ABSTRACT
The question of the seat of authority is clearly and distinctly resolved in the 1979 Constitution. Sovereignty belongs exclusively to the one and indivisible God. The Ottoman Empire that preceded the Turkish Republic was a multiethnic and multilingual empire. Like Turkish nationalism, which was the political response of ethnic Turks to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, secularity was a reaction, in another form, to Islam as a system. The basic idea of the Muslim Brotherhood is the restoration of a total and Universalist Islam—”total Islam” in the sense that the Brotherhood adheres totally to the totality of Islam. The Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood is a Universalist Islam, in the sense that the Muslim Brotherhood avows its independence—at least in theory—of all ethnic, national, or confessional ties. The secular nature of the Algerian state is accentuated by the principle of equality of all citizens before the law, and equal justice for all.
