Practice
The majority of Algerians are traditionally Muslim; resident Christians, numbering less than 1% of the population, are mainly foreigners. It is difficult to determine the number of atheists, agnostics and deists but they are concentrated in the larger cities and in Kabylie (Matoub Lounes or Ferhat Mehenni to name few are popular singers among Kabyle youth). Sunni Islam is universal apart from the small Mozabite community, concentrated in five Saharan oases, which instead follows Ibadhism.
The dominant madhhab is Maliki, although, at least until the last century, some families of Turkish descent followed the Hanafi madhhab. Sufi brotherhoods have retreated considerably, but remain in some areas. Saint cults are widely disapproved of as un-Islamic, but continue, as a visit to the shrine of Sidi Abderrahmane in Algiers quickly demonstrates.
The popularity of Islamism fluctuates according to circumstance; in the 2002 elections, legal Islamist parties received some 20% of the seats in the National Assembly, way down from the FIS's 50% in 1991. Conversely, strong anti-Islamist sentiment (typified politically by the RCD, which received 8%) is not unknown. Support for Islamist parties is especially low in the Kabylie region, where the FIS obtained no seats in 1991, the majority being taken by the Front of Socialist Forces, a secular party.
Read more about this topic: Islam In Algeria
Famous quotes containing the word practice:
“Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Know how to be content and you will never be disgraced; practice self-restraint and you will never be in danger.”
—Chinese proverb.
Laozi.
“She, too, would now swim down the river of matrimony with a beautiful name, and a handle to it, as the owner of a fine family property. Women’s rights was an excellent doctrine to preach, but for practice could not stand the strain of such temptation.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)