule would become permanent. However, there is an alterna-
tive thesis: that the commitment to democracy within the FIS was genuine. It is an asser-
tion not without problems. Yet when we see the hold Bennabi’s ideas had on some of the
most important men within the movement, the assumptions made by western governments
about the FIS start to appear questionable.

The Bennabi Seminars

Bennabi had been given a professorship by Algiers University in 1963, a campus increas-
ingly split between leftist students and Islamists. He began to organise informal seminars
for Islamist students at his home. As an engineer by training, he tended to attract scienti-
fically educated, francophone students. Those associated with him came to be known as
the Ja’zara or ‘Algerianists’, a label contemptuously applied by Mahfoud Nahnah, the
Algerian Muslim Brother and founder of HAMAS, for their rejection of Mashriqi, pan-
Islamic ideas in favour of Algerian particularity.9 These Ja’zarists would form a recogni-
sable, and important, part of the FIS, including Rashid Benaissa, Moustapha Brahmi,
Mohammed Said, Anwar Haddam and Abderrazak Radjam amongst others. Haddam,
for example, has told how in 1972:

[J]’ai assisté aux séances de Malek Bennabi. J’ai commencé à voir l’islam non pas
en tant que dimension du problème pour arriver à un État islamique, mais en tant que
problème civilisationnel. Il m’a beaucoup aidé, son approache était scientifique
(Labat, 1995, p. 169).

Another FIS activist, Rashid Benaissa, recalled:

Our grandmaster was Bennabi . . . it was he who showed me that science should not
confuse itself with religion. He had created a centre which we called the Centre for
Cultural Orientation. We held what we called ‘seances of reflection’ there. Bennabi
said that he wanted to put on the front of his house: ‘No one should enter here if he is
not an engineer’. We did not want to create a doctrine that knowledge depends on
faith. We wanted . . . to reconstruct not just religious thought, but the global thinking
of the Muslim (Burgat & Dowell, 1993, pp. 256 –7).

Though not considered by others to be a Ja’zarist altogether, the future leader of the FIS,
Abassi Madani, also attended meetings at Bennabi’s house (Willis, 2001, p. 74).
 Killing Post-Almohad Man 241

Aside from discussing his ideas with participants, Bennabi’s circle also gave them
access to a social network of like-minded individuals, and the beginnings of an organis-
ational structure. The group began to articulate their views in public, publishing a
review, Que sais-je de l’Islam. In addition, Bennabi encouraged their establishment of a
student mosque in 1968, which developed into an important meeting place for Islamist stu-
dents, and in 1973 they founded a majlis al-shura (consultative council), what Séverine
Labat has called the embryo of the Ja’zara faction (Labat, 1994, p. 107). The mosque
and the majlis would become important rallying points for Bennabi’s disciples after his
death, as Boumediene began to clamp down on Islamists.
However, it is worth noting that Bennabi’s circle did not only attract hostility from
leftist students, but also from other, arabophone, Islamists. In part this was due to its
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domination by francophone science students, which gave it an aura of elitism, a

charge which has followed those involved ever since. Certainly, it is significant that
many of the Jaz’arists and their allies within the FIS benefited from scientific edu-
cations, and thus were less affected by the government’s arabisation policy in edu-
cation.10 To some extent this explains not only their attraction to Bennabi, many of
whose works remained written in French, but also their knowledge of western philos-
ophy. This would become apparent in later disputes between the Ja’zarists and the ara-
bisants within the FIS, many of whom believed the Ja’zara to be compromised by their
study of western ideas. A second point is that the arabophone Islamist students con-
sidered themselves disciples of Ben Badis. Bennabi and his followers’ scepticism of
his focus on doctrine, and conservative Salafiyyism in general, angered them, and set
the Ja’zara apart.
Thus what Bruno Étienne called Bennabi’s political disappearance in the late 1960s
was actually the period of his greatest influence for the future (Étienne, 1977, p. 139).
From 1967 until his death in 1973 he was free of official responsibility, and able to
express his unique Islamist nationalist position all the more clearly, as shown in his
last major work, The Question of Ideas in the Muslim World (1971). The ideas
expressed here were certainly discussed by those who gathered for his seminars in
this, his most active teaching period.
In it, he returned to a familiar theme, arguing that Islam was the ‘archetype’, the funda-
mental basis of Algerian civilisation, and that ‘expressed ideas’ (individual actions or gov-
ernment policies) must draw on that archetype to be effective. In the past, Bennabi had
warned that this must be so. Now, he stated categorically that is had not become so:

When the archetypes are obliterated . . . the expressed ideas, having lost their roots in
the original plasma, fall silent . . . [and] society is atomized because of the lack of
common motivation, as was the case in Algeria after the Revolution . . . this situation
becomes more tragic as a movement is launched to revive a cultural world—satu-
rated with dead ideas—by means of deadly ideas borrowed from another civiliza-
tion. The latter category of ideas, already deadly in their original environment,
becomes even deadlier as they are uprooted from that environment.

He thus argued that Algerian society was addicted to foreign development models, mis-
guided in themselves as they ignored the spiritual foundations of their own society, but
yet more debilitating for the Muslim world. What most disturbed him was Muslim
 242 S. J. Walsh

society’s ‘inertia and apathy in this stage, as if it wished to stay in it forever!’ They had
failed to use Islam’s modernistic heart:

it is not enough to simply proclaim the sacred values of Islam. We should rather
provide them with what would enable them to stand up to the spirit of the age. It
is, therefore, no question of making any concessions to the profane at the expense
of the sacred. What is at stake is to free the latter from certain vanities that might
be fatal for it.

