INTERNATIONAL
Algerian Police
Publicly Interrogate
Ex-Muslim
Islamic leader condemns
Christian evangelists.
By Peter Lamprecht
ISTANBUL, For
two hours yesterday on a
street in Tiaret in
western Algeria, police
body-searched and
interrogated a former
Muslim on trial for
practicing
Christianity, a
Protestant leader said.
The incident occurred a
day after Algeria’s top
Islamic authority denied
that the woman’s case
violated religious
freedom and claimed
evangelization was “a
new form of
colonization.”
Five plainclothes
officers stopped Habiba
Kouider yesterday
afternoon on a street in
her home city of Tiaret,
150 miles southwest of
Algiers, said the
President of the
Protestant Church of
Algeria in an online
statement.
After examining the
contents of the
Christian woman’s
handbag, police officers
body-searched her and
then proceeded to
interrogate her.
“Why did you convert to
Christianity, why did
you forsake Islam?” the
officers asked,
according to comments by
Mustapha Krim, published
on the website
collectifalgerie.free.fr.
Kouider, 35, recognized
at least one of the
officers as having
escorted her to her
court hearing on May 27.
Krim said officials
released Kouider at 5
p.m. following two hours
of interrogation.
The Christian convert is
on trial for “practicing
non-Muslim religious
rites without a
license,” a charge that
her lawyer says does not
exist in Algerian
criminal law. Police
pulled her off an
intercity bus outside of
Tiaret on March 29 after
finding several Bibles
and books on
Christianity in her bag.
Kouider said they were
for personal use, but a
Tiaret state prosecutor
has claimed that she was
distributing the
literature to
proselytize Muslims,
outlawed under a 2006
religion law.
Scheduled to rule on the
Christian’s case last
Tuesday (May 27), a
Tiaret court postponed
the verdict after the
trial gained
international attention.
Local human rights
activists as well as
French State Secretary
for Human Rights Rama
Yade spoke out on
Kouider’s behalf.
“They want to avoid
deciding because
condemning Habiba is
likely to discredit
them, but to release her
will be humiliating,”
defense lawyer
Khelloudja Khalfoun told
Compass.
Algeria’s Catholic
Archbishop Emeritus,
Henri Tessier, who at
times has made comments
to distance his church
from Protestant
evangelization in
Algeria, said he
believed the case
against Kouider was
illegal, according to a
May 28 article in daily
El Khabar.
“I hope Habiba Kouider
will be acquitted,” he
told the newspaper.
On Saturday (May 31) an
Algerian leader
responded to the outcry
over Kouider’s case with
accusations that members
of the country’s
evangelical churches
sought to divide the
country.
“There are some of the
church evangelists and
some reformist
journalists who want to
sow discord,” said Dr.
Abu Amrane Chikh, head
of the
government-appointed
Islamic Higher Council.
Claiming Christian
evangelization was
harming Islam in
Algeria, Chikh said it
was “unacceptable”
because it violated
Islam as the state
religion and the
religion of the
country’s majority.
“[Evangelists’] distant
political goal is to
create a Christian
minority coupled with
some foreign
institutions,” Chikh
said. “This is a new
form of colonization
that is hidden behind
freedom of worship.”
A former French colony,
Algeria gained its
independence in 1958.
Responding to a question
about Kouider’s case,
Chikh said it was
Algeria’s sovereign
right to regulate the
worship of non-Muslims.
“There is no movement
opposed to Christians as
alleged by some
tendentious minds,”
Chikh said.
