Word: fundamentalistism
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...morning, five hours after the polls had closed, Algeria's Interior Minister stepped to the microphone at the government press center in the capital city of Algiers. Speaking in a monotone, Mohammed Salah Mohammedi delivered the startling news: the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front was ahead in Algeria's first multiparty election since the country's independence from France in 1962. Eventually the scope of the victory became plain: the Islamic party took a majority of the municipal and provincial councils, while the ruling National Liberation Front (F.L.N.) captured only one-third of them...
Arguments like this, however, often fail to distinguish between the religious fanatics who garner headlines with terrorist attacks and the far more numerous Muslims who seek a greater say in their countries' policies. Anti-Islamic attitudes also tend to obscure the import of the fundamentalists' electoral gains. In Jordan's elections last November and now in Algeria, fundamentalist organizations offered the only strong vehicle for voters to register a protest against government policies...
...outcome in Algeria is certain to provide a boost for Islamic movements elsewhere. The prospect that haunts is a militant tide that topples unpopular regimes and replaces them with fundamentalist theocracies. Some leaders are beginning to recognize that the most effective safeguard against radical fundamentalism -- or any other dogmatism -- may be to garner the consent of the governed. Among the countries that have taken tentative steps toward such reforms...
TUNISIA. The country most likely to be shaken by the vote in Algeria is neighboring Tunisia, which also held municipal and regional elections last week. Unlike that in Algeria, Tunisia's Islamic movement, Ennahdha, was banned from fielding candidates. That decision no doubt stemmed from the strong fundamentalist showing in legislative elections in April 1989, when Islamic militants, running as independents, took about 12% of the vote. The ruling party of President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali claimed last week that it had garnered 99% of the vote -- hardly a democratic outcome...
...course than did his predecessor. He reopened the Islamic university in Tunis, pardoned some 10,000 political prisoners, loosened press restrictions and encouraged the creation of non-Islamic parties. Ben Ali's gravest challenge may come from students and unemployed youths, who will no doubt be inspired by the fundamentalist success in Algeria...