Unfortunately, Muslim ‘political leaders have no belief in the necessity of such a system to
control the course of affairs in their countries’. Equally, however, he attacked both those
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who believed it was Islam itself that held back development—Algerian leftists and wes-
terners—and people who blamed all on the colonial legacy:

According to the supporters of the colonialist thesis, Islam is the factor of the
delayed [civilisational] take-off, whereas it is colonialism according to the national-
ist thesis . . . By pinning all the problems on Islam, the first group would like us to
forget that colonialism is responsible for a great portion of the present chaos in the
Muslim world. In contrast, by pinning everything on colonialism, the second groups
would have us forget their demagoguery, which has increased the acuteness of the
problem.

This argument impressed itself on all Bennabi’s disciples. Moreover, they took to heart Ben-
nabi’s view that the FLN of the post-independence governments had betrayed the ideals of
the revolution. Controversially, he even argued that Algerians found themselves worse off
than in 1954, ‘dominated by a totally alien ideology in which the martyred heroes would
not recognise the ideas and ideals for which they died’ (Bennabi, 2003b, pp. 44–8, 74,
81). This was echoed by Abassi Madani, following the establishment of the FIS in 1989:
‘[t]he FIS wants to save the experiences of November [1954] which have been lost’.11
Though Bennabi died on 31 October 1973, these ideas would form one of the most important
strands in that organisation’s complex politico-religious ideology.

Roads to the FIS, 1973 – 89

In the ten years following Bennabi’s death, the Ja’zarists were hardly a notable force in
Algerian Islamism. Far stronger was Mahfoud Nahnah’s group, closely affiliated with
the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Nahnah would be arrested in 1976 for publicly
denouncing Boumediene and his draft National Charter, condemning the latter as a com-
munist, anti-Islamic document. Also influential were the ageing men who had been
involved in Ben Badis’s AUMA, most notably sheikhs Ahmed Sahnoun and Abdellatif
Soltani. Though they reflected traditional Salafiyyist priorities, focusing on the good prac-
tice of religion rather than politics, they were deferred to as authentic, spiritual voices.
The Ja’zara, on the other hand, appeared insignificant, still seeking to mollify their
image as a francophone, scientific ‘franc-maçonnerie’, more interested in politics than
Islam. The emergence of Mohammed Said as its leading figure, an Arabic educated theol-
ogy graduate of some quality, can be seen as a response to such charges. Still based within
the University of Algiers, it retained its non-confrontational posture, despite increasing
 Killing Post-Almohad Man 243

political violence. This was partly due to distaste for the contemporary Islamist-Berber
dynamic of the conflict, then appearing on university campuses across Algeria. In 1980,
it was the Berbers of Kabyle that first challenged the basic contradiction in President
Chadli Benjedid’s policy of liberalisation, protesting that it offered economic liberalisa-
tion, beneficial to well-connected individuals, whilst denying political liberalisation.12
Benjedid used Islamists to counter the threat. Conservative elements within Algerian Isla-
mism considered Berbers a blot on Algeria’s Arab identity. In particular, those influenced
by the Muslim Brothers were hostile; Berbers were not accounted for in their Mashriq-
inspired ideas. For the Ja’zarists, however, the Berbers were an important component of
the Algerian nation, and thus clashes between Islamists and Berbers were fundamentally
misguided.
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A crucial moment came when Benjedid arrested 400 Islamists in Algiers, after the out-
break of fighting between them and leftists during student elections. When Abassi Madani
called for a protest rally in response, the Ja’zarists demurred. However, in light of the pro-
test’s success as a show of strength, with Madani flanked by Sahnoun and Soltani deliver-
ing a manifesto for the restoration of Islamic principles, it proved to have been an error of
political judgement. The lesson was taken. From this point the Ja’zarists, rather than dis-
approve of aspects of Algerian Islamism, began to work more actively towards what they
considered a truer path. Certainly, they quickly recovered their old relationship with
Madani, with whom they shared control of the student mosque Bennabi had helped estab-
lish. Indeed, Madani and the Ja’zara were not far apart ideologically, both holding a
similar Islamist nationalism. Madani himself possessed excellent nationalist credentials,
having been imprisoned for involvement in the symbolic assault against French power
on All Saints Day, November 1954. Like Bennabi, Madani had also approved of
aspects of Boumediene’s government prior to the Révolution Socialiste, remaining a
member of the FLN until early 1974. In addition, though the recipient of a traditional reli-
gious education, he was culturally sophisticated, with a British doctorate and various
foreign languages. Therefore he could talk to both the Ja’zarists and the Salafiyyists in
their own language: a crucial fact in holding together the alliance that was the FIS.
Before November 1982, full co-operation between the Ja’zara and Madani had been pre-
vented by their different tactical approaches, the former taking a patrician approach to Isla-
mising society, the latter unashamedly populist. From now on, they largely co-operated.
The moment of crisis came with the massive protests of October 1988. An eruption in
popular anger, stemming from a range of socio-economic grievances, they were not Isla-
mist in inspiration. However, the Islamist response, a march on 7 October, was the first
politically homogenous demonstration, and the first to be fired on by the army. The
deaths of 50 marchers shook sheikh Sahnoun, and both he and Mohammed Said, the
leading the Ja’zarist, urged for no repetition. The response, though, came from a new
source, Ali Belhadj, a young and popular preacher at the Al-Sunna mosque in Bab el-
Oued. Originally from Ourgala, a desert city of the south, he had a basic, entirely
Arabic, education. A consistent advocate of confrontation, he was politically unsophisti-
cated, idealising revolutionary purity ahead of practical considerations. Indeed, he shared
little with Badisiyya like Sahnoun, and even less with the political pragmatism of Madani
and the Ja’zara. As he said in 1990, ‘[I am] a man of religion and not a statesman’.13 Yet
his organisation of the 10 October march, in which another 30 Islamists died at the hands
of the army, thrust him to prominence. When Benjedid invited leading Islamists to a crisis
meeting, Belhadj would join Madani, Sahnoun and Nahnah as part of the president’s
 244 S. J. Walsh

attempt rehabilitate himself with the public. In order to do so, the president Chadli intro-
duced a new Constitution in February 1989, ending the one-party system and allowing for
‘associations of a political character’ to be established. The result was the FIS.

