Christianity in Algeria
Currently, North Africa is primarily Muslim: Islam is the state religion of Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. While the practice and expression of other faiths is guaranteed by law, the same legal framework tends to restrict minority religions from actively seeking conversion to their religion, or even building or repairing churches. Converts to Christianity may be investigated and searched by the authorities as well as punished. There is some evidence that there has been an increase in conversions to Christianity among North African Muslims in recent years, even though in many cases the government will not change the religion from Islam on any citizens' identity cards. Despite this, the total number of Christians remains very low relative to the populations of these countries. In 2009, the percentage of Christians in Algeria was less than 2%. In this same survey, the UNO counted 100,000 Roman Catholics and 45,000 Protestants in the country. Although Christians are a religious minority in Algeria, churches built during French rule can still be found.
Berber Spring
Since its independence in 1962, Algeria has a single-party system, governed by the FLN. After 132 years of French colonization, one of the goals of the Arab nationalist party FLN is to institute Arabization measures that will implement Arab as the national language in administration, schools and public services in general. Like most ex-colonies, the independence of Algeria stressed the need for "recovery" of the language, as a symbol of the "recovery" of a nation. Under French colonization, Arab language was disregarded. In 1938, the French government even implemented a law that declared Arab a foreign language in Algeria. The nationalist party of the independence, the FLN, has therefore a sort of "arabic" conception of Algeria, an Arab and Muslim Algeria, that does not recognize the pluralism of cultures, identities and languages in Algeria. For example, the 1976 National Charter did not take into account any Berber claims for recognition.