Abbassi Madani
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Abbasi al- Madani
(born 1931, Sd Uqbah, Alg.) Cofounder, with Ali Belhadj, of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut; FIS). After earning a doctorate in London, he returned to Algeria to teach at the University of Algiers, where he became a leader of religious students. He traveled with other itinerant preachers around the country, exchanging ideas and preaching the outlines of a religious political movement. He was arrested after the first round of voting in the 199192 legislative elections and imprisoned; he was released in July 1997 but placed under house arrest later that year. In 1999 he endorsed a peace agreement put forward by Algeria's president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, between the FIS and the Algerian government. Following his release from house arrest in July 2003, al-Madani lived in self-imposed exile in Qatar.
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Abassi al-Madani
1931 -
Algerian founder and president of the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut; FIS), a major opposition political movement.
Born in Sidi Okba in southeast Algeria, son of a rural imam, Abassi (often referred to by his last name, Madani) had a dual education in Qurʾanic and French schools. An early recruit to the nationalist movement, he was arrested by the French authorities in 1955 for placing a bomb at Radio Algiers. He spent the remainder of the Algerian War of Independence in prison.
Upon the country's independence, Madani became a schoolteacher while simultaneously pursuing a licence degree in philosophy at the University of Algiers. Influenced by the Islamic philosopher Malek Bennabi, he became active in Al-Qiyam (Values), an association that popularized the ideas of Middle Eastern fundamentalist thinkers. Yet he remained within the conservative "Arabist" wing of the National Liberation Front (FLN), and was elected to the Algiers departmental assembly in 1971. While studying for a doctorate in London in the mid-1970s, he became acquainted with international Islamist circles. Appointed professor of education at the University of Algiers, he began preaching in various mosques around the city. For his participation in violent anti-regime demonstrations, he returned to prison in December 1982, serving sixteen months of a two-year sentence.
Madani quickly capitalized upon the liberalization of the regime after the October 1988 riots by founding the FIS in February 1989. In this he worked closely with a younger firebrand preacher, Ali Ben Hadj. Emerging as the strategist of the Algerian Islamist movement, he organized an effective electoral machine, which rode to an unanticipated victory in the municipal elections of June 1990. The FIS captured 54 percent of the popular vote and won control of some 850 city councils including those of Algiers, Oran, Constantine, and Annaba. Heady with victory, Madani called for national parliamentary elections, then declared a general strike in May 1991 to protest the gerrymandering electoral law under which the government proposed to hold the election. The strike led to violence, Madani was reported to have threatened jihad against the army, and once again - on 30 June 1991 - the Islamist militant was arrested on charges of conspiracy against the state.
Imprisoned once again and his party officially dissolved, Madani nevertheless remained a significant interlocutor for the government during the civil war of the 1990s. In 1997, he was released from jail but kept under house arrest. In July 2003, he completed his twelve-year sentence; in failing health and his party still banned, he remained a controversial symbol of political protest in Algeria.
— ROBERT MORTIMER
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Abbassi Madani
Dr. Abbassi Madani (Arabic عباسي مدني) was born in 1931 at Diyar Ben Aissa, Sidi Okba (now in Biskra Province). He was the President of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria. As its leader he became the voice of a large part of the dispossessed Algerian youth.[1]
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Career
In his youth he joined the Front for National Liberation (FLN) and participated in the first day of the Algerian War of Independence, 1 November 1954, by planting a bomb at an Algiers radio facility, but was arrested by the French on 17 November 1954, and remained in jail until independence in 1962.[2] After studying for a doctorate in educational psychology in London from 1975 to 1978,[3] he became a professor of educational sciences at the University of Algiers.[2] Madani grew critical of the FLN's socialist orientation, and in 1989, after the Algerian Constitution was changed to allow multiparty democracy, he co-founded the democratic Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which rapidly grew to enjoy success in the ensuing local elections.[4] Madani contended that the Islamic essence of November 1954 was betrayed by the Charters of Tripoli and Algeria, along with other charters upheld by Houari Boumediene and Chadli Bendjedid.[1]
Political positions
Madani advocated, on the one hand, the "stepwise" introduction of Sharia (Islamic Law) and called Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of the dominant religious movement in Saudi Arabia, the "avant-garde of the reform-oriented Muslim world". On the other hand he declared that his party had no intention to impose the wearing of the veil or to ban women from driving. He named the liberal Muslim reformer Muhammad Abduh as part of the same "avant-garde" as Abd al-Wahab. In a 1990 interview he said he wanted to suppress "usury" in banking and to substantially reduce taxes, while he avoided answering a question about the financing of development projects. In the 1980s he advocated for the arabization of the education system in Algeria while he sent two of his own daughters to a French high school in Algiers.[5]
Retirement
Politically, he was widely considered to represent the moderate wing of FIS, contrasted with Ali Belhadj's more hardline views. His positions included free markets, early Islamic education, Arabization of education and government, segregation of the sexes, and sharia-based law. He expressed support for democracy, but with the reservation that it could not override Sharia law.
In January 2011, Agence France-Presse announced, in connection with ongoing demonstrations in Algeria, that Madani had fled to Qatar.[6]
References
- ^ a b Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed", Martin Evans and John Phillips, Yale University Press, 2007, pp. 147 - 148.
- ^ a b L'islamisme en Algérie", Abderrahim Lamchichi, Yale University Press, 1992, p. 208.
- ^ La classe politique algérienne: de 1900 à nos jours : dictionnaire biographique", Achour Cheurfi, Casbah Editions, 2006, p. 15.
- ^ "Madani, Abbasi" in Oxford Islamic Studies Online
- ^ Kaidi, Hamza. "Abassi Madani:"Jamais, jamais nous n'imposerons le voile!"". Jeune Afrique 1543 (25 juillet au 15 août): 16–21.
- ^ "Algerian Islamists' former number two indicted ", 19 Januar 2011, read 14 February 2011
External links
Bibliography
- M. Al-Ahnaf, B. Botiveau, F. Fregosi (1991). L'Algérie par ses islamistes. Paris: Karthala. ISBN 2-86537-318-5.
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