Liberalism versus strict Islam: Algeria fights for minds of youth

ALGIERS -- First, Abdel Malek Outas's teachers taught him to write his math equations in Arabic and embrace Islam and the Arab world. Then they told him to write in Latin letters that are no longer branded unpatriotic and open his mind to the West.

Malek is 19, and he is confused.

''When we were in middle school we studied only in Arabic,'' he said. ''When we went to high school they changed the program and a lot is in French. Sometimes, we don't even understand what we are writing.''

The confusion has bled off the pages of his math book and deep into his life. One moment, he is rapping; another, he recounts how he flirted with terrorism, agreeing two years ago to go with a recruiter to kill apostates in the name of jihad. At a time of religious revival across the Muslim world, Algeria's youth are in play. The focus of this contest is the schools, where for decades Islamists controlled what children learned and how they learned, officials and education experts here said.

Now the government is urgently trying to re-engineer Algerian identity, changing the curriculum to wrest momentum from the Islamists, provide its youth with more employable skills, and combat the terrorism they fear schools have inadvertently encouraged. It appears to be the most ambitious attempt in the region to change a school system so its students are less vulnerable to religious extremism.

But many educators are resisting the changes, and many disenchanted young men are dropping out of schools. It is a tense time in Algiers, where city streets are crowded with police officers and security checkpoints, and alive with fears that Algeria is facing a resurgence of Islamic terrorism.

From 1991 to 2002, as many as 200,000 Algerians died in fighting between government forces and Islamic terrorists. Now one of the main terrorist groups, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat has affiliated itself with Al Qaeda, rebranding itself as ''Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.''

There is a sense this country could still go either way. Young people in the capital appear extremely observant, filling mosques for the daily prayers, insisting that they have a place to pray in school. The strictest form of Islam, Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia, has become the gold standard for the young.

And yet, the young in Algiers also appear far more socially liberal than their peers in places like Egypt and Jordan. Young, veiled women walk hand in hand, or sit leg to leg, with young men, public flirtations unthinkable in most other Muslim countries.

The two natures reflect the way in which Algerian identity was cleaved in half by 132 years of French colonial rule, and then again by independence and forced Arabization.

Once the French were driven out in 1962, the Algerians were determined to forge a national identity free from Western influence. The schools were one center of that drive. French was banned as the language of education, replaced by Arabic. Islamic law and the study of the Koran were required, and math and science were shortchanged. Students were warned that sinners go to hell and six-year-olds were instructed in the proper way to wash a corpse for burial, education officials said.

There is a feeling among many Algerians that they went too far.

''We say that Algeria's schools have trained monsters,'' said Khaoula Taleb Ibrahim, a professor of education at the University of Algiers. ''It is not to that extent, but the schools have contributed to that problem.''

Over the years, the government has pushed back, reintroducing French, removing the most zealous religious teachers and trying to revise the religious curriculum. Seven years ago a committee appointed by the president issued a report calling for an overhaul of the school system - and it died under intense political pressure, mostly from the Islamists and conservatives, officials said.

But this year, the government is beginning to make substantive changes. The schools are moving from rote learning, which was always linked with memorizing the Koran, to critical thinking, where teachers ask students to research subjects and think about concepts.

Yet the students and teachers are still unprepared, untrained and in many cases, unreceptive.

''Before teachers used to explain the lesson,'' Malek said. ''Now they want us to think more, to research, but it's very difficult for us.''

Malek hopes to graduate from high school next year and says he now wants to join the military, just like his father. It is a long way from the person who had accepted what he said the terrorist recruiter told him - that soldiers, like his own father, are apostates and can be killed. His resolution lasted for three days, until his imam found out and persuaded him not to go.

But the call to jihad still tugs at him. In his world jihad, or struggle, is a duty for Muslims, but as Malek explains, the challenge is who will convince young people of the proper form that struggle should take.

''They really convince you,'' he said of the extremists.

And then later, with great sincerity, he asked: ''Can you help me? I want to go to New York and rap.''

Four years ago, Amine Aba, 19, one of Malek's best friends, decided it was time to take his religion more seriously, to stop listening to music, to stop dancing, to stop hanging around with Malek - most of which he accomplished, most of the time.

''Muslim countries have been influenced by the Europeans,'' Amine said, explaining why he thought he had not been religious enough for most of his life. ''We have neglected our religion.''

''Like us,'' said Malek, who was nearby with his new buddy, Muhammad Lamine Messaoudi, a baby-faced 18-year-old with a bit of a paunch and a constant smile. The two burst into nervous laughter.

Malek, Amine and Lamine are each dealing with the forces shaping their world in slightly different ways. Amine has chosen religion; Malek, who has gelled hair and a slight stutter, has taken a middle road of religion, girls and rap; and Lamine appears a sentry of the left, interested in beer, girls and, he hopes, a life in France.

Each has felt the push and pull of the political-ideological fight going on in Algerian schools, with those who want to maintain the status quo - and those hoping to reopen a window to the West. The messages the young men receive through teachers and curriculum are still, almost uniformly, aimed at reinforcing their Arab-Islamic identity. But that is changing, slowly, and not without a fight.

At stake are the identities of young people like Malek, Amine and Lamine, and their futures.

The young men focused on trying to pass their exams, because Algiers is full of examples of those who have not. More than 500,000 students drop out a year, officials said, and only about 20 percent make it into high school. Only about half make it from high school into university. The vast majority of dropouts are young men who see no connection at all between work and school. Girls tend to stick with school because, officials said, it offers independence from their parents.

Young men in Algeria are leaving school because there is no longer any connection between education and employment, school officials said. The schools raise them to be religious, but do not teach them skills needed to get a job.

This is another cause for extremism, and it is one reason the police do nothing to stop so many young men from illegally working the streets, selling everything from deodorant to bread from makeshift stands.

''These stands are illegal, but they let them do it as a matter of security and because of unemployment, instead of them going out and carrying weapons,'' said Muhammad Darwish, a social studies teacher in Muhammad Bou Ras middle school, as he passed masses of young men selling on the street.

Malek, Amine and Lamine are all trying to avoid ending up like the vast majority of their friends - selling on the street. Lamine and Malek try to study, but only because they say if they don't pass the test, they can't get into the military, and if they can't get into the military they will have no status in Algeria. They have focused on the science curriculum. But it does not seem their heart is into it.

''They don't let you like education here,'' Lamine said.