Islam Fundamentalism Sweeps Over Algeria Like Desert Wind : Election: An introspective professor and a brash orator seek to define the movement’s identity after victory in every major city.

The gentle, trilling voice of Abassi Madani sailed out of the loudspeakers encircling the mosque, glided over the square outside and settled like a billowing parachute over the tens of thousands of faithful crouched Friday on prayer rugs far into the distance.

“The whole world is looking at Algeria today, and I can say to you that with your vote, you have completed your religious identity,” the Muslim spiritual leader said. “Algerians, I tell you that we have an appointment with history . . . our desert will be more fertile than California’s lands. We will rebuild our cities. We will revive Algeria!”

Suddenly, someone pointed to a thin bank of clouds suspended over the mosque, and the crowd leaped to its feet.

“Allah! It says Allah!” someone declared, thrusting a clenched fist toward an intricate pattern of vapor that shifted almost as soon as it settled.

“Allahu Akhbar (God is great)!” the crowd roared. Several men began embracing. A few wept. One fainted and was carried out, suspended above the tumult on dozens of arms.

Three days after scoring an unexpected victory over the ruling party that has governed Algeria for more than 27 years, Islamic fundamentalists gathered for jubilant prayers, and Algeria’s ruling elite prepared to do battle against the fundamentalists’ pledged assault on national power--still reeling from the magnitude of the Islamic victory.

Final returns showed the fundamentalist party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), swept every major city in the country, capturing all 33 municipal councils in the capital city of Algiers, even those councils in well-to-do neighborhoods populated by wealthy businessmen and Cabinet ministers.

Already in the days since the election, Islamic militants have begun sweeping port-side restaurants, demanding a halt to alcohol sales to non-tourists. The party that had adopted a moderate political tone during the days of the campaign vowed Friday to gain control of the National Assembly and turned a radical eye toward France, Algeria’s former colonial steward.

“We know that France wanted to say the FLN (the ruling National Liberation Front) had won,” declared Ali Belhaj, the fiery, 34-year-old imam who preaches every other week at Kouba Mosque on the outskirts of Algiers.

“I say to France, no,” he said, his voice whipping from the loudspeakers of the mosque and bouncing along the walls up the winding streets. “I say to France, just wait, because the day will come when we will settle with you the account for the blood of our martyrs that you have shed. Just wait, France, for the day of accounting has come!”

Madani, a soft-spoken, introspective philosophy professor, and Belhaj, the brash orator whose sermons have become best sellers on cassettes, are the spiritual leaders who form opposite poles at the head of the Salvation Front and who help define its identity as the most important Islamic movement in North Africa.

But now, with the front’s demand that the parliament be dissolved and national elections scheduled, government leaders here and in the surrounding Mediterranean region are beginning to ask what kind of Islam Madani and Belhaj have in mind. Is Algeria set to become another Iran, openly hostile to the West? Will it seek to export its revolution to neighboring countries in the Arab world, or even to Europe, which lies just 40 miles across the Mediterranean?

Most political analysts here, so far, think not. The Muslim fundamentalism that the front promotes is a unique brand of Arab nationalism and traditional Islam that has emerged all along the south rim of the Mediterranean, in Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, as well as Algeria--an assertion of a home-grown identity in the face of, first, European colonial rule and, later, the Western-oriented regimes that allowed economic decay to set in following the departure of the colonial rulers.

It is an outgrowth of the Sunni Muslim faith, a code much less radical than the Shiite sect to which Iran adheres and much more in tune with the kind of conservative Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia and much of the Persian Gulf.

Algerian fundamentalists say that one of their first priorities is to establish the Islamic sharia as the basis for legislation, a legal system that can include capital punishment for adultery, requires that thieves’ hands be chopped off and gives men much greater privileges in inheritance, marriage and divorce law. The party has in the past proposed paying women to stay home with their families as a way to open up more jobs for men. A front spokesman announced Friday that the party will seek to curtail the sale of alcoholic beverages in Algeria.

