FIS de la haine.

The freest legislative elections since Algeria's independence in 1962 were held on 26 December 1991. The first ballot of those pluralist elections was won by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the main beneficiary of the democratic process, a process which ended 30 years of single-party rule by the wartime liberation movement, the National Liberation Front (FLN). Had the second ballot, scheduled for 16 January 1992, not been interrupted by the military on 11 January, Algeria would undoubtedly now be run by an Islamist government and an Assembly composed overwhelmingly of Islamists. Governments and media in the West, on the one hand, and many intellectuals and so called democrats in Algeria and elsewhere, on the other hand, condemned the interruption of these elections, for they saw in their suspension an end to the democratic process itself. They have argued that had the FIS come to power, it would have proved incapable of fulfilling the electorate's expectations and would have lost its popularity after a few years, thus putting an end to its reign, and even making Algerians aware of the necessity of separating religion from politics.

Two distinguished figures of Algerian literature in both French and Arabic, Rachid Boudjedra and Rachid Mimouni, along with many small democratic parties and intellectuals in Algeria, welcomed the military's intervention, which they perceived as salvation for the country. Both authors rejected the arguments expounded by those who favored the continuation of the electoral process. Despite their different approaches, ideological predilections, and temperaments, neither writer shows the slightest sympathy for the Islamist movement regardless of the reasons that account for its rise. For them, Islamism is a historic regression, a return to barbarity, and an impediment to social, cultural, and technological progress. In their view, the FIS is nothing less than a fascist movement (Boudjedra:. 70; Mimouni, 153), which, like the Nazis, would endorse the democratic contest only as a ploy to come to power and then establish a totalitarian regime (Boudjedra, 105-6; Mimouni, 152). Consequently, it was vital that the ascent of the movement be stopped.

Boudjedra's passionate, yet well written, pamphlet whose title can also be read as "Son [fils]-of Hatred," is a merciless, uncompromising attack on the FIS and the Islamists in general. However, the title is somewhat misleading, for Boudjedra does not limit his attack on the FIS; he has spared no one: the official West (governments and media), successive Algerian regimes, intellectuals (himself included), and the population at large. In spite of the angry, resentful, and at times abusive, tone, Boudjedra utilizes history, sociology, and psychoanalysis to support his analysis, thus confirming his broad intellectual abilities. Hence, beneath the fiery diatribe, rests powerful critical thinking about the movement and the conditions, both internal and external, which helped its advance.

In his book, for which he won the Albert Camus Prize, Mimouni provides an interesting, even if less passionate, analysis of the Islamist phenomenon in Algeria. His mastery of economics - he teaches economics at the University of Algiers - provides the book greater analytical depth. Further, he uses concrete examples throughout the book to illustrate and to highlight the obscurantist and the regressive nature of the Islamist movement.

Boudjedra and Mimouni published their works only a few months apart. Their main objective, it seems, was to offer an explanation for the reasons which led to the rise of Islamism in Algeria and to awaken people's consciousness to its dangers as an essentially violent, anti-democratic, anti-modernist and fundamentally barbaric movement.

The FIS is the fils (son) of the FLN. The successive Algerian regimes favored its growth often for demagogic and political reasons. For instance, they deliberately allowed it to take control of the mosques, on the one hand, and strengthened the national-religious trend each time they wished to oppose the left-wing of the FLN and the PAGS [Communist party], on the other hand (Boudjedra, 35). They also called on the Islamists to counter the Betbet [ethnic minority] movement, as happened during the explosion in the Kabylia region in April 1980 (Mimouni, 79). Yet, these were only a few among several other well-documented reasons provided by the two authors.

Although it tried to modernize Algeria and had great achievements in its record, "the FLN failed because it did not make the fight choices . . . because it was authoritarian, corrupt, condescending, dictatorial, perverted, to an unbelievable degree" (Boudjedra, 14). Unlike Boudjedra's somewhat more balanced view of the FLN-regime, especially under Boumedienne's rule, Mimouni's critique of the FLN is merciless. For him, the austerity programs imposed on the population, in the name of modernization by Boumedienne, worsened people's living conditions. The dislocation of the traditional structures and the inability of the uprooted peasants to adapt to urban life compelled them to seek salvation through religion. Boumedienne's expectation that the new proletariat would be less attached to religion once its material conditions were improved, did not materialize (Mimouni, 77). Both authors concur, though, that Chadli Bendjedid's regime worsened conditions in the country, for it was under his leadership in the 1980s that corruption became institutionalized and social inequalities intensified. The drop in the price of oil inevitably threatened the durability of the regime. One of the consequences of the severe socio-economic problems was the social explosion of October 1988 - although Boudjedra argues that this was a "palace revolution" rather than a popular revolution. Bendjedid's economic policies - dismantling of State-owned enterprises, import of luxury goods and other unnecessary commodities - had dire ramifications, the most obvious of which were the emergence of a privileged class and the impoverishment of many Algerians.

Although Bendjedid was the president who made the biggest concessions to the Islamists, Ben Bella and Boumedienne, too, helped their ascent. Ben Bella made Islam the state religion, whereas Boumedienne surrendered Algerian schools to "semi-illiterate Egyptian fundamentalist teachers," with scant knowledge of the Qur'an (Boudjedra, 39-40; Mimouni, 121-122). The FIS leadership, except for Abassi Madani, were the product of those schools. The programs of education in schools and universities were inadequate and favored the rise of intolerance, opposition to art, and to practically everything that carried modernity.

