Islamic Salvation Front
|
Islamic Salvation Front
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Arabic name | الجبهة الإسلامية للإنقاذ |
| French name | Front Islamique du Salut |
| Founder | Abbassi Madani, Ali Belhadj |
| Founded | 18 February 1989 |
| Dissolved | 4 March 1992 |
| Ideology | Islamic fundamentalism |
| Religion | Islam |
| Party flag | |
 |
|
| Website | |
| http://www.fisdz.com | |
The Islamic Salvation Front (Arabic: الجبهة الإسلامية للإنقاذ, al-Jabhah al-Islāmiyah lil-Inqādh; French: Front Islamique du Salut) was a Sunni Islamist political party in Algeria. The party had two major leaders representing its two bases of its support. Abbassi Madani appealed to pious small businessmen, and Ali Belhadj appealed to the angry, often unemployed youth of Algeria.
Officially made legal as a political party in September 1989, less than a year later the FIS received more than half of valid votes cast by Algerians in the 1990 local government elections. When it appeared to be winning a general election in January 1992, a military coup dismantled the party interning thousands of its officials in the Sahara. It was officially banned two months later.
The founders and leaders of the FIS did not agree on all issues, but agreed on the core objective of establishing an Islamic State ruled by sharia law. FIS hurriedly assembled a platform in 1989, the Projet de Programme du Front Islamique du Salut, which was widely criticized as vague.
Its 1990 electoral victory, giving it control of many local governments, led to the imposing of the veil on female municipal employees; pressuring of liquor stores, video shop and other unIslamic establishments to close; segregation of bathing areas by gender.
Elimination of French language and culture was an important issue for many in the FIS such as co-leader Ali Benjadj, who in 1990 declared his intention, "to ban France from Algeria intellectually and ideologically, and be done, once and for all, with those whom France has nursed with her poisoned milk." Devout activists removed satellite dishes of households receiving European satellite broadcast in favor of Arab satellite dishes receiving Saudi broadcasts. Educationally, the party was committed to continue the Arabization of the educational system by shifting the language of instruction in more institutions, such as medical and technological schools, from French to Arabic. Large numbers of recent graduates, the first post-independence generation educated mainly in Arabic, liked this measure, as they had found the continued use of French in higher education and public life jarring and disadvantageous.
...
Wikipedia