Quota Of Imams Who Are Travelling Abroad Provokes Sedition

Religious Affairs Minister, Mohamed Issa, announced on sending over 120 Imams to France, Canada, Germany and Spain, during the month of Ramadan 2016, in order to lead the migrants in the Tarawih prayers, as the quota of imams that is selected by the Ministry of Religious Affairs every five years, especially in the month of Ramadan, provokes further discord and many of the accusations are launched against the Religious Affairs’ Ministry, on the background of the chosen names for these assignments or Ramadan missions.

Despite the fact that the minister asserted that the concerned countries asked the Algerian government to choose reciters of the Book of Allah to perform the Tarawih prayer, but that the ministry is forced to choose some Imams among the tens of thousands of Imams in Algeria.

Many imams called Echorouk and wondered about the criteria by which the Ministry of Religious Affairs used to select imams and reciters, with evidence that a lot of them have international awards in reciting Koran and had never been chosen, which made one of the imams say that some of the assignments were sold in the previous period, and a number of oral questions were asked to the former Minister, Ghoulamallah in this regard, but the mystery remained surrounding the process, and because the majority of the protesting imams refused to mention their names for fear of reprisals from the Ministry of religious Affairs.

Echorouk asked questions about the place of competencies in these missions, as Algeria is strongly present among the top Koran awards that are organized in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and all those who received awards are able to give a pretty picture for Algeria, but they are neglected.

Professor Adda Fellahi said; “How can an Imam, who was unable to perform his duty here in Algeria and in his environment, and the evidence is the moral collapse in Algeria, can succeed in another environment?

An official from the Ministry of Religious Affairs told Echorouk, that official agreements exist between Algeria and France for the assignment of the imams in various French cities every five years, and in Ramadan the number is not specified, as Algeria provides special training for imams who are assigned abroad, both in the French language or in the method of dealing with the others, a training that was criticized by the imams who were not assigned to travel to abroad, and considered it a response to the orders of the French Interior Ministry that is supervising the religious affairs, and which required knowledge of secularism in order to avoid conflict with the the constants and the laws of the French Republic, but the problem that is confirmed by sources from the Religious Ministry is that more than 90% of the imams who were assigned for five years in France, stayed there after the end of their mission, arguing that their children joined schools, and are accustomed to the life in foreign countries, like an example from Constantine, which is the second province after Algiers, from where imams are chosen thanks to the Emir Abdelkader University of Islamic Sciences, as only two Imams returned to the homeland, for family reasons, and the rest of them stayed in France, including Abdelkrim Bouchar who was imam in the Emir Abdelkader mosque, and Atef Khoualdia, a former Imam in Haroune Mosque, and Mohamed Litime, an imam in Chentli Mosque in Constantine, who were assigned to teach Koran, then they stayed in France, and the list is very long in the various provinces, where imams were assigned to teach imams for the Algerians abroad.