Sheik Abdelhamid Ben Badis

Sheik Abdelhamid Ben Badis
Educateur and Reformer Religious

Abdelhamid Ben Badis, President of the Association of Oulemas Algerian
Moslems, emblematic figure of the movement Moslem reformist in Algeria,
in first half of the XXème century, was born on December 5, 1889 in
Constantine where he died on April 16, 1940. It belonged to a patrician
family whose origins went up in Zirides. Bologhine Ibn Ziri, the founder
of Algiers, is one of the most famous figures of this princely family.
It is in its birthplace that it learned the Koran according to
traditional uses', and them bases of its knowledge in Arab language and
literature, like those of sciences of the Islamic religion. Any child,
it is placed under the tutorship of Hamdân Lounissi, follower of the
mystical brotherhood of Tidjâniyya, which will mark the Abdelhamid young
person durably.
Raise, since 1908, from the Zeitouna University in
Tunis, it there is subject to the influence of Masters, in particular of
Tahar Ben Achour, followers of the movement salafi- Moslem reformist
preaching the return to a purified Islam of all the deformations which
had denatured it. This movement had been spread in second half of XIXè
century in the Middle East and in Egypt. After having obtained its
diploma in 1912, Abdelhamid will teach during one year in Zitouna, in
accordance with the uses applied by this prestigious Tunisian
university.
After having achieved the pilgrimage in Mecque and
Médine where it went to the exit its studies to Tunis, it côtoya the
movement rigorous reformist of Wahhabites in full rise in the holy
places of Islam. During its stay with Médine, Abdelhamid which will find
its first Master Hamdân Lounissi, residing from now on in the city of
the Prophet, will supplement and look further into its knowledge near
this exiled voluntary like near other Masters.
Of return in Algeria, it was devoted initially, of
1913 to 1925, with teaching and the cultural action, before dedicating
all its energy with the reform of the religious practice in the country.
Contrary to what is frequently constant - by publicity agents and
historians the movement religious reformist in Algeria ex- nihilo by Ben
Badis and his companions was not created. The end of XIXème and the
beginning of the XXème centuries transfer to be born emergence from
intellectuals reformists represented by a group of Oulémas and teachers
of value in Algiers, Constantine and Tlemcen and elsewhere, the such
sheiks Medjaoui, Ben Smaïa, Benali Fekhkhâr who condemned the practices
obscurantist of a certain number of religious
brotherhoods, and characters considered as saints because of their piety
or their ascent, as they denounced the seizure of the colonial
administration on the Moslem worship. At the time of his visit in 1905
in Algiers and Constantine, the Sheik Mohammed Abdou met several of
these teaching well-read men.
The movement reformist developed in Algeria during
between two world wars thanks to the action of Ben Badis and a group of
alumni and companions, honest faithful, disciples trained in their
majority in Tunis or the Middle East. This movement finding its
inspiration in the thought and the action of Mohammed Abdou and Rachid
Ridha, also undoubtedly undergoes the print of the rigorous ideas and
often intransigents of Wahhabites from which it borrowed a certain
number of ideas and practices.
The goal of Ben Badis intellectual guide of this
coterie and stimulating leader of the group of his companions, combining
an integrity and a intellectual probity without faults, with a love
impassioned for Algeria, its language and its religion, was to purify
the Algerian Islam of all the practices nonin conformity with the Koran
and Sunna, the two only sources dogmatic of the religion. All these
devoted and voluntary men wished, with the tools of education, the book,
the press, to revivify the orthodoxy of the first splendours of Islam
all while reconciling it with the prospects for opening of a moderate
modernism. The Moslems were to take example on the virtuous ancestors -
have-Salaf have-Salih and as in the Middle East, the followers of
religious reformism were made call Salafiya/Salafites. In the same way
they were known by the name of Islahiya/- the reformers.
From 1913 to 1925, as of its return to the country,
Abdelhamid Ben Badis will devote all his efforts and its remarkable
talents of teacher to teaching that goes from educational sciences such:
literature, history, geography with the civic and religious
disciplines. Its teaching action as well targets youth, boys and girls,
that adults:
·in 1917, it arranges a public course in the mosque of Sidi Qammoûch, in Constantine.
·always in its birthplace, with the seat of the
Company of Moslem Help, with the assistance of its first disciples, the
courses of the evening for adults are exempted, and the languages Arab
and French were with the program.
·in 1918, Ben Badis, as a true manager, sent to the
University of Zitouna in Tunis, the first promotion of a group of
Algerian students who will have to constitute the executives of free
teaching, opening the way with missions of periodically programmed
studies.