But Madani, president of the front, has chosen to adopt a moderate tone in recent days, declaring that while politics and religion cannot be separated, he sees the front as one party in an emerging multi-party democracy.

“The experience of America is an example for what freedom is; freedom is the basis of democracy, and freedom should be the best expression of collective will,” he said in a recent interview. “Sometimes history is for you, sometimes it is against you. What is important is in our country we have put an end to the permanent system of one-party rule. We have a new system, even if it is weak.”

Though neighboring North African countries that have not legalized their blossoming fundamentalist movements fear the victory in Algeria will add new fuel to Islamic fires there, Madani has resisted comparisons between the front in Algeria and increasingly politically successful Islamic movements in nearby Egypt and Jordan.

“The comparisons with Egypt and Jordan are no good. It’s not a proper comparison. It’s not a movement, or a group of elite, it’s something that goes beyond the limit of political choices,” he said.

“In Algeria, we are facing a political crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis, a cultural crisis, but all these crises come from an overall crisis, which is a crisis of civilization.

“Let’s go back to the question in the United States or the U.S.S.R., in Great Britain, in Germany, France or Italy. We find there are two main ideologies. One is liberal capitalism and the other is socialist Communist. But these two ideologies have not permitted the genius of modern man to get out of these two circles, and the two of them have not been able to give any answer to the essential questions or problems.”

Madani has also taken care to distance the movement from Iran, despite Tehran Radio’s broadcast congratulations this week of the Islamic movement it said is spreading all over North Africa.

“Islam did not start with Khomeini, and cannot end with Khomeini,” he said.

Privately, some political analysts are skeptical. Several Western diplomats here said there are credible reports that Saudi Arabia and other conservative Persian Gulf regimes have provided financing to the FIS, and several said the Islamic front’s calls for democracy may last only as long as there is a political opposition in Algeria to confront it.

“The FIS commitment to the democratic system is purely functional,” asserted one Western diplomat. “They’ve agreed to abide by the rules for now, but once in power I don’t think there’s any guarantee at all they would be content to abide by democratic procedures.”

In fact, Belhaj has frequently asserted that democracy and Islam are not necessarily compatible concepts.

“Let me say that we will win, with or without elections,” he declared Friday. “It is Islam that won, not democracy. We did not vote for democracy, we voted for Islam.”

If listeners find the conflicting rhetoric confusing, it may be because it’s meant to be--part of the shroud of vagueness that has been the front’s hallmark since the early days of the campaign, during which the party provided few or no details about its proposals for resolving soaring unemployment or turning a profit out of Algeria’s burdensome public sector industries.

But the confusion may also spring from the fact that Madani and Belhaj do not get along, several observers said. Madani and his moderate, intellectual approach reportedly merged with Belhaj’s fiery radicalism only for purposes of the election effort, and several analysts said the Islamic movement may face deep divisions during the even more difficult campaign ahead to win national power.

Already, Madani has had trouble holding the radicals in check, denying any front responsibility and blaming “fanatics” when bands of bearded Muslims have attacked Algerians going into wine shops or couples holding hands on the street.

Algeria’s middle-class, Western-oriented citizens who have the most to fear from the front say they believe the activities of Muslim radicals and the overwhelming election returns are likely to galvanize in the coming months the estimated 40% of Algerians who did not vote in this week’s elections--and hand a defeat to the fundamentalists before they attain national power.

But other analysts say the municipal victories, which will allow Islamicists to set up cultural centers in local communities and rule on local regulations such as alcohol licenses, could be an important factor in developing a grass-roots political base that would be a formidable factor in any coming national elections.

Already, they say, the front has the ability to mobilize surprisingly large numbers of people simply with the call to noonday prayers. An estimated 30,000 surrounded Kouba Mosque on Friday, filling the mosque and at least four adjoining streets in addition to the square outside.