The Balance of Power in the FIS—Salafis14 Ascendant, February

1989 to June 1991
The initial impetus for creating a political party came from Belhadj and Madani, the latter
proposing Front Islamique du Salut as its name, deliberately evoking the original FLN: the
term ‘front’ had a decidedly nationalist, not Islamist, history. It was also no coincidence
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that when one pronounces ‘FIS’, we hear ‘fils’, or son, implying what Madani would con-
sistently stress, that the FIS was the true heir of the historic FLN (ICG, 2004c, pp. 4 –5).
Some older Islamists, however, were doubtful. Before his death in 1984 Soltani had
warned, in traditional Salafi fashion, against establishing a political party, believing it
would divide the Islamist movement. Nahnah rejected any involvement, dismissing the
FIS as being led by ‘kids’; a reference to Belhadj, whom he considered a parvenu.
Perhaps the more surprising abstention came from the Ja’zarists, considering their associ-
ation with Madani. Their reason seems to have been distrust of Belhadj and the more
radical neo-Salafis who formed part of Madani’s ‘big tent’ strategy for the FIS. Indeed,
Mohammed Said had already blamed Belhadj publicly for the deaths of 10 October. In
addition, Said had pragmatic reasons for arguing against establishing a political party at
this point; he distrusted Benjedid’s commitment to the elections.
This left the Salafis dominant within the organisation at the outset. Although the nation-
alist Islamist Madani was its leader, in the four-man National Executive he was joined by
three Salafis: Belhadj, Benazouz Zebda and Hachemi Sahnouni. It made for an uneasy
relationship. The Salafis were convinced there could be no place in Algeria for those
who dissented from Islamic strictures, rejecting compromise and thus undermining
Madani’s commitment to the democratic experiment. Belhadj was their foremost spokes-
man: ‘Democracy is a stranger in the House of God . . . There exists only the shura with its
rules and constraints . . . The majority does not express the truth.’15 Western commentators
who have condemned the FIS as anti-democratic—’fascist’ in one case—believed this
Belhadj/neo-Salafi grouping to have dominated the FIS.16 However, there are at least
two problems with this interpretation. One, its development has clearly been assisted by
Algerian groups hostile to the FIS. For example, in an interview with Anwar Haddam,
Daniel Pipes quotes Belhadj as saying ‘when we are in power there will be no more elec-
tions because God will be ruling’. As Pipes’s notes reveal, this attribution had come from
Saı̈d Sadi, a militant Berberist secularist (Pipes & Clawson, 1996). Second, and more
importantly, it exaggerates the neo-Salafis’ importance in the organisation. By the time
the FIS was on the threshold of government, their influence had collapsed.
Abassi Madani was clearly uncomfortable with this early Salafi dominance. Though he
could rely on the personal loyalty of Belhadj, other Salafis, both the Badisiyya and the neo-
Salafis, believed he was too willing to compromise. Certainly, Madani’s speeches were
politically attuned. In response to alleged Islamist attacks on ‘inappropriately’ dressed
women, Madani condemned violence ‘from wherever it came’, and stressed his party
chose ‘the path of dialogue for the settlement of all questions, whether political, economic,
social or cultural’.17 Indeed, he regularly expressed his support of the multi-party system
 Killing Post-Almohad Man 245

brought about by the 1989 constitution. In an interview prior to the legislative elections, he
stated that

pluralism is necessary for political development, because we are not angels . . . We

are human and make mistakes . . . Pluralism is a guarantee of cultural wealth, and
diversity is needed for any development . . . We are not tyrants, and we do not mon-
opolize religion. Democracy as we understand it means pluralism, choice, and
freedom.

The key to Madani’s platform was the idea that the FLN had abandoned its Islamic roots.
The FIS, he declared, would pick up this banner, as it and the FLN were:
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two branches of the same origin, the history of Algeria until March 19, 1962 . . . If
the FLN goes back to its roots, it will find us there, and we will become one thing . . .
The FLN was destroyed when it . . . replaced its doctrines with imported ideologies,
its men with opportunists (Shahin, 1998, p. 141).

