Mahfoud Nahnah

Who was Mahfoud Nahnah?

Mahfoud Nahnah was the leader of the Islamist political party Movement of Society for Peace in Algeria.

Nahnah was born in Blida and later studied literature at the University of Algiers. He became a teacher of Arabic after Algeria achieved independence in 1962. Influenced by Egyptian professors, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 1976, Nahnah was sentenced to 15 years in prison for cutting telephone wires in an act of opposition to the National Charter of that year. After being freed four years later, he helped found the El Islah Oual Irchad charitable association with Mohammed Bouslimani, as well as the Islamic Preaching League with Ahmed Sahnoun, uniting major figures of the Algerian Islamist movement such as Abbassi Madani and Mohammed Said. However, he decided not to join the Islamic Salvation Front because he was opposed to its founding principles.

On 6 December 1990, after the FIS was successful in local elections, Nahnah established his own party and called it Hamas. Seeing FIS as overambitious to the point of hubris, he emphasized the importance of gradual, step-by-step change and reform from within. He felt that the military and the West were not ready to allow Algeria even to become a full democracy at that time, much less an Islamic state.