Islamic Salvation Front
The Islamic Salvation Front was an Islamist political party in Algeria. The party had two major leaders representing its two bases of its support; Abbassi Madani appealed to pious small businessmen, and Ali Belhadj appealed to the angry, often unemployed youth of Algeria.
Officially made legal as a political party in September 1989, less than a year later the FIS received more than half of valid votes cast by Algerians in the 1990 local government elections. When it appeared to be winning a general election in January 1992, a military coup dismantled the party, interning thousands of its officials in the Sahara. It was officially banned two months later. Its armed wing, the Islamic Salvation Army, fought in the Algerian Civil War against the Algerian government from July 1994 until its dissolution in January 2000.
Goals
The founders and leaders of the FIS did not agree on all issues, but agreed on the core objective of establishing an Islamic state ruled by sharia law. FIS hurriedly assembled a platform in 1989, the Projet de Programme du Front Islamique du Salut, which was widely criticized as vague.Its 1990 electoral victory, giving it control of many local governments, led to the imposing of the veil on female municipal employees, pressuring of liquor stores, video shops and other establishments perceived as un-Islamic to close, and segregation of bathing areas by gender.
Elimination of the French language and culture was an important issue for many in the FIS such as co-leader Ali Benhadj, who in 1990 declared his intention "to ban France from Algeria intellectually and ideologically, and be done, once and for all, with those whom France has nursed with her poisoned milk." Devout activists removed satellite dishes of households receiving European satellite broadcast in favor of Arab satellite dishes receiving Saudi broadcasts. Educationally, the party was committed to continue the Arabization of the educational system by shifting the language of instruction in more institutions, such as medical and technological schools, from French to Arabic. Large numbers of recent graduates, the first post-independence generation educated mainly in Arabic, liked this measure, as they had found the continued use of French in higher education and public life jarring and disadvantageous.
Following the first National Assembly ballot, the FIS issued a second pamphlet. Economically, it strongly criticized Algeria's planned economy, urging the need to protect the private sector and encourage competition – earning it support from traders and small businessmen – and urged the establishment of Islamic banking. However, leaders Abbassi Madani and Abdelkader Hachani both made statements opposed to opening the country to competition from foreign business.
Socially, it suggested that women should be given a financial incentive to stay at home rather than working outside, thus introducing sexual segregation with the supposed goal of increasing the number of jobs available to men in a time of chronic unemployment.
Politically, the contradiction between Madani and Belhadj's words was noteworthy: Madani condemned violence "from wherever it came", and expressed his commitment to democracy and resolve to "respect the minority, even if it is composed of one vote".
Belhadj said, "There is no democracy in Islam" and "If people vote against the Law of God... this is nothing other than blasphemy. The ulama will order the death of the offenders who have substituted their authority for that of God".
In an interview with Daniel Pipes and Patrick Clawson, Anwar Haddam rejected this view of Belhadj, saying, "He has been misquoted. He has been accused of things out of bitterness. He wrote a book in which he expressed himself clearly in favor of democracy. In it, he writes on page 91 that "the West progressed by defeating tyranny and preserving freedoms; this is the secret of the Western world's remarkable progress." Belhadj refers many times to the Western world and to those very values that people are trying to deny us within our own borders."
History
Background
Social conditions that led to formation and popularity of the FIS included a population explosion in the 1960s and 70s that outstripped the stagnant economy's ability to supply jobs, housing, food and urban infrastructure to massive numbers of young in the urban areas; a collapse in price of oil, whose sale supplied 95% of Algeria's exports and 60% of the government's budget; a single-party state ostensibly based on socialism, anti-imperialism, and popular democracy but ruled by high level military and party nomenklatura from the east side of the country; "corruption on a grand scale"; and in response to these issues, "the most serious riots since independence" occurred in October 1988 when thousands of urban youth took control of the streets.Earlier Salafist movements in Algeria included the Association of Muslim Ulemas founded in 1931 by Abdel Hamid Ben Badis, which like the Muslim Brotherhood believed that religion should be the "absolute focus of private life and society", preached against the "superstitions" of popular Islam and French culture or secularism in Algeria, but did not venture into politics or promotion of an Islamic state.
After independence the government of Houari Boumediene began a campaign of Arabization and Islamization against the French language which was still dominant in higher education and the professions. It recruited Egyptians to Arabize and de-Frenchify the school system, including a substantial number of Muslim Brotherhood members. Many of the generation of "strictly Arabphone teachers" trained by the Brothers adopted the beliefs of their teachers and went on to form the basis of an "Islamist intelligentsia" that made up the FIS.