The parallels with Bennabi here are unmistakeable, not only regarding the FLN’s betrayal
of the revolution’s Islamic character, but his condemnation of post-independence poli-
ticians and their careless adoption of foreign ideologies. With this, Madani’s electoral
strategy, increasingly undermined by Salafi intransigence, it appears that he turned to
those who had also absorbed Bennabi’s ideas. In June 1990 he invited the Ja’zara to
join the FIS.
Indeed, Madani needed allies who shared his ‘Algerianist’ outlook at this time particu-
larly. Tensions had already surfaced with the Salafis regarding support for Saddam
Hussein during the Gulf crisis. Whilst the Salafis loathed Hussein’s secular, Ba’athist
ideology, Madani recognised Algerians were hostile above all to the western incursion
into Muslim land. Not for the first time, he gave priority to the nationalist spirit of Alger-
ians over strictly religious considerations. Two more serious disputes followed. The first
came after huge FIS success in the local elections of June 1990. The Salafis, particularly
the Badisiyya, now believed it was time to unite the Islamist movement. They argued for
this through the autumn and spring, in May 1991 issuing a public statement through the
Majlis Shura, which they dominated: ‘The FIS regards, in all sincerity, that the unity of
the Islamic ranks is a duty in order to prevent [the emergence of] contradictory political
positions capable of thwarting the desired Islamic solution’ (Willis, 2001, p. 175). With
Nahnah, in particular, now seeking to join, this created a problem for Madani and the
Ja’zarists. To admit such a prominent Muslim Brother, closely linked to the Egyptian
organisation, would seriously undermine the FIS’ nationalist appeal. This was not a
problem in the Salafis’ view. They were not only unconcerned about Madani’s strategy
of mobilising Algerian nationalist sentiment, but also more positive about foreign Islamist
ideas. The Ja’zarists’ intellectual hostility to the latter, inherited from Bennabi, meant they
provided Madani crucial support in resisting this move.
The second clash came following the government’s electoral law of March 1991, aimed
at fixing the forthcoming legislative elections in favour of the FLN. Madani’s response
was to call for a general strike. Never heavily committed to the political strategy,
the Salafis considered this unnecessary.18 Angry meetings followed, with Madani carrying
a majority for the strike of only 21 to 17 within the Majlis, infuriating the Badisiyya.
 246 S. J. Walsh

Statements attributed to members of the Majlis emerged, condemning the action: ‘The call
to strike . . . constitutes a plan which works to the interest of the authorities in undermining
the FIS and preventing the achievement of the Islamic way’ (Willis, 2001, p. 178). Ill-dis-
guised attacks on Madani and his Ja’zarist allies, ‘certain personalities who work for the
regime’, also appeared: the Salafis, due to Bennabi’s past support for Boumediene, long
believed that the Ja’zara had ambiguous relations with the regime. A dangerous split
was apparent. Following the army’s intervention of 5 June, leading Salafis were openly
critical. On television three founding members—Bachir Fakih, Ahmed Merrani and
Hachemi Sahnouni—demanded Madani’s resignation. Fakih stated he was ‘a danger for
the FIS and for Muslims’. As a consequence, backed by the Ja’zarists, Madani expelled
Merrani and Fakih from the party. Sahnouni was only spared by the intervention of
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Belhadj.19 However, the Salafi disquiet continued. Four other leading Salafis—Benazouz
Zebda, Said Guechi, Achour Rebhi and Mohammed Kerrar—attempted to open nego-
tiations with the government in defiance of Madani. Indeed, it was this open split that prob-
ably encouraged the regime’s next move, the arrest of Madani and Belhadj on 30 June.20

Rise of the Ja’zara

Tellingly, it was on Mohammed Said, leader of the Ja’zara, that Madani conferred the lea-
dership upon his arrest, trusting him ‘to prevent FIS going underground and adopting clan-
destinity and instead to continue the struggle on a political level’.21 Throughout his
disputes with the Salafis, the Ja’zarists had been Madani’s most important allies. Signifi-
cantly, the nine members of the Majlis who had opposed their accession to the party
included all the major figures who went on to criticise Madani.22 As we have already
seen, Madani shared their commitment to the Islamist nationalism Bennabi had described.
In addition, the Ja’zarists disputed the Salafi obsession with scripture. The Salafis, to them,
were like those Bennabi condemned, who ‘proclaim[ed] the sacred values of Islam’
without recognising it must be efficacious for society.23 Indeed, in December 1990, Ja’zar-
ists had established the Islamic Association for Civilisational Edification, a name that
reflected Bennabi’s teaching that Islamic civilisation, rather than Islamic creed, was the
key issue for society. For the Ja’zarists, Islamic renaissance required the reconnection
of the state with the individual Muslim, and thus participation in elections was a necessary
step forward.
Little is known by western commentators about Said himself, aside from his admiration
for Bennabi and association with the Ja’zara. However, Ahmed Zaoui related this much to
the author:

He had a quiet disposition and was very careful and cautious about the people he
associated with. He rarely gave interviews to journalists. He was highly respected
for his ability to gather people together and for his integrity. He did not use politics
to profit himself or his followers . . . [he] was more of a pragmatist than an ideologue,
committed to practical reform and dialogue rather than implementing a particular
ideology. In contrast to other leaders, he did not ask his followers to read particular
scholars as opposed to other scholars. Rather, he borrowed from many schools, and
that is why I would argue that he was a pragmatist in orientation.
 Killing Post-Almohad Man 247

