In the Name of God by Yasmina Khadra

"Forgive us for kidnapping you in such a casual manner," said Kada.
"So it's a kidnapping, is it," said the imam bitterly.
He did not know how many hours he had lain there, his face on the floor, in the back of the van, nor how he had managed to walk through the forest, his hands bound and his eyes blindfolded, until they reached this hut where those who had ordered his capture were waiting. Four men were staring at him with grave expressions. Kada Hilal sat on a cushion, his face impassive. Next to him, Tej Osmane was mechanically stroking the blade of a machete. 'Smail Ich was leaning against the wall, his hands clasped over his stomach. The fourth was a pale, puny boy, almost lost in his voluminous para jacket. He had a fringe of down on the tip of his chin and venom in his eyes. It was Yusef, Hadji Boudali's son.
"Sit down on the stool."
The imam preferred a straw mat.
"You could have asked me to follow you, and I would have done so. And my wife would not be going frantic at this hour. She's a diabetic."
"You'll be returned to her before dawn," promised Kada.
Tej fidgeted impatiently:
"Tell him why he's here."
Kada calmed him with a lofty gesture.
He turned to the imam:
"Hadji Salah, you are a good man. That is why we are appealing to you. It's true, we have not been gentle with the Elders. But not in any way out of arrogance. The world is changing and they refuse to recognize it É Since Independence, our country has been permanently regressing. Our natural resources have sapped our convictions and our efforts. Traitors have amused themselves luring us with false promises. They have introduced us to jingoistic vanities and demagogy. For thirty years, they've been taking us for a ride. Result: the country is a disaster, young people are apathetic, hope gone. Everywhere people are giving up. Worse, having lost our identity, now we're losing our soul."
Kada stopped. Sheikh Abbas always used to stop in that way, suddenly, to make his audience sit up.
"We say 'that's enough!'"
'Smail Ich nodded:
"That's enough."
"That was how the Movement was born. It is God who inspired the Islamic Salvation Front. He took pity on this disconcerted nation under threat of destruction from a bunch of phoneys through abuses of trust and authority, outrageous nepotism, blatant incompetence and corruption. We had the most beautiful country in the world, and they've turned it into a pig-sty. We had a certain historic legitimacy, they have usurped it. And they have undermined all our prospects for the future É That is why we say Ôthat's enough'."
"That's enough," echoed 'Smail looking preoccupied.
"We members of the FIS have behaved decently. We have worked and shown what we are capable of. The people voted for our principles and our ideology. But the thugs in power refuse to face up to the facts. They have deliberately chosen to play with fire. That's why we're now offering them the fires of hell."
Hadji Salah looked up in the silence that had fallen over the hut. Tej had cut his finger on the blade of the machete. Yusef now had two blazing embers beneath his brow. Only 'Smail carried on nodding.
"And it's war," said Kada.
"It's war," repeated 'Smail.
Hadji Salah was tired. He was growing drowsy but the sharp pains in his joints kept him awake. "What exactly do you want of me, son of the Hilals?"
"A fatwa."
"I don't have the requisite learning. I'm just a rural imam whose modest knowledge is diminishing and whose memory is increasingly unreliable."
"You have been the village imam for forty years," cut in Tej exasperated by Kada's emphatic and excessive loquaciousness. "You are fair and enlightened. We want you to declare a holy war." "And who is the enemy?"
"All those who wear uniform: police, the army ..."
"Even postmen," said 'Smail sarcastically, instantly undermining the solemnity that Kada had so carefully contrived to impress the imam.
Hadji Salah remained silent for a moment, lying prostrate, his head in his hands, as if he refused to believe what he had just heard. The moment he had been dreading had come. The beast had awoken within the child who no longer understood why, suddenly, the urge to punish was stronger than that to forgive. The poet was right: there was inevitably a share for the Devil in every religion that God offered man; a tiny share, but largely sufficient to falsify the Message and lead the unwary astray down the path of evil and barbarism. That Devil's share is ignorance. Sidi Saim used to say: "There are three things it is against nature to entrust to the ignorant man: wealth would cause him suffering; power would turn him into a tyrant, and religion would be equally damaging to him and to others."
Hadji Salah shivered. At first, there had been the mercy of God, who was aware of the trials and tribulations that confronted the most accomplished as well as the most vulnerable of His creatures, those born into pain, who owe their survival only to a bitter struggle, from their first steps to their last breath. But men do not know how to read the Signs. They interpret them to suit themselves. They turn dreams into a utopia, light into pyres, and they become unjust and foolish.
Hadji Salah feebly surfaced from his state of confusion. He didn't have the strength to wipe his streaming face with his hand. He stared in turn at Kada, Tej, Yusef and 'Smail and said: "Do you know why God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son?"
"Of course."
"Why?"
"To test Abraham's faith," said Yusef.
"Blasphemy! Do you dare insinuate that God doubted His prophet? Is he not the All-knowing? God simply had a message for all the nations. By asking Abraham to kill his son on top of the mountain, and then offering him a ram in place of the child, He wanted to make men understand that Faith has its limits too, that it stops when a man's life is threatened. For God knows the value of life. That is the seat of all His benevolence."

The canvas bag was placed in the middle of the bridge so that it would be seen by the first person to pass that way. It was covered with buzzing flies. The stench had put the birds to flight. Jelloul was in a state of shock. Something had flashed through his tormented mind and jogged a memory from long, long ago. He pictured himself as a child, clad in a patched tunic. It was a rainy morning in the winter of 1959. Jelloul was taking lunch to his father, a groom at the Xavier's. On the bridge, he had found a bag, just like the one there now, out of which poked a human head. Because he didn't really understand, because he could neither run away nor scream, Jelloul had sunk into madness.
This new canvas bag on the bridge also contained a man's decapitated head. That of the imam Hadji Salah. Jelloul raised his hands to his temples and began to howl and howl...