Ordinance 06-03, the Closed Churches and the Martyrs of Oran

Algeria regulates non Muslim worship through Ordinance 06-03 of 2006. Its structure matters more than its tone. Collective worship by a non Muslim faith is permitted only in buildings specifically authorised for the purpose by the state, and the authorising committee has in practice approved very few. Attempting to persuade a Muslim to change religion is a criminal offence carrying imprisonment and a fine, as is producing or distributing material for that purpose.

The community most affected is Algerian rather than foreign. A Protestant movement grew from the 1980s largely among Kabyle Berbers, and the churches associating in the Protestant Church of Algeria, a body with legal recognition dating from 1974, number in the dozens. From 2018 the authorities began sealing them for lack of the specific building authorisation the ordinance requires, and most of the association's churches have been closed since, with the association's own registration also contested. Individual believers have been prosecuted under the proselytism provisions and for possession of Christian literature.

Set beside that is an event that pulls the other way. In December 2018 nineteen Catholic religious killed during the 1990s civil war were beatified at Oran, among them the seven Trappist monks of Tibhirine, whose abduction and deaths are the subject of a French judicial inquiry that has not fully resolved them. The ceremony took place on Algerian soil with the agreement of the Algerian state and with Muslim religious figures present, and the church deliberately framed it alongside the far larger number of Algerian Muslims killed in the same conflict. It is the first beatification held in a Muslim majority country.