The Anniversary of the establishment of Algerian Muslim Scholars Association.
The Anniversary of the establishment of Algerian Muslim Scholars Association.
(Tuesday 5th May 1931)
How The Algerian Muslim Scholars Association was formed.
The first founding meeting After several meetings between Abdel Hamid bin Badis and Al-Bashir Al-Ibrahimi, sometimes in Setif and another in Constantine, which focused on studying the situation in Algeria and searching for ways to address this situation. After these pioneering meetings, Sheikh Abdul Hamid thought that he would take a practical step that would be a direct prelude to preparing for the establishment of this association, which remained an idea that had not found its way to implementation. After that, efforts continued to establish this body, and Sheikh Khair al-Din mentions in his memoirs that in 1928, Sheikh Abd al-Hamid bin Badis invited students returning from the Zaytuna Mosque and the Arab Mashreq to a symposium examining the situation in Algeria, and what can be done to fix these conditions.
Ibn Badis did not attend the founding meeting of the association “Association of Muslim Scholars” from the first, and behind that was a goal made clear by Sheikh Khairuddin, one of the founders who attended public and private sessions to establish the association.
Among those who answered the invitation were those who could be called “pioneers of reform”, such as: Al-Bashir Al-Ibrahimi, Mubarak Al-Mili, Al-Arabi Bin Belkassem Al-Tebsi, Muhammad Al-Saeed Al-Zahri, and Muhammad Khair Al-Din. They met under the leadership of Sheikh Abdul Hamid in his office. After that, he reached the role of scholars in resisting and sacrificing, and among other things he said: There is only one of two things left for us: “Either death and martyrdom in the way of God, waiting for the victory that God promised His faithful servants, or surrendering and extending our hands to the shackles and bowing our heads In front of the enemies, the result will be as much that we are what happened’s north of Andalusia .. “and then display a plan of action consisting of points:
- Establishing free schools to teach Arabic and Islamic education.
- Commitment to giving preaching lessons to the general Muslim community in free mosques.
- Writing in newspapers and magazines to educate the people.
- Establishing clubs for meetings, giving speeches and lectures.
- Establishing Islamic boy scouts teams.
- Working to raise the spirit of struggle among the people to liberate the country from slavery and submission to foreign rule. And what is noticed here is that this meeting has written the program that the association is to stimulate to be established, as if Ibn Badis wanted to precede the events, so he identified the axes of the reform activity, which must be undertaken by the association that he called for its establishment, and indeed that was the program that the association followed after its birth In the year 1931 AD.
The Association of Algerian Muslim Scholars was established on the fifth of May 1931 AD in the Promotion Club in Algiers, following an invitation addressed to every scholar of Islam in Algeria, by an institution composed of impartial persons belonging to the Promotion Club, who are not known to be extremists whose mention does not provoke sensitivity or composition With the government (French occupation), and neither the Tariquinians, have declared that the association is a religious and not politically motivated body that seeks to serve religion and society and does not interfere in politics nor it works with it.
