J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God here. God is certainly back in the headlines, 9/11 and Islamic fundamentalism saw to that. Whereas the new leaders of Algeria saw Islam and Socialism as both compatible and features of Algerian culture and society; radical Islamists saw Islam as the only defining characteristic and in fact incompatible. 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. The popularity of Islamism fluctuates according to circumstance; in the 2002 elections, legal Islamist parties received some 20% of the seats in the National Assembly, way down from the FIS’s 50% in 1991. Conversely, there is strong anti-Islamist sentiment from secular parties such as the RCD and the Algerian Workers Party.

After independence the Algerian government asserted state control over religious activities for purposes of national consolidation and political control. 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. The state monopolized the building of mosques, and the Ministry of Religious Affairs controlled an estimated 5,000 public mosques by the mid-1980s. That ministry also administered religious property (the habus), provided for religious education and training in schools, and created special institutes for Islamic learning. Government in these colonies contained elements of theocracy, asserting that leaders and officials derived that authority from divine guidance and that civil authority ought to be used to enforce religious conformity. Islam became the religion of the state in the new constitution (Article 2), and was the religion of its leaders. Thus, the movement began spreading to university campuses where it was encouraged by the state as a counterbalance to left-wing student movements. Buddhist temples came under the control of the state, and the training of priests and the management of temples and the hierarchy was effectively state supervised.

A proposal to ban Southern Baptist women from serving as pastors failed a two-thirds-majority vote, signalling that the far right has not yet consolidated its control of the Church. 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. 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. Soon after arriving in Algeria, the French colonial regime set about undermining traditional Muslim Algerian culture. During the Regency period, unlike the Maliki Algerian masses, the Ottoman-Algerians remained affiliated with the Hanifi school of Islamic jurisprudence. 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.

This proved to be the most difficult challenge for the immediate post-independent regimes as they tried to incorporate an Islamic national identity alongside socialist policies. Policies of Arabization (increasing Arabic education and the use of Arabic in professional institutions) had failed to come to fruition: French remained the language of the political elite and French speaking students were prioritised for jobs. Houari Boumediene largely contained militant Islamism during his reign, although it remained throughout the 1970s under a different name and with a new organization. The most famous saints who remain local patrons of the cities where their tombs are situated are Sidi Abdel Rahman in Algiers, Sidi el Houari in Oran and Sidi Boumediene at Tlemcen. Jeremiah was a prophet who warned the people of Judah for many years concerning their eventual destruction because of idolatry and sin. Evolutionists believe that dinosaurs lived 65 million years before man lived.