Islam • 183credit the GIA. There was now a ghastly stalemate. Both
FLN and FIS were torn apart by an internal feud between
the pragmatists, who wanted a solution, and the hardliners,
who refused to negotiate. The violence of the initial coup to
stop the elections had led to an outright war between the re-
ligious and secularists. In January 1995 the Roman Catholic
Church helped to organize a meeting in Rome to bring the
two sides together, but Zeroual's government refused to par-
ticipate. A golden opportunity had been lost. There was
more Islamic terror, and a constitutional referendum banned
all religious political parties.
The tragic case of Algeria must not become a paradigm for
the future. Suppression and coercion had helped to push a
disgruntled Muslim minority into a violence that offends
every central tenet of Islam. An aggressive secularism had re-
sulted in a religiosity that was a travesty of true faith. The in-
cident further tarnished the notion of democracy, which the
West is so anxious to promote, but which, it appeared, had
limits, if the democratic process might lead to the establish-
ment of an elected Islamic government. The people of Eu-
rope and the United States were shown to be ignorant about
the various parties and groups within the Islamic world. The
moderate FIS was equated with the most violent fundamen-
talist groups and was associated in the Western mind with the
violence, illegality and anti-democratic behaviour that had
this time been displayed by the secularists in the FLN.
But whether the West likes it or not, the initial success of
the FIS in the local elections showed that the people wanted
some form of Islamic government. It passed a clear message to
Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, where secularist governments
had long been aware of the growing religiosity of their coun-
tries. In the middle of the twentieth century, secularism had
been dominant, and Islam was thought to be irredeemably
passe. Now any secularist government in the Middle East was