Ms Hunt, thank you for your response.

1-) You listed the 200,000 figure as if it was an official count of some sort. I think it would have been more accurate and more objective to write "more than 150,000" people were killed.

2-) It is not just about repressing the secular democratic opposition. The Algerian government (and others in the Arab world) repressed any kind of opposition to their rule. How do you explain the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon? How about Hamas in the occupied territories? One has to understand that to many people the Islamist agenda is much more appealing than the so-called "secular democratic agenda". To most people the "secular democratic agenda" is just another name for "western agenda" which is, rightly so, suspected as a tool for western imperialism. With every war the West, lead by the United States, wage in our lands, the suspicion becomes reality.

Islamists like western secular democrats can be moderates, repressive or violent. When France colonized Algeria it was regarded as a secular liberal democracy. The numerous wars that the US government waged in the last decades is also a good example. Europe may have backed down but the US government is now leading the effort.

3-a) Obviously westerners have no business telling Muslims, men or women, what to wear or how to behave. My point is why do you always chose that issue over many other things? It is one thing when Muslims discuss this issue but another when westerners do. The latter is often an expression of prejudice and anti-Muslim feeling.

It boils down to this: the West as a whole has not given Islam as a religion the respect it deserves. They somehow "tolerate" it but there is no respect.

3-b) You wrote that many women get insulted and threatened by violence from Tehran to Paris for not covering. Can you post any statistics? I am sure isolated events like these occur. Don't Arab looking people get harassed and even beaten up in Europe simply because they looked Arab? I lived in France for years. No one ever came to me to tell me why I was not sporting a beard. I was however turned down rent because my name was Arab.

Women do face a certain social pressure from other women who cover and from sexist men. Sometimes there are social trends triggered by political events and such. The women issue is universal.

The issue of insults on the streets is a cultural one. In the West, you may insult someone on TV and on newspapers (and be hailed as a hero of free speech), but in our countries the streets are not as "self-regulated" as it is in many Western countries.

3-c) You inferred that "covering hair" for women is draconian. Well according to what standard? The fact of the matter, whether you agree with it or not, is that if you run a poll among Muslim women and ask if they believed that the hijab was draconian, the answer would be mostly no.

You accuse Islamists of trying to impose certain social standards on people when you implicitly oppose certain standard that you deem "draconian".

Talk about insulting people for what they chose to wear.

3-d) The interpretation of Islam is the business of Muslims themselves. Muslims don't tell you how to interpret your bible or whatever book you follow.

While I tried to be civil and respectful, I would like to you know that I have no respect for that hate-mongering likudist organization that you work for. It is a pity for a Scottish person to be involved in such war-mongering think-tanks.

If you are genuinely concerned about women rights and sufferings (which is widespread), then please join Amnesty or other humanitarian organizations. It is never late, do justice to your conscience.

A bon entendeur.

Karim,
Thank you for your comments, and now I would like to respond if I may.

1) The reference to 200,000 dead is actually a compromise figure. It is true that many sources put the figure for the civil war at approximately 150,000. But this figure includes only up to 1999, does not count the thousands of 'disappeared,'or the thousands who have died and continue to die in Islamist related activity since the official 'end' of the war. Other estimates have gone as high as 250,000 dead or missing. I think the point is that whether it's 150,000, 200,000, or even more, the number of victims in this conflict is substantial enough to leave an indelible mark on Algerian society.

2) Karim is correct to say that FIS won the first round of the parliamentary elections fair and square. But he actually makes a more relevant point by saying that most Algerians voted for the FIS as a protest against the military regime. I do not deny the popularity of the Islamist agenda in many parts of the Mulsim world. But I think their success is also due to the repressive measures that authoritarian governments, including the Algerian regime, take against secular democratic opposition. In the absence of alternatives, the Islamists become the most convenient vehicle of anti-government sentiment. That phenomenon is at least a partial explanation of the Islamist victory in 1991.

3) On the question of women's choice to veil or not veil--I was constrained by the limited length of the piece, and of course there are more nuanced examples of the coexistence of secularism and political Islam in Algeria. But is the western media 'obsessed' with Muslim women's attire? Extremist Islamist men, rather than westerners, choose to make an issue of what Muslim women wear and do. Women's activity is frequently the first battlefield for Islamists seeking to impose a narrow, draconian interpretation of Islam on a particular community. From the streets of Tehran to the suburbs of Paris, many women are threatened with insults and physical violence if they choose to go uncovered. If it doesn't matter what women do and wear, why do the more radical Islamists go to such lengths to force the issue? The same goes for Muslim men who choose to behave in a 'secular' or 'western' manner. If a Muslim man's freedom of choice to drink alcohol or shave his beard symbolizes nothing, then why do Islamist militants consistently and deliberately target Muslim men who do?

I'd like to offer the following comments regarding the above article:

1- The Algerians who voted for the FIS did so in order to protest the military dominated government that ruled Algerians for decades and misused the huge natural gas wealth of the country. It is quite simplistic to argue that Algerians simply woke up one day and decided they wanted a conservative Islamic republic. Algeria ALREADY has Sharia in some of its laws.

2- The Islamists and FIS won the first round of the elections FAIR AND SQUARE. It is irresponsible to accuse them of trying to "impose their ideology" on Algerians.

3- It is again simplistic to argue that this was initially a conflict between 2 ideologies. It is much more complicated than that. The military dominated government, basically a mafia, did not want to lose its grip on power regardless of who was challenging them. It turned out to be very convenient for them that their opponents were Islamists who could easily be demonize with the support of the West.

President Chadli Benjdid (a Colonel) was the one who initially resisted all attempts by the military to stop the elections. Benjdid, who was not an Islamist, wanted fair elections and explained that he did not fear Islamists winning.

4- Most of the independent sources put the death toll at 150,000 people, where is this 200,000 figure come from?

5- While about 150,000 were killed and millions traumatized, Ms Hunt is talking about mini-skirts and veils as if the civil war was just about that. Very typical of "western media" analysis which often obsessed with what our women wear or what our people drink (whether alcohol is available or not is very crucial), when Marijuana is still banned in most Western countries (but you know what, it is OK, whatever liberal democracies decide is the standard), and when a certain dress code is still enforced in all public areas in America (men can bare their chest, but not women, so says liberal democracies), not to mention censorship of "foul language" on broad act TV and radio (not good for the children of liberal democracies).

The use of the word liberal has become a tool for certain experts to demonize any ideology that doesn't subscribe to their own understanding of being liberal. According to this standard, it is OK to wage wars, kill hundred thousands of people, as long as it is done under the umbrella of "liberal democracy". You know, Saddam's secular government had to be falsely linked to Al-Qaeda (non-secular) in order for many to support the immoral invasion.

Worse of it all, all of this blunder is still OK. I often hear that liberal democracies can make mistakes, like killing all those foreign people, but they can correct themselves. Sounds like a good deal unless they "mistakenly" kill your family, bomb your town and destroy your neighborhood.

Please let's stop with this "liberal" non-sense. These are SLOGANS that mean different things to different people.

You could have written your piece on Algeria without the slogans.