Islam • 181Algerian revolution against France had been an inspiration to
Arabs and Muslims who were also struggling to gain inde-
pendence from Europe. The FLN was similar to the other
secular and socialist governments in the Middle East at this
time, which had relegated Islam to the private sphere, on the
Western pattern. By the 1970s, however, people all over the
Muslim world were becoming dissatisfied with these secular-
ist ideologies which had not delivered what they had
promised. Abbas Madani, one of the founding members of
FIS, wanted to create an Islamic political ideology for the
modern world; Ali ibn Hajj, the imam of a mosque in a poor
neighbourhood in Algiers, led a more radical wing of FIS.
Slowly, FIS began to build its own mosques, without getting
permission from the government; it took root in the Muslim
community in France, where workers demanded places of
prayer in the factories and offices, incurring the wrath of the
right-wing party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen.
By the 1980s, Algeria was in the grip of an economic crisis.
FLN had set the country on the path to democracy and state-
hood, but over the years it had become corrupt. The old garde
were reluctant to attempt more democratic reforms. There
had been a population explosion in Algeria; most of its thirty
million inhabitants were under thirty, many were unem-
ployed, and there was an acute housing shortage. There were
riots. Frustrated with the stagnation and ineptitude of the
FLN, the young wanted something new and turned to the Is-
lamic parties. In June 1990 the FIS scored major victories in
the local elections, especially in the urban areas. FIS activists
were mostly young, idealistic and well educated; they were
known to be honest and efficient in government, though they
were dogmatic and conservative in some areas, such as their
insistence upon traditional Islamic dress for women. But the
FIS was not anti-Western. Leaders spoke of encouraging links
with the European Union and fresh Western investment.