Said was, however, arrested shortly after declaring his provisional leadership of the FIS. It
then fell to the little known Abdelkader Hachani, whom Said had appointed as deputy. Not
himself a Ja’zarist, he had once been a member of Abdallah Djaballah’s al-Nahda group-
ing, but joined the FIS upon its founding. al-Nahda had also developed during the 1970s
and 1980s. Though influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, Djaballah asserted Algeria’s
national independence, and his own from the Egyptian Ikhwan. From its heartland
around Djaballah’s home city of Constantine, al-Nahda demanded that government
respect both the authority of the people and the sovereignty of God. Though far from
the Ja’zara’s Algiers stronghold, the movement was not ignorant of Bennabi’s ideas.
For example, in the preface to the programme it issued upon its formation into a political
party, it echoed Bennabi’s preoccupation with the individual renaissance: ‘The only way
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to address this problem [of Algerian society] is through restoring the confidence of the
Algerian citizen in himself, his system and his leadership’. Djaballah’s uncertainty of
FIS intentions meant he did not join the party in 1989, founding instead the MNI (Mouve-
ment de la Nahda Islamique). However, many of his supporters did, including Hachani. It
was in alliance with some of these men that the Ja’zarists were able to supplant Salafi dom-
inance of the FIS by the time of the legislative elections in December 1991.
Hachani’s accession certainly represented a success for Madani and the Ja’zara. He had
voted for the strike, and both he and Said had signed a communiqué acknowledging the
incarcerated Madani’s leadership. The crucial moment came at an FIS conference held
in Batna (25 – 26 July 1991). In a blow to his Salafi critics, the conference confirmed
Madani’s leadership, and formalised Hachani’s position as provisional head. In addition,
more leading Salafis were suspended from the Majlis. Benazouz Zebda, Hachemi
Sahnouni and Mohammed Kerrar were all removed, and Said Guechi, the principal remain-
ing dissident, resigned. Hachani and his Ja’zarist allies then set about bolstering their pos-
ition. Rabah Kebir and Othman Aissani, two other former al-Nahda men, were made
responsible for political affairs and vice president, respectively. Abderrezak Radjam and
Mohammed Said (though in prison) received high posts, the latter entering the new
Majlis. Ja’zarists also began to dominate the party apparatus, particularly in the regions.
Batna therefore demonstrated the victory of the Madani –Ja’zara alliance, as the older
Salafis gave way to young, university educated Algerianists.24 Indeed, by the autumn of
1991, the FIS was taking an even more pronounced Islamist nationalist identity. For
example, Hachani attended the main ceremony of Algerian nationalism that autumn, the
1 November Revolution Day commemoration, which even Madani had avoided. The
post-Batna leadership also embraced the Ja’zara’s argument that Berber identity was
part of Algeria’s national identity, distributing propaganda leaflets in tamazigh. Conse-
quently, Ould Adda Abdelkrim, a senior FIS spokesman, could state clearly:

Le FIS est fondamentalement algérien. Il prend racine dans un mouvement politique

et social vieux de plusieurs années, ce qui lui confère son originalité et son authen-
ticité, puisqu’aucun autre État musulman ne l’a dicténi ne lui a servi de modèle.
L’Islam est commun entre tous les musulmans, mais notre approche est tout à par-
ticulière (Denaud, 1997, p. 48).

The Ja’zarists and Madani had won the argument: ‘[w]e can not arrive in power other than
through free and proper elections’.25 The empowerment of the individual Algerian through
elections was adopted as the way towards the desired Islamic renaissance, overriding
 248 S. J. Walsh

Salafi objections that religious purity was compromised by this political strategy. It was an
event of significance for the whole region.
The question was now whether the elections would be fair. In the autumn of 1991 Madani
and Belhadj were still imprisoned, and some advocated boycotting the elections unless they
were released. To participate risked the appearance of concession, but boycott threatened
marginalisation. Yet this was no longer an ideological split over the validity of elections.
This was a tactical dispute. Those who advocated boycott feared legitimising bogus elec-
tions, not the elections themselves. Though Hachani was angry about harassment from
the government, he stressed the party’s will to remain within the legal framework. Thus,
whilst in September he did threaten to stop the elections, he chose his words carefully:
‘[the FIS would] exert every available means, within the framework of the law, so that
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there will be no elections’ (Entelis & Arone, 1992, p. 33). Even when Hachani himself
was arrested on 27 September after Friday Prayers, he called on worshippers not to resist.
Yet it was a surprise when on 14 December, under two weeks before the first round of
voting, the FIS issued this statement: ‘To take a step towards the establishment of an
Islamic state . . . the FIS will take part in the forthcoming legislative elections’ (The Guar-
dian, 16 December, 1991). After all, FIS rhetoric had been trenchant in October, some
members calling for an Islamic republic at a rally in the poor Algiers district of Belcourt.
Though the Badisiyya had been sidelined since Batna, the Belhadj-inspired, neo-Salafi
ideas remained popular amongst the rank and file. It was the release of Hachani and
Said in early November that had crucially strengthened advocates of participation.
Though opposition remained, candidates were selected, and Hachani was already speaking
of achieving an Islamic state through the vote at a 6 December rally.
On 26 December, Algeria went to the polls. The results shook both North Africa and the
wider world. The FIS gained over 47 per cent of the vote, leaving the FLN far behind on 24
per cent. It dominated the northern urban centres, with only the rural south staying with the
FLN, whilst Hocine Ait Ahmed’s Berberist party, the FFS (Front des Forces Socialistes),
took the Kabyle region. The FIS had thus already won 188 seats out of 430. The 199 as yet
undecided seats would go forward to the second round, scheduled for the 16 January, but
the FIS was poised for a crushing overall victory.
The army, led by Defence Minister Khaled Nezzar, had seen enough. On 11 January
1992 Benjedid was forced to resign, and the tanks duly rolled into Algiers. The Haut
Comité d’Etat (HCE), created by the military, collectively assumed presidential powers.
Shortly afterwards, the second round of elections were cancelled. By the end of January
most FIS leaders had been imprisoned. Mohammed Boudiaf, one of the revered neuf his-
toriques, who had been invited back from exile to act as head of the HCE, was initially
reluctant to ban the party.26 However, under pressure from the military he did so on the
9 February. So ended the democratic experiment in Algeria, the first anywhere in the
region to see the participation of a legal Islamist party.

