Iran and Algeria largely shape Western perceptions of Islam. But non-Arab Shiite Muslim Iranians recoil at the thought of being compared with Arab Sunni Muslim Algeria, particularly with the savagery of the six-year old civil war there.
For their part, secularists in Algeria see the Islamic Republic as a worst case scenario; in their eyes, Iran represents the kind of backward, medieval society that the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) would have created in Algeria had it been allowed to win parliamentary elections in 1992.
Yet one basic question determines events in both countries: what should be the role of religion in society? For nearly two decades, revolutionary Iran has been governed by the Velayat-e-Faqih or Guardianship of the Faithful, a system devised by the late Ayatollah Khomeini under which the top religious leader has absolute power. This year, the God-given right of the Shiite clergy to rule every aspect of Iranian life has come under attack. Through books and lectures, men like the philosopher Abdol Karim Soroush advocate a New Iran where the government guarantees freedom of speech and expression and minority rights. Newly-elected President Mohamed Khatami subscribes to these ideas. Although the debate has sometimes led to riots and fundamentalist attacks on reformers, Iran has set itself on a more moderate, democratic path.
In Algeria, torture, imprisonment and murder are the main expressions of political debate. The civilian cabinet is a screen for a handful of ruthless and corrupt military officers.
Algerians are Muslims, the government argues; the "terrorists" trying to take power are criminals and gangsters who have distorted the message of Islam. Algerian fundamentalists believe that the generals and all who support them are "infidels" who must be annihilated. Leaders of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) were trained in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, and they share the extreme views of the Afghan Taliban regarding the veiling and subjugation of women and rule by Koranic law.
Between the secularist regime - which pays lip service to Algeria's Muslim heritage - and the throat-slashing rebels of the GIA, the "tame" Islamists of the Hamas and Ennahda parties have no real power.
Elections in Iran and Algeria this year also showed the difference between a changing society and a country locked in a downward spiral of violence, whose rulers have made a mockery of the democratic process. True, the four candidates in Iran's May 23rd presidential election were all mullahs, and they were selected from a field of more than 200 candidates by the religious Council of Experts. Yet the turn-out approached 90 per cent, and more than two-thirds of the electorate voted for Hojatolislam Mohamed Khatami with genuine enthusiasm.
In Algeria, President Liamine Zeroual completed his cosmetic cycle of "democratisation" with parliamentary elections on June 5th and local and regional elections on October 23rd. There was convincing evidence of fraud in both polls, and the cancelled 1992 ballot was the ghost at President Zeroual's party.
With the FIS outlawed and the elections rigged, it was impossible to measure how much support the Islamists still enjoy. "You Westerners want us to have elections, so we have elections to make you happy," an Algerian official told me. "Then you dare to complain when we cheat."
Algeria and Iran have tense, emotional relations with the powers who once dominated them; Algeria with France, Iran with the US. France is still one of Algeria's main trading partners, while the US broke all relations with Iran at the time of the American embassy hostage crisis in 1979 and has tried to impose sanctions on states investing there. Both nations have tried to improve ties with the EU. But Europe's "critical dialogue" with Tehran broke down when a German court last April accused the top leaders of the Islamic Republic of plotting to kill opponents in Germany. Attempts by Algeria to conclude an economic Agreement of Association with the EU have floundered on its abysmal human rights record.
1997 was the most violent year of the Algerian war, when massacres of entire villages became a nightly occurrence. The government attributed the killing of thousands of innocent civilians to the GIA. From July to September, almost 1,000 people were hacked to death and beheaded in Larbaa, Beni-Messous, Rais and Bentalha, on the outskirts of Algiers. The fact that these massacres occurred within sight of military barracks - and that the communities targeted had once voted for the FIS - led Algerians to wonder whether government death squads were actually carrying out some of the killings, despite GIA claims of responsibility.
Iran has sponsored some of the most violent Islamic fundamentalist movements in the Middle East, including the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but the barbarity of Algerian "Islamists" has been so extreme that Tehran prefers to blame others for the raping and kidnapping of women, the mutilated bodies and mass graves. "In Algeria," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution, said recently, "the most gruesome crimes are perpetrated by covert hands to accuse the Islamists with them and to defile Islam."
Before its descent into this bloodbath, Algeria was known for the excellence of its diplomatic corps, which often helped the Islamic Republic extricate itself from crises. Algeria mediated an end to the 444-day captivity of 53 US diplomats in Tehran from 1979 until 1981. A plane full of Algerian diplomats was shot down over Iraq while trying to resolve the 1980-1988 IranIraq war. When Lebanese Shiites backed by Tehran hijacked a Kuwaiti airliner in 1988, Algiers negotiated a solution to the crisis.
With their own anti-imperialist credentials, earned in the 1954-62 war against France, Algerians felt they understood revolutionary Iran. It was Saudi Arabia - not Iran - that nurtured the FIS. Yet when the Algerian war began to go badly, the government turned on Iran, accusing it of fomenting the rebellion and expelling Iranian diplomats from Algiers.