The catastrophic state of the educational system - 47% of the population are illiterate despite the state's spending 30% of its budget on it - has worsened because of the uncontrolled demographic growth (3.2% annually). Among the negative consequences of the phenomenal population growth, Mimouni and Boudjedra cite the increase in the number of failures in schools - which helps to swell the ranks of Islamists, for the unemployed and semi-illiterate constitute the bulk of the FIS's clientele - the overcrowding of cities, the continued import of foodstuffs (about 60% of Algeria's needs), the collapse of family units, the loosening of the old solidarity, and the degradation of values (Boudjedra, 60-61; Mimouni, 126-128).

Both authors denounce what they describe as the "pathological behavior" of the Islamisis, especially their abusive attitude toward women. "A few Islamists become sexually obsessed. . . . They transform their sexual drive into needs for death, through which one reaches ecstasy and orgasm, by simply canceling out the other, the object of desire, in this case the obscene and lustful female who carries all the temptations and thus all the dangers" (Boudjedra, 78). As Mimouni puts it, "The woman is for the Islamists what the Jew is for Hitler: an obsessional fixation". Mimouni devotes many pages to the issue of women, highlighting the discrepancies between the teachings of Islam and the archaic practices of the Islamists. For him, in today's Islamic societies, men use the sacred to legitimize their privileges. "They have superposed only those pre-existing customs, Qur'anic provisions, and restrictive interpretations that limit women's rights". The 1984 Algerian Family Code falls within this scope because it attempts to reduce women to the condition of sub-humans. The culpability of the state in helping increase the power of the Islamists is therefore unmistakable.

Boudjedra and Mimouni leave no doubt as to the barbarity of the Algerian Islamists, the fascist nature of their movement, and the deceptive character of their leadership. The two authors are bewildered by the complacent attitude adopted by the West, on the one hand, and by Algerian intellectuals, on the other hand. Both writers attempt to present credible explanations. For Boudjedra, the FIS gained prominence thanks to the French media, fascinated by a rampant green fascism. Boudjedra blasts at the official West, especially France. In his view, France, which never accepted its defeat in Algeria, has sought revenge through neo-colonial policies (Francophonie, media influence, imposing its literature, etc.). He even argues that "the FIS has been engendered by, among other things, Western contempt for the Arabic language and the dominant Arab-Islamic identity in Algeria". Boudjedra denounces - without naming him - Francois Mitterrand, who, while Minister of Justice and of the Interior during the 1950s, advocated staunch repression against colonial peoples, had no respect for their human rights, and who today presents himself as the spearhead of human freedom. It is no secret that France has collaborated with the FIS, a movement that has made no secret of its aversion to democracy. Yet, this West that committed genocides now "gives lessons of democracy to peoples tom by tribalism, misery, lack of political culture, civic illiteracy, and colonial rights".

For Mimouni, the West "cared more about the disease than about the patient". In other words, it showed no concern for the millions of Algerians opposed to the FIS who would have paid a dear price in the event the FIS had come to office - popular tribunals, executions of artists, communists, intellectuals, and the public stoning of "adulterate" women. The belief held by some that, once in power, the Islamists would moderate their position is, according to both authors, simply fallacious. It is easy for "Westerners in their comfortable chairs" to make such naive judgments (Mimouni, p. 154). Furthermore, Mimouni, perhaps correctly, rejects as erroneous the argument that one cannot compare the Iranian experience with what would have happened in Algeria because of the alleged differences between Sunni and Shi'a Islam.

In their zeal for "democracy," both the West and the pseudo-democrats in Algeria and elsewhere, have themselves become "fundamentalists" [integristes] of democracy because they demand the implementation of democracy at all costs, regardless of whether the conditions for its exercise are propitious (Mimouni, 152); they fail to understand that it was only in order to make people accept economic desocialization [liberalization] that Bendjedid and his cohorts threw democracy as a bone to the people (Boudjedra, 49). The real beneficiary, though, was the FIS.

Boudjedra, although apparently a communist, and Mimouni both wrote their books not against Islam, but against the interpretations made of it by the Islamists. Although they can be criticized, Boudjedra, for his often violent and disrespectful style as well as for his contradictory assessment of Boumedienne's rule (Boudjedra, 46-47), and Mimouni for his somewhat pathetic appeal to the West (Mimouni, 157-159), both have provided a daring analysis of the Islamist movement and the dangers which derive from fanaticism. In particular, Boudjedra's conclusion about the psycho-pathology of the FIS membership deserves further study, for in his words: "Between the fire at the Reichstag in 1933 and the fire in the little apartment in Ouargla in 1989 [the house of a widowed woman suspected of receiving male guests was set on fire, costing the life of her baby and causing third degree burns to her face], there is more than an analogy. There is the whole world of barbarity and insanity" (Boudjedra, 141). Whatever reservations one might have, these two books must be read, for they underscore not only the question of Islamism in Algeria, but also the polarization between modernists and traditionalisis and the concurrent crisis of identity which has pervaded Algerian society.

Yahia H. Zoubir is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the American Graduate School for Business in Switzerland.