‘One Man, One Vote, One Time’

In announcing its dissolution, Boudiaf declared that ‘the FIS wanted to use democracy to
destroy it’. Many analysts agreed. Labat argues that an Algeria ruled by the FIS would
have not have seen another election (Labat, 1994). Yahia Zoubir posits that FIS leaders
‘present democracy as a religion that attempts to replace Islam’. Tellingly, whilst he
seems aware of Bennabi’s work, he describes those influenced by him as only ‘one of
 Killing Post-Almohad Man 249

the FIS’s small factions’ (Zoubir, 1998, pp. 147, 150). As we have seen they were, in fact, a
significant force, after Batna a dominant one. However, though it is clear that the Ja’zara-
Hachani group was leading the FIS during the legislative elections, the concerns of
western analysts are perhaps understandable. The broad front of the FIS was both its
great strength and great weakness. Though the Ja’zara-Hachani leadership had a pragmatic
attitude towards the sharia and any putative Islamic state, they had to maintain those more
radical grassroot supporters that Belhadj had brought on to the streets. Thus in December
and January 1991/2, amidst moderate statements in the FIS press, fiery words were also
recorded. On 3 January in Bab El-Oued, Belhadj’s district, Hachani declared ‘these elections
have demonstrated there are only two parties—the Party of God and the Party of the
Devil’.27 It seems to have been this need, to placate its more radical base, which created
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the dangerous impression of a two-faced FIS. This allowed the regime to claim that its
leaders’ generally pragmatic rhetoric was a tactical façade for their real agenda, the impo-
sition of a religious dictatorship. These contradictory statements make it difficult to demon-
strate whose view was of the façade, and whose of the real FIS; the radical youth of Bab
el-Oued or the constantly reassured media and opposition parties. However, given the
intellectual background of the leadership, it is difficult to take their more radical rhetoric
seriously. As one election observer recorded, Hachani for one remained committed to
pluralism, assuring him privately that if the FIS failed in office it would expect to be cast
out by the ballot box by which it had entered: ‘If the majority of the people voted against
the sharia and Islamic Government, it would be through a failure of the FIS not because
of the apostasy of the people. Therefore we must cede power to someone else.’28
The most important example of a frequently misinterpreted FIS statement was its commit-
ment to establish an ‘Islamic state’. To western ears this sounded like Khomeini’s Iran, a
bête noir for the French and American governments in particular. The Algerian government
deliberately used this Iranian example to argue that democracy was incompatible with Isla-
mism. The radical rhetoric of some FIS members made this diplomatic legerdemain all the
easier. For example, one FIS candidate obligingly declared that, under an Islamic state, sup-
porters of democracy would be ‘at the end of a rope’.29 However, the leaders of the party had
a very different understanding of an ‘Islamic state’: a state reconnected with its spiritual
roots, as Bennbi described. This was not the Islamo-fascist dictatorship described by the
government. The HCE’s success in manipulating western reaction is easily perceived in
Daniel Pipes’ interview with Anwar Haddam, then the FIS’ most prominent spokesman
in the United States. One of Pipes’ first questions was ‘[h]ow might the Islamic State of
Algeria be similar to or differ from the Islamic Republic of Iran’, to which Haddam replied:

We don’t want to establish a theocratic state. We don’t believe a certain group of

people have the divine authority to impose their vision on society. We seek a repub-
lic and with all what that means—political authority based on the popular will, on
the separation of powers (legislative, executive, judicial), on a multiparty system,
and so forth. The idea of imposing Islam does not exist in Islam.

When Haddam said that the sharia can be flexible, Pipes asked whether it could allow the
drinking of beer. The increasingly exasperated Haddam replied that:

some parts of Sharı̀a, the thawabit, are fixed and others, the mutaghayyarat, might
change. Some schools of thought in Islam permit beer, others do not. More broadly,
 250 S. J. Walsh

we don’t have a fixed economic or political or social system. It is up to the society,

according to its development. The Islamic State of Algeria will be a republic based
on Islamic principles. People went too far, from separating between church and
state to separating between religion and state, even to separating moral values
from the state (Pipes & Clawson, 1996. Emphasis added).

First, the idea of a second Iran in Algeria is very wide of the mark. Not only was there no
equivalent in overwhelmingly Sunni Algeria for the Shi’ite clergy who established the
Iranian Republic, but the Ja’zarists emphasis on cultural authenticity dictated that a
model imported from distant Persians was as invalid as a western one. Second, note
that for Haddam an ‘Islamic State’ was above all a question of re-establishing the religious
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legitimacy of the government. In this, his comments were entirely in tune with Bennabi’s
vision.
Though Bennabi had never used the vocabulary, his vision for Algerian civilisation was
thus similar to the FIS’s Islamic state. As put by one founding member, Ali Djeddi:

[an] Islamic state is a state whose reference is to Islam. It is a state of a sovereign

people, free in its political as well as its economic choices. The Islamic state does
not have a unique and definitive form.

As he commented, this was close to the betrayed programme of the Algerian Revolution.
Quoting from the FLN’s original manifesto, he said ‘[o]ur idea of the Algerian state we
derive from the Declaration of 1 November 1954: “[a] democratic, social, state in the fra-
mework of Islamic principles”.

