The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History

by Michael Willis

Book Overview

In recent years, Algeria has been rocked by social upheaval, protest, and spasmodic violence. Like many countries caught between the tides of fundamentalist religion and secular culture, the very fiber of the nation seems to be fraying.
Michael Willis here charts the meteoric rise of one of the largest and most powerful Islamist movements in the Muslim world. Tracing its origins to the French colonial domination in the nineteenth and early...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814793290
• ISBN13: 9780814793299
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: New York University Press
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent account offering valuable insights

Dr Michael Willis's book is an excellent and very readable account of events that led to the present crisis in Algeria. It also provides valuable insights, applicable to different parts of the world, into what happens where an elite fails to address the democratically expressed aspirations of desperate people at the bottom of the socio-economic pile. Of particular interest is the work of fundamentalist Muslim activists attempting to alleviate social and economic pressures at the grass-roots level.