Page 145 - The Winter of Islam and the Spring to Come

HARUN YAHYA (ADNAN OKTAR)
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movements matured. A notice published by resistance forces on Nov. 1,
1954, urged the Algerian people to rise up for freedom and indepen-
dence. The National Liberation Front (FLN) and the National
Liberation Army (ALN), founded that same year, led the independence
movement. The FLN was not a homogenous movement, and people of
diverse political persuasions gathered under its umbrella. It met in
Cairo in September 1958 and formed the Temporary Government of
Algeria.
France, of course, had no wish to lose Algeria with its rich reserves
of oil and natural gas. The potential emergence of a Muslim country
with rich natural resources made France and other anti-Islamic forces
uneasy. The French administration calculated that such a development
would have a domino effect on other Muslim countries in Africa, and so
it turned to further killing. Many villages were burned by the French,
and schools and mosques were demolished, until Algeria declared in-
dependence. During this period, which saw thousands of people lost
their lives, the French did not shrink from ruining the Algerian people's
harvests and killing their animals as well. Some 400,000 vines were up-

Muslim Algerians who resisted the French occupation were wiped out with tanks, guns and tor-
ture. The seven-and-a-half-year struggle for independence from colonialist France left a tragic
toll in its wake: French forces killed 1.5 million Algerians dead in their heavily armed attacks on
defenseless people. After independence, the Algerian state took up where the French left off.