To pretend to legislate on the basis of the Shari’a and not take account of the three
variable dimensions of time, space and human nature is simply not realistic . . . The
Islamic reference is a reference to authentic texts, the Qur’an and the Sunna. The
most perfect application of these texts occurred in the time of the Prophet (Peace
Be Upon Him) and the first four caliphs. It nonetheless remains linked to a very
specific temporal, territorial and human context . . . We can make this our model
. . . but we shall not be able top reproduce it exactly, fourteen centuries later.
What we propose is that all the solutions to the problems of modern life be the
object of a debate between the ‘ulama and the specialists and experts. The con-
clusions of this debate should be submitted to the approval of a sovereign people,
enjoying all its freedom to organise in opposition to whatever one may propose
for its ratification . . . In this way we will reconcile respect for the shari’a and
respect for the popular will.30

The post-Batna leadership had no intention of creating a radical Islamic state on the Kho-
meini model. Their programme owed far more to the two main strands of Algerian Isla-
mism, as Haddam made clear: ‘The FIS approach was laid out by the Association of
Algerian Ulema of Ibn Badis, and by the school of thought of the Algerian scholar
Malek Bennabi’ (Pipes & Clawson, 1996).
 Killing Post-Almohad Man 251

Conclusions
In the aftermath of the 1992 coup, Algeria drifted into a long and bloody civil war. With
the electoral process discredited, some former FIS supporters, especially those associated
with the neo-Salafis, turned to violent action. It was as Said had warned it would be. By
dismantling its leadership the regime had rendered FIS supporters ‘une grenade dégoupil-
lée’ (Charef, 1994, p. 384). The chaos of the 1990s has since allowed the Algerian regime
to position itself as the necessary bulwark against Islamist violence. The question for us
must be, therefore, of what relevance is the FIS and the ideas now?
Certainly, as an organised body, the FIS has been decimated. Inside Algeria this has
been accomplished by assassinations, Abdelkader Hachani for one being murdered in
November 1999. Though now released from prison, Madani and Belhadj have been
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banned from political activity. Those sympathetic to the Ja’zarist-Hachani agenda have
also lost influence within the exiled FIS leadership. For a time, it was otherwise. The
FIS delegation to the Rome discussions of 1994 –5, led by Anwar Haddam, Rabah
Kebir and Ahmed Zaoui, had continued that agenda. There they unambiguously com-
mitted the FIS to ‘political pluralism’ and the ‘alternation of power through universal suf-
frage’; to ‘[g]uaranteeing fundamental liberties, individual and collective, irrespective of
race, sex, religion or language’; and perhaps most remarkably ‘[f]reedom of and respect
for confessions of faith’. However, in September 2002 a special ‘party congress’ in
Belgium dissolved these individuals’ organisations. The less politically attuned, though
respected, Mourad Dhina now appears to be the principal spokesman for the FIS in exile.
However, the FIS organisation is not as important as its ideas. Former FIS voters have had
no real choice in elections since 1992. What legitimacy President Bouteflika has is as the
guarantor of ‘stability’, or at least the reduced rate of violence Algeria now endures.
However, it appears that he knows this is not enough, and has begun to seek to arrogate
some religious legitimacy to his position, not least the Islamist nationalist legacy of
Bennabi. In his 2004 election campaign he even occasionally attacked opponents as
‘mercenaries of foreign governments’, ‘believing neither in God nor his Prophet’ (The Econ-
omist, 15 April, 2004). At the beginning of 2005, for the first time in Algeria, a conference
on Bennabi was organised. Held in Constantine, certainly with government approval, its
occurrence may reflect something of Bouteflika’s rediscovery of what Boumediene once
found in Bennabi: a modernistic Islamism in tune with nationalism, religion and dialogue
with the West. To many, this has been seen as a cynical move to co-opt Bennabi’s
legacy. Regarding a proposal for creating a Bennabi foundation, one of his descendants
declared: ‘J’ai passé vingt ans de ma vie à me battre pour récupérer l’heritage intellectuel
et culturel de Malek Bennabi et je ne permettrai pas que cet héritage demeure entre les
mains d’une poignée d’opportunistes’ (EL Watan, 6 January, 2005). That Bouteflika recog-
nises the danger to his authority of allowing a new party to espouse aspects of the FIS plat-
form was shown by his refusal in 2001 to licence Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi’s Wafa party. A
long-time FLN figure and son of a former AUMA leader, Ibrahimi was never a member
of the FIS, but had protested at Belhadj and Madani’s arrest in 1991. Certainly, he received
support from Islamist voters during his 1999 presidential campaign, and in 2000 some
former FIS members were activists for his new party, though the extent of this is controver-
sial.31 Above all, the fear appears to have been that Ibrahimi, associated with traditional FLN
nationalism, Islamist credentials and historic legitimacy, could use the same political
weapons against it that the FIS had. This remains something the regime will not allow.
 252 S. J. Walsh

