85 percent of Algerians boycotted the New Year celebrations

The head of the free Salafist revival front, Abdelfatah Zaraoui Hamadache, has revealed the outcome of the boycott campaign against celebrating the New Year, which started since 1 December, covering 23 wilayas or provinces in the East, West and South of Algeria in addition to the capital of Algiers, saying it had secured a strong response from citizens “who were approached with wisdom, guidance and pieces of advice in a peaceful way”, as he put it.

Mr Hamadache affirmed to this effect that 85 percent of the Algerian citizens who had been polled as part of this awareness-raising campaign said they would boycott the celebrations of the New Year.

Their answers were unanimous as quote: “We are not Christians and Crusaders, and our Muslim feasts are widely known as being only Eid al- Fitr and Eid al-Adha”.

The revival Front launched its large-scale sensitization campaign through online messages and encounters with Imams of various mosques and elders across Algeria in addition to explanatory leaflets distributed to university students in different provinces of the country in a bid to convince the maximum number of Algerians not to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s eve because these feasts  don’t tally with the precepts and values of the religion of Islam.