I paid much in my fight for justice and liberty of people. But clearly, I did what I felt to be a duty, an obligation. So, for me the choice was not … - Ahmad ibn Billah

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I paid much in my fight for justice and liberty of people. But clearly, I did what I felt to be a duty, an obligation. So, for me the choice was not difficult. When I was engaged in the struggle for my country, I was very young. My horizons were open. I quickly realised that the problems go beyond Algeria, that colonisation affected many people, that three-quarters of the countries in the world have been colonised in one way or another. Algeria was thus, for the French, a department overseas; it was the France located on the other side of the Mediterranean. The French colonisation of Algeria lasted a long time: 132 years. I participated in that fight right in Algeria.

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About Ahmad ibn Billah

Ahmed Ben Bella (Arabic: أحمد بن بلّة) (25 December 1916 – 11 April 2012) was an Algerian politician, soldier, and socialist revolutionary who served as the first President of Algeria from 1963 to 1965. He is respected for his role in the anti-colonial struggle and was seen by many Arab intellectuals as one of the last original Arab nationalists.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Muhammad Ahmad ibn Billah
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Additional quotes by Ahmad ibn Billah

I myself, speaking as a man of the south, note that something has changed in the north, which is a very important point to raise. What changed exactly in this so-called advanced region of the north: that we have made a war, we have colonised, that we have done terrible things, and that there is today an opinion that is expressed, that there are young people who say "enough." This indicates that this perverse global system does not strike only the south but also the north. In the past, we spoke of poverty, misery only in the south. Now there is a lot of misery, a lot of bad that creates victims in the north as well. This has become manifest: the global system was not made to serve the good of all, but to serve multinational companies.

We never act with the thought that it’s us who are going to be the beneficiaries. We act because it’s necessary to act. The great conquests have never been the product of a single generation. We say in my country that he who eats is not he who serves the meal. It’s necessary to create a network of solidarity that unconditionally supports the struggle of its people.

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I am going to tell you, although Islam has encountered so many woes, Islam has never done wrong to other counties. In history, Islam showed a tolerance that does not exist at all elsewhere, whereas Israel has succeeded in establishing itself by force in a space and in a place which was inhabited by Palestinians - one of the most developed Arab people - and created there, in the dispossession of their land, a racist state. As long as Israel will refuse to recognize the rights of Palestinians to exist and come back to their land, there will not be peace in the world.

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