E/CN.4/2003/66/Add.1 page 13 do not fully understand) the only point of reference and the only route to follow on pain of punishment in the hereafter, not excluding punishment deriving from the obligation incumbent on every Muslim to propagate virtue and prevent vice. 57. Many non-governmental representatives interviewed said that such speeches could not but be highly successful, given the deep social and moral crisis in the country and the lack of a response from the authorities in power or the established opposition. As evidence they pointed to the large crowds attending the mosques addressed by the most radical and virulent preachers, enlisting the general precepts of Islam in pursuit of the most narrowly partisan ends. 58. Young Algerians are said to have been recruited and sent to Afghanistan for military training; from 1975 onwards, Islamist movements began to receive funding from foreign countries which turned their sponsorship into a veritable bidding war. 59. FIS and its imams used the mosques to spread rousing sermons calling for the “enemies of Islam” to be punished - beginning with women, lay people, intellectuals, foreigners, Christians and Jews. The calls for killings posted on mosque doors or broadcast over loudspeakers were heeded: over 100 reporters, 19 Christian monks and nuns, some Jehovah’s Witnesses, and about 130 foreign Christians and Jews were killed. Women were attacked in the streets, threatened with death if they went out at night or because they were living alone, were divorced or were not wearing the hijab, and were kidnapped, raped and murdered in the most atrocious fashion. 60. Regarding themselves as upholders of the divine order and assuming the right to monitor people’s observance of religious precepts, men announced that they were guardians of Islam, attacked bars and alcohol stores and their clients and banned plays. All public areas gradually came under the sway of the extremists, who set up their own police to monitor the ban on men and women being found together in buses and schools, and to destroy television sets, antennas and anything else symbolizing the “corruption” they ascribed to the West. 61. The return to first principles which the extremists advocated and their consequent efforts to revive abandoned institutions destroyed the foundations of religious feeling in the Maghreb. It was on the basis of these considerations that the notion of Islamic dress emerged. So-called “Islamic” veils and tunics intended to hide women’s natural indecency appeared alongside the traditional veils that women wore, together with Afghan robes and beards. 62. Regarding those in power as tyrants and miscreants, and a people which accepted and submitted to them as an impious people, the extremists took it upon themselves to combat the “heresy of the faithful”. At this point it was not just Western influence they had in their sights but traditional Islam and local customs which they considered to be inconsistent with the Shariah. 63. About 150 individuals who stood their ground were killed, and the entire Algerian population whose mores were considered to be deviant became targets. Large-scale massacres began in 1996, the most sadly renowned being those at Raïs and Bentalha in 1997.