CHETAIBI: A scenic beach town on Algeria’s Mediterranean coastline has become the center of a clash over men’s bathing suits, pitting religious and conservative values against tourist habits.
Chetaïbi, a town of 8,000 known for its turquoise waters, rocky coves, and forested hills, draws thousands of Algerian beachgoers each summer. Seasonal tourism is a cornerstone of the local economy.
“The mood is warm, welcoming, colorful, bustling — no hostility toward bathers, not in words, not in looks. People here have a tradition of hospitality,” said Salah Edine Bey, a longtime resident.
In his view, there was little sign of controversy, until there was.
Earlier this month, some vacationers and business owners were caught off guard when the town’s mayor issued a decree banning beachgoers from walking around in Bermuda shorts, calling the attire indecent in contrast to the longer, looser shorts preferred by conservative male beachgoers.
“These summer outfits disturb the population, they go against our society’s moral values and sense of decency,” Mayor Layachi Allaoua wrote.
“The population can no longer tolerate seeing foreigners wandering the streets in indecent clothing,” he added, referencing visitors from elsewhere in Algeria.
The order sparked immediate backlash from officials, including in the regional capital Annaba, who called on the mayor to revoke it.
The mayor reversed the decree within two days. On Facebook, he insisted his order wasn’t driven by Islamist pressure, but by a desire to preserve “peace and tranquility” for both residents and guests.
Still, the episode tapped into deeper tensions over religion, identity, and public space in a country that remains haunted by a civil war that killed an estimated 200,000 people throughout the 1990s. The conflict began in 1991, when the army canceled elections that an Islamist party was set to win.
The so-called “black decade” ended long ago. But it left unresolved some underlying friction between political Islam and Algeria’s military-backed secular state.
“Even though Islamists lost the war in the 1990s, they never gave up on their invasive and intrusive ideological project, which has gained ground in society,” said sociologist Redouane Boudjemaâ.
For some, the beach debate echoed that earlier era, when Islamist-run municipalities tried to reshape public life in line with religious doctrine. For many Algerians, particularly in underserved regions, political Islam remains popular not out of extremism, but as a reaction to corruption, inequality, and distrust in state institutions. While Islamist parties have mostly fared poorly at the ballot box, they play a large role in daily life, filling social and moral voids.
In neighboring Jijel, residents have roped off parts of the beach for mass prayers, with videos of the scenes circulating online and dividing opinion.
For Halim Kabir, it’s a stark reminder of the past. In the 1990s, Islamists who won local elections in Jijel imposed stricter rules on public behavior. Today, cars parked near the beach have been vandalized with warnings telling beachgoers to “go sin elsewhere.”
“It’s provocation,” Kabir said. “An attempt to drive away visitors from other regions.”
Said Boukhlifa, a former senior official at the Ministry of Tourism, warned that conservative groups are exploiting Algeria’s economic troubles, as falling gas revenues strain the state, to expand their influence. That, he said, could undermine the country’s ambitions to grow its tourism sector.