Page 142 - The Winter of Islam and the Spring to Come

The Winter of

ISLAM

and the Spring to Come ALGERIA

The bloody toll of

endless cruelty and

oppression

A lgeria enjoys an important place in
the spread of Islam in North Africa,
but has been wracked by social and
political disorder for many years now. The
roots of the conflict in Algeria, which the
world has grown used to hearing about
over the last decade, go back a long way.

The French Occupation
of Algeria

Algeria lived in peace and security
under Ottoman rule from the sixteenth to
the nineteenth centuries. However, as the
Ottoman Empire began to fall apart, colo-
nialist powers divided up the Islamic
world. One of these lands was Algeria. In
1827, French armies with 37,000 men in-
vaded the country. In the three years of
fighting that ensued, the whole country