The government follows a de facto policy of tolerance by allowing, in limited instances, the conduct of religious services by non-Muslim faiths in the capital which are open to the public.
By law, children follow the religion of their fathers,[1] even if they are born abroad and are citizens of their (non-Muslim) country of birth.
Amendments to the Penal Code in 2001 established strict punishments, including fines and prison sentences, for anyone other than a government-designated imam who preaches in a mosque.
In 2003, the Government sanctioned a number of imams for inflammatory sermons following the May 21 earthquake and for interpretations of the Qur'an "likely to offend public cohesion".
The Ministry of Religious Affairs provides some financial support to mosques and during the period covered by this report sought to expand its control over the training of imams through a government-run Islamic educational institute.
People without religious affiliation tend to be particularly numerous in Kabylie (a Kabyle-speaking area) where they are generally tolerated and sometimes supported; notably, Matoub Lounes is widely seen as a hero among Kabyles, despite (or because of) his lack of religion.
Many of the "home churches" in which Christians worship are in allowed and known by the Government, although there have been notable incidents of criminal charges for home-based religious practices.
[1] The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) added Algeria to its 2019 annual report of the world's most severe religious freedom violators, citing several legal barriers to the free exercise of religion, specific incidents of violence against members of the Protestant Church of Algeria, and the repression experienced by certain minority Muslim sects.
[12] In recent years USCIRF reported that religious freedom conditions in Algeria had continued to deteriorate and that the government was increasingly enforcing blasphemy laws and restricting worship.