·in 1919, in Sidi Boumaza, the first school of
girls is open under her impulse. Ben Badis will even undertake him, with
the assistance of Moubarak Al-Mili, to exempt the courses understanding
very early that the instruction of the girls is a parameter impossible
to circumvent for tending to the rebirth of the Algerian company.
parallel to his intense socio-educational
activities, the Master, with his doubled usual perspicacity of a
remarkable pragmatism, will invest, in a first stage, spaces
socio-cultural in urban environment. As follows:
·it encourages, organizes and sponsors the
blossoming of many musical companies essaimées through the own
territory, as well as theatrical troops and sporting formations.
·it was one of the first leaders to have known to
include/understand the considerable contribution which one could draw
from the movement scout to frame and structure the organization of mass
of the young people.
·in addition, of the arts centres are born little
by little, always under its instigation and its aegis whose most famous,
the Circle of Progress, in Algiers was animated by Tayeb Al-Oqbi, a
faithful companion of the Master.
The action of the group for the moral regeneration
of the Algerian Moslems, of the rebirth of an Islam in their eyes
authenticates, and the assertion of the personality arabo-Moslem woman
of the Algerian people, took several forms and will be aligned with the
combat to defend its ideals on the ground of the press.
Since 1925 it published newspaper Al-Muntaqid - the
Critic and it is in the columns of this periodical, that, him and
his/her companions started to diffuse the ideas reformists. The
newspaper considered to be subversive by the colonial administration,
was interdict with its 18è number. Always obstinate, Ben Badis created
other periodic publications thereafter. Most famous Ach-Chihab remainder
- the Meteor which will offer a large media platform to the propagation
of the speech badissien and appeared of 1925 to 1939, when the Sheik
voluntarily stopped the publication of it, of fear, think some of its
historians biographers, to be obliged to give an opinion for one or the
other of the two camps which clashed in Europe.
The creation of schools where the Arab language and
the principles of a renovated Islam were taught, was the second means
of action used by Ben Badis and his partisans. If in 1934-1935, the
Ach-Chihab newspaper announces creation, until this date, of 70 schools -
of one or two classes distributed in various areas of the country with
3000 registered pupils the Association of Oulémas, which will be created
in 1931, published in 1950 the list of 124 schools with an educational
body made up of 274 Masters. In 1954 same Association notes a number of
40.000 pupils attending its school establishments. It created in
Constantine, in 1947, the Institute Ibn Badis, secondary establishment
which will train teachers and pupils called to be sent to continue their
studies with Fès, Tunis and in the Middle East.
To exert his action and to join together all the
goodwill’s engaged in the fight for the revival of Islam, Ben Badis and
his companions linked themselves into 1931 with the sheiks of the
significant religious brotherhoods to create the Association of Oulémas
Algerian Moslems. It is with the Circle of Progress, in 1931 in Algiers,
at a meeting of the General meeting constitutive of the Association of
Oulémas Musulmans gathering the companions, the disciples, the
sympathizers and the delegates of the interior of the country around the
Master, that Abdelhamid Ben Badis was elected President of this
organization. At the first board of directors sat Tayeb Al-Oqbi,
Moubarak Al-Mili, Bachir Al-Ibrahimi, and Larbi Tébessi.
Thus they are the reformists who seized the key
positions of Association the representatives of the brotherhoods
quickly. One year afterwards, it was the final rupture with the sheiks
of the brotherhoods which formed in their turn an Association of Oulémas
Sunnites of Algeria. The open secessionist conflict enters the two
antagonistic groups Oulémas reformists on the one hand, and the heads of
the brotherhoods and Zaouias on the other hand, will disturb the mass
of the people. In particular the farming community and the deep people
characterized by a natural simplicity in practice of their devotion and
which remained still very attached to its Zaouïas the more so as these
last held a considerable spiritual power, and exerted at the same time a
deep temporal influence charitable teaching, arbitration, hospitality,
works...
The principal doctrines of Moslem reformism, the
Islâh of the Ooulémas gathered around the Master and leader, Ben Badis,
were founded fundamentally, recall it on the return to the two essential
sources of Islam the Koran and Sunna. They preached the regeneration of
Islam and their action, referring constantly to the pure religion of
the virtuous ancestors lightened of the innovations blâmables - bida` -,
was centered on an offensive impassioned against all marked the
traditionalists mediums to propagate a Sufism obscurantist and
retrograde in contradiction with the authentic Moslem values. They
condemned the worship of the saints particularly and showed the sheiks
and the followers of the zaouïas and the brotherhoods of charlatans, of "
makers "of amulets, going until taxing them with polytheism - chirk -.
They presented them like exploiters of the people, misusing without
shame of the credulity of the rural populations