Article begins Months following Algerian independence from French colonial rule in 1962, Shaykh Mohamed Bachir El Ibrahimi, one of the founders of the  Jem`iyyat al-`Ulamā’ al-Muslimīn al-Jazā’iriyyin  (Association of Algerian Muslim Scholars) was invited to address the first Friday congregation at Ketchaoua Mosque in central Algiers. In a celebratory tenor, he began his address to the crowds that had gathered at the mosque and overflowed onto its steps, congratulating them on their newfound political independence. With a shift in register, addressing the new leaders of the nascent Algerian state, he turned attention to a different kind of liberation, and the question that had driven his work with the Association throughout the three decades prior to formal decolonization.  “ I pray for a determination that eradicates colonialism from the souls , as it has been eradicated from the land… O people of Algeria, colonialism is like the devil.…