Secularisation and Islamisation in Morocco and Algeria

The conflict between the state and Islamic opposition in North Africa appears to represent a dichotomous, zero‐sum confrontation between the religious and the secular. Yet the evidence reveals ambiguity in the religious‐secular divide, and Burgat and others have suggested mutual influences resulting in an Islamisation of the state and a secularisation of religious politics. This article, based on the author's dissertation, seeks to identify the religious and the secular elements of the political‐religious competition in these two countries, and to assess the Islamising or secularising impact on the state and Islamic politics during the final decades of the twentieth century.