Political Islam in Algeria
by Amel Boubekeur
Publisher: Centre for European Policy Studies, May 2007
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Algerian Islamist movements are some of the most heterogeneous in the Arab world. Algeria has a wide range of Islamist tendencies, illustrated by Islamist parties’ different strategies towards the state, civil society and external partners such as the European Union (EU). This paper will focus more specifically on the two major Islamist political parties in Algeria, the Movement of Society for Peace (Harakat al Moujtama’ As-Silm, MSP; formerly called Hamas) and the National Reform Movement (Harakat al-Islah al Watani or el-Islah, MNR). After having been founded clandestinely in the 1970s, these parties became components of the official Algerian opposition in the 1990s. This ‘officialising’ of some Islamist movements by the Algerian government occurred after the failure of revolutionary Islamist strategies, in particular those of the Islamic Salvation Front (al-Jabhat al-Islamiyya lil-Inqad, FIS) banned by the Algerian regime in 1992. The MSP and MNR have adapted their ideology to the daily concerns of civil society, moving away from their previous revolutionary posture. This evolution demonstrates how Islamism as a social movement is today one of the most important forces for change in the region, having spread to different sectors such as trade unions, women’s associations, young people and students, and even networks of businessmen.
