Algerian religious authorities to alter preachers' professional status

The Algerian religious affairs minister Bou Abdellah Ghoulem Allah has revealed that 25% of the Imams or preachers, were not delivering their sermons regularly at the mosque despite being paid decently, pushing him to reconsider their professional status and downgrade them.

• Talking yesterday on the sidelines of the preachers and religious guides training days for the 2009 laureates, the minister has revealed that the new status has reorganized the profession and that the preachers have to work a week long and several hours a day, admitting that the task was tough because the preacher starts his work at dawn and finishes after the late prayer.
• On the other hand, he addressed the 122 new recruits saying” Beware of behaving in a pedant way like some of your fellow preachers who thought they’d become theologians out of reach of the humble citizen except on Fridays”. He went on saying that those drifted from their original duty slammed the door to their community.
• The minister called on the new Imams to stick to the Algerian mosque’s guidelines and avoid the 1990s gross mistake when mosques drifted apart from its original virtue with the import of foreign religious ideologies spreading chaos.