sali11
Algeria
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From 1963 to 1967, Bennabi served as director of superior studies at the ministry of education; he was removed because of suspicions that he belonged to al-Qiyam, an Islamist organization opposed to the regime. During the late 1960s, Bennabi’s disciples established a mosque at the University of Algiers. Bennabi, who organized private discussions in his own home, attracted primarily French-speaking students enrolled in science departments. He and his disciples alienated Arab-speaking Islamists mainly because of Bennabi’s criticism of the salafists, the followers of the so-called purist movement, who reject progress, urging Muslims to eschew modernity and go back to the “strictness” of the Prophet’s epoch, which they view as the golden age of Islam. The Algerian salafists drew their inspiration from Egyptian and south Asian sources. During the 1990s a current within the Front Islamique du Salut (Islamic Salvation Front, FIS), known as the Jazara, or Algerianists, formed an elitist Islamist group, purporting, implausibly, to be inspired by Bennabi’s ideas. Nourredine Boukrouh, an opponent of the FIS and founder of the Algerian Party for Renewal, rejected that claim, insisting that he was Bennabi’s true disciple. He edited a book, Pour changer l’Algérie (To change Algeria, 1991), which contained Bennabi’s newspaper and magazine articles organized into sections on political, economic, cultural, and international themes. In view of Bennabi’s enlightened approach, it is doubtful that he would have endorsed the radicalism of the Jazarists or any other violent Islamist group. Bibliography Bariun, Fawzia. Bennabi, Malik: His Life and Theory of Civilization. Kuala Lumpur: Buaya Ilmu Sdn, 1993. Christelow, Allan. “An Islamic Humanist in the Twentieth Century: Malek Bennabi.” Maghreb Review 17, no. 1 – 2 (1992). Zoubir, Yahia H. “Islam and Democracy in Malek Bennabi’s Thought.” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 15, no. 1 (spring 1998): 107 – 112.
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