In the 1980s the government imported two renowned Islamic scholars, Mohammed al-Ghazali and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to "strengthen the religious dimension" of the ruling National Liberation Front party's "nationalist ideology". However, both clerics were "fellow travelers" of the Muslim Brotherhood, supporters of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, and supported "Islamic awakening" in Algeria, giving only "lip service" to the government.
Another Islamist, Mustafa Bouyali, a "gifted inflammatory preacher" and veteran of the Algerian independence struggle, called for the application of the sharia and creating of an Islamic state by jihad. After persecution by the security services he founded the Mouvement Islamique Arme, "a loose association of tiny groups", with himself as amir in 1982. His group carried out a series of "bold attacks" against the regime and was able to carry it fight on underground for five years before Bouyali was killed in February 1987.
Also in the 1980s, several hundred youth left Algeria for camps of Peshawar to fight jihad in Afghanistan. As Algeria was a close ally of the jihadists' enemy the Soviet Union, these jihadists tended to consider the Afghan jihad a "prelude" to jihad against the Algerian FLN. After the Marxist government in Afghanistan fell, many of the Salafist jihadis returned to Algeria and supported the FIS and later the GIA.
Also adding to the strength of salafist "Islamic revivalism" and political Islam in Algeria was the weakness of any alternative in the form of popular Muslim brotherhoods which had been dismantled by the FLN government in retaliation for lack of support and whose land had been confiscated and redistributed by the FLN government after independence.
During and after the 1988 October Riots, Islamists "set about building bridges to the young urban poor". The riots "petered out" after meetings between the President Chadli and Islamists Ali Belhadj and members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Founding
On 3 November 1988, the Algerian Constitution was amended to allow parties other than the ruling FLN to operate legally. The FIS was born shortly afterwards in Algiers on 18 February 1989, led by an elderly sheikh, Abbassi Madani, and a charismatic young mosque preacher, Ali Belhadj. Its views ranged across a wide spectrum of Islamist opinion, exemplified by its two leaders. Abbassi Madani, a professor at University of Algiers and ex-independence fighter, represented a relatively moderate religious conservatism and symbolically connected the party to the Algerian War of Independence, the traditionally emphasized source of the ruling FLN's legitimacy. His aim was to "Islamise the regime without altering society's basic fabric." The party came into legal existence on 16 September 1989.Ali Belhadj, a high school teacher, appealed to a younger and less educated class. An impassioned orator, he was known for his ability to both enrage and calm at will the tens of thousands of young hittiestes who came to hear him speak. However, his radical speeches alarmed non-Islamists and feminists. He purportedly represented a Salafi mindset. Madani sometimes expressed support for multiparty democracy, whereas Belhadj denounced it as a potential threat to sharia. Their support of free market trading and opposition to the ruling elite also attracted middle class traders, who felt left out of the economy.
As in other Muslim countries where the political system allowed opposition and free elections for the first time, the FIS benefited from being a religious party. Unlike the secular parties it had "a coherent network of preachers already in place."
Its support base increased rapidly with the help of activists preaching in friendly mosques.
1990 local elections victory
The FIS made "spectacular" progress in the first year of its existence. The first edition of its weekly publication, Al Munqidh, was distributed to 200,000. The FIS-inspired doctors, nurses and rescue teams showed "devotion and effectiveness" helping victims of an earthquake in Tipaza Province. It organized marches and rallies and "applied steady pressure on the state" to force a promise of early elections.In the first free elections since independence on 12 June 1990, they swept the local elections with 54% of votes cast, almost double that of the FLN and far more than any of the other parties. The FIS took 46% of town assemblies and 55% of wilaya assemblies. Its supporters were especially concentrated in urban areas: it secured 93% of towns/cities of over 50,000. This was the "high point" of FIS influence. Its rapid rise alarmed the government, which moved to curtail the powers of local government.
Once in power in local governments, its administration and its Islamic charity was praised by many as just, equitable, orderly and virtuous, in contrast to its corrupt, wasteful, arbitrary and inefficient FLN predecessors.
The victory in local elections was the "high point" of FIS influence, which benefited from widespread disillusionment with the Algerian ruling party. As time went on non-core supporters began to become disenchanted. The secular, educated, salaried urban middle class began to be concerned over the anti-French language policy.
The Gulf War energized the party, but brought fissures. The FIS had condemned Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, but once it was apparent that Western intervention was inevitable, public opinion shifted and there were massive demonstrations, blood donation drives. When Benhadj delivered a speech in front of the Ministry of Defense building demanding a corp be sent to fight in Iraq's favor, the military took it as a "direct affront" and challenge to the discipline in the armed forces. Furthermore, his co-leader Madani had received much aid from Iraq's direct enemies, Saudi Arabia and other oil monarchies, supported them and was unhappy about having to defer to Benhadj and the pro-Sadam position.