The government does talk a great deal of ‘civil concord’ and ‘national reconciliation’,
most recently encapsulated in the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation voted on
in late 2005. Many Algerians are, without doubt, grateful for the relative decline in vio-
lence since the late 1990s. However, any moves towards a form of liberal, democratic gov-
ernance remain firmly stalled. As in Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, elections occur in the sure
knowledge of the winner. As Zaoui put it from exile, ‘the people with the real power
haven’t really learned any lessons. The official discourse about freedom of expression,
freedom of the media, and of democracy, is still unclear and ambiguous.’ This is
because the Bouteflika regime still refuses to allow any political grouping to challenge
it where the FIS had done so: on its legitimacy as defined by the revolution, its failure
to create a truly independent, and Muslim, Algerian state.
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Notes
1. Considerations of space preclude a full discussion of Salafiyyism in this article. For further reading, see
Hourani (1970).
2. In his autobiography Fı̄ Mahab al-Ma’rakah he claimed this was in order to be closer to the FLN’s exiled
leadership, reproducing a letter he sent to them prior to his arrival, that as an ‘Algerian who has partici-
pated in the anti-colonial struggle for a quarter of a century, and who has now come to continue that
struggle under the banner of the Algerian revolution’ (Bennabi, 2002).
3. Defined by Bennabi as ‘the evaluation of everything with the scale of objects’ (Bennabi, 2003b, p. 49).
4. Author’s interview with Ahmed Zaoui, 26 June 2005. Zaoui, a former Algiers University professor,
entered the FIS in 1991, in which he headed the powerful Al-Daw’a Committee, which advised the
party on issues of doctrine and religious practice. Forced out of the country in 1993, he became one
of its most prominent spokesmen in exile. At different times he has been condemned to death in absentia
by both sides of the civil war in Algeria, the Groupes Islamiques Armés (GIA) and the government. He
eventually sought asylum in New Zealand in December 2002, where in December 2004 a tribunal
granted him legitimate refugee status. However, New Zealand security services blocked his full
release. At the time of writing, he has been released on bail into the care of St Benedict’s Dominican
friary, Auckland.
5. President Charles De Gaulle, in conversation with British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, 29 June
1958 (Thomas, 2000, p. 2).
6. Bennabi cites the story of Jewish woman whose house was to be demolished to make way for a mosque
under the Caliph ‘Umar. However, as she could not consider the mosque part of her public domain;
‘Umar allowed her house to remain’.
7. Bennabi, La Democratie en Islam (Algiers, n.d.), Zoubir (1996, pp. 12, 16–29, 36, 42).
8. Author’s interview with Zaoui. Zaoui cited the opinion of Mouloud Belcacem, former government min-
ister, in his explanation of Bennabi’s departure. He also noted that Bennabi had never engaged in ‘direct
confrontation with the government about his ideas’.
9. HAMAS (Harakat al-Mujtama’ al-Islami). Though founded under that name only in 1990, Nahnah led
an active group of Islamists since the 1960s.
10. This proved far more determined in the arts and legal studies than in science, which remained largely
taught in French.
11. Madani, Algérie Actualité, 23 February 1989, Willis (2001, p. 155).
12. This was the ‘Berber Spring’, centred on Tizi Ouzou in March and April. The Berbers, though a minority,
were a powerful voice in Algeria, Kabyles having played a disproportionately large role in the Revolu-
tion. The historical legitimacy of Berber leaders such as Hocine Ait Ahmed, combined with demands for
liberalisation, was thus a significant threat to Benjedid.
13. Belhadj, al-Mujtama’, 26 June 1990, Willis (2001, p. 132).
14. This term is used in Algeria, and in most academic literature, to describe those individuals who consider
religious texts as the sole guide to Islamic society, drawing on the conservative writers who dominated
Salafiyyism after the modernistic period of ‘Abduh and al-Afghani. However, there are two very distinct
strands within this strictly ‘religious’ Salafi tradition—the Badisiyya or traditional Salafis, and the
 Killing Post-Almohad Man 253

radical, Mashriq-inspired neo-Salafis. When I use the term ‘Salafi’, I use it as an umbrella term for both
these ‘religious’ strands, over general views they share, as opposed to the more political, pragmatic
trends represented by Madani and the Ja’zara. When dealing with the many differences between the
two groups of Salafis, I describe the traditional, preaching-oriented group as Badisiyya, the more
radical group as neo-Salafis.
15. Algér Republicain, December 1989, ICG, (2004c), p. 144.
16. Séverine Labat, commenting in New Zealand Herald, 16 October 2004.
17. El Moudjahid, 26 December 1989, Willis (2001, p. 146).
18. The law allocated a disproportionate number of seats to the rural south of Algeria, where the FLN was
strong. Willis (2001, p. 172).
19. The two were close friends, Sahnouni having been the official imam at the al-Sunna mosque, where
Belhadj had made his reputation.
20. As the editor of El Watan remarked, ‘[i]f the FIS had been united, Madani would not be in prison—it
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simply would not have been allowed to happen’. Willis (2001, p. 188).
21. Zaoui is unambiguous on this: ‘Mohammed Saeed was given responsibility for the FIS at this time’. It
was announced on 7 July 1991. Author’s interview with Zaoui.
22. Merrani, Kerrar, Fakih, Sahnouni, Zebda and Guechi. Willis (2001, p. 190).
23. Bennabi had drawn on the life of Mohammed to illustrate that dogmatic adherence to the word of scrip-
ture was no substitute for effective interpretation: ‘the Prophet himself never let any occasion pass
without warning Muslims against such vanities whose inhibiting effect on the development of the con-
temporary Muslim society we have well experienced. Upon returning from a military expedition in the
middle of the fasting month of Ramadan . . . [he] attributed the merit of the expedition’s victory to those
who had exempted themselves, as permitted by Islamic law, from fasting that day so as to attend to the
needs of the expedition’ (Bennabi, 2003b, pp. 74–75).
24. The majority of Ja’zarists had attended Algiers University, the former al-Nahda members the Ben Badis
Institute in Constantine, where Djaballah had founded his organisation.
25. Hachani, Algérie Actualité, 1 August 1991, Willis (2001, p. 222).
26. Boudiaf had been one of the co-founders of the FLN, and was an early leader of its campaign for Alger-
ian independence. He was imprisoned by France from 1954 until 1962.
27. Algérie Actualité, 9 January 1992, Willis (2001, p. 240).
28. Interview with Ibrahim El-Bayoumi Ghanem, 26 June 1994, Willis (2001, p. 241).
29. El Watan, 3 August 1994, ibid., p. 241.
30. Interview with Ali Djeddi, 10 July 2003, ICG (2004c, p. 9).
31. The anti-FIS El Watan claimed 17 of 40 official founding members of Wafa were ex-FIS, whilst a party
spokesman stated ex-FIS members made up only around 3 per cent of the party’s leadership. Ibid.,
pp. 278–9.

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