Ash'arism in Algeria

The choice of Muslim faithful in Algeria, the former Central Maghreb, was linked to the inspiration of Imam Al-Ghazali, author of The Revival of the Religious Sciences, who was himself attached to the great imams and spiritual masters of the traditional currents of Sunni Islam, in particular the theological doctrine Ash'ari, and the spiritual path of orthodox Sufism.[6]

During the golden centuries of the Muslim world, the triptych of Ash'arism, Malikism and Sufism went hand in hand and coexisted in the education of Muslims to a good practice of religiosity and ibada.[7]

This is how Imam Ibn Arabi, the great Sufi, and Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, the famous Ash'ari theologian and exegete of the Quran, maintained amiable reports and discussions, and which Ibn Arabi reports in one of his books.[8]

The adoption by the Algerians of Ash'arism is due to the fact that the partisans of the Hanbali school in Mashreq showed, throughout the history of Islam, a great doctrinal intolerance towards all those who did not share their opinions, as historians of Islam have reported.[9]

Neither the Sufis, nor the Ash'arites, nor the supporters of other schools escaped their vindictiveness, and this is how they found a refuge for their persons and their ideas in the Maghreb, including present-day Algeria.[10]

The Ash'ari school of theology took the opposite position of the Muʿtazila and insisted that truth cannot be known through reason alone.[11]

The Ash'ari school further claimed that truth can only be known through revelation (Waḥy).

The Ash'ari claim that without revelation, the unaided human mind would not be able to know if something is good or evil.[12]

Today, the Ash'ari school is considered one of the Orthodox schools of theology and became, together with the Maturidi, the main schools reflecting the beliefs of the Sunnah.[13]

During the period of the Algerian civil war, one of the objectives of Salafist Wahhabi terrorism, implemented by terrorist armed groups, was to put an end in Algeria to the three local religious constants forming the Algerian Islamic reference, and which are Ash'arism, Malikism and Sufism.[14]

This modern persecution of Salafist terrorists is not new, since the partisans of Shafi'ism, Hanafism and Malikism, have been persecuted by the zealous Hanbalites, as have been victims of the partisans of the Ash'ari school of thought founded by the great theologian Al-Ash'ari.[15]

This persecution is underlined in the book written by the great Sufi and Ash'arite scholar Al-Qushayri, the author of the famous Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya on Sufism, and this book, entitled The Chikaya (the complaint), relates all the grievances that the adversaries of the Hanbalites reproached them with.[16]

Even the illustrious historian and exegete Al-Tabari was not immune from the persecutions of these Salafi zealots, since he was prevented from leaving his home for months and, when he died, he was buried at night.[17]

His only fault is to have maintained that Imam Ibn Hanbal was not a jurisconsult (faqih), but a traditionist (muhaddith).[18]

And not only in Algeria, one of the great scholars of Mecca, the exegete Muhammad Ali Sabuni, the author of a concise exegesis of the Quran much appreciated in the Muslim world, was the subject, there a few years ago, of a great campaign of criticism from the Wahhabis of Mecca and Medina for his exegesis considered as inspired by Ash'ari thought and defending Sufism.[19]

The strengthening of the Ash'arism tradition in Algeria, within the framework of tolerance and moderation in Islam, requires that the anti-Wahhabi strategy must be based on the fact that there are different schools of thought in Islam which must refute the repressive theses of Wahhabism.[20]

While the polemics and controversies between the two parties cannot cease, they must not slip into violence and exclusion.[21]

The misunderstanding seems to have a bright future ahead of it, and it will be so as long as Salafists refuse to admit that Islam is very rich and very diverse in its thought.[22]

Islam can accept all tendencies and all schools of thought, whether based on reason, like that of the Mutazilites on the reconciliation between reason and text; that of the Ash'arites on conformity with the apparent texts of the Quran and the Hadith, as is the case for the Salafists or on the knowledge of God (Allah) Almighty through the mastery of the passions of the nafs and its purification as taught by the Sufis.[23]

Book of Sidi Abd al-Rahman al-Tha'alibi

Algeria is a birthplace of many Ash'ari scholars such as:

1. Sidi Abu Madyan (died 1198)[24][25]
2. Mohamed al-Waghlissi (died 1241)[26][27]
3. Ahmed al-Ghobrini (died 1304)[28][29]
4. Mansour al-Mechedelli (died 1331)[30][31]
5. Mohamed al-Melikechi (died 1339)[32][33]
6. Ahmed al-Ilouli (died 1359)[34][35]
7. Abderrahmane al-Waghlissi (died 1384)[36][37]
8. Ali al-Menguellati (died 1412)[38][39]
9. Sidi El Houari (died 1439)[40][41]
10. Mansour al-Menguellati (died 1442)[42]
11. Sidi Boushaki (died 1453)[43][44]
12. Sidi Abd al-Rahman al-Tha'alibi (died 1479)[45][46]
13. Sidi Ahmed Zouaoui (died 1488)[47][48]
14. Sidi M'hamed Bou Qobrine (died 1793)[49][50]

• 
  The Revival of the Religious Sciences
• 
  Al-Ghazali