Religion in Algeria
Those measures, however, did not satisfy everyone. As early as 1964, a militant Islamic movement, called Al Qiyam (values), emerged and became the precursor of the Islamic Salvation Front of the 1990s. Al Qiyam called for a more dominant role for Islam in Algeria's legal and political systems and opposed what it saw as Western practices in the social and cultural life of Algerians.This proved to be the most difficult challenge for the immediate post-independent regimes as they tried to incorporate an Islamic national identity alongside socialist policies. Whereas the new leaders of Algeria saw Islam and Socialism as both compatible and features of Algerian culture and society; radical Islamists saw Islam as the only defining characteristic and in fact incompatible.
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.