Guessoum to Echorouk: “we demanded to make Islamic law the source of legislation”

The President of the Algerian Association of Ulemas or Muslim Scholars, Dr. Abderazak Guessoum told Echorouk that his delegation had put forth during its meeting with the presidential office manager and state minister in charge leading the ongoing consultations to amend the Constitution, Ahmed Ouyahia, a number of proposals and suggestions to be contained in the future amended constitution.

One of the most important is to make Islam the prime source of legislation in Algeria, where all the country’s laws are derived from the Islamic Shariah, with the aim of strengthening “national principles” and especially “Islam as the state religion” as a unit for the Algerians and their potent affiliation to the Islamic Ummah or community.

Dr Guessoum also stressed that the delegation of Muslim scientists and scholars who had attended these consultations on the planned revamping of the constitution had expressed during the encounter with Ahmed Ouyahia concern about the status of the current Arab language and its virtual absence in the State institutions, and requested that it must returned to its paramount place in Algeria.

They also referred to the Tamazight language, by suggesting the “Arabisation” of its characters and its preservation as a national language, adding that efforts should be deployed to make English the first foreign language to be taught and used in the country.

The members of the delegation also suggested that mainstream scientific Arabic must be used at all levels of academic knowledge notably in all disciplines of the higher education system, Dr Guessoum underscored.