Omar Rassem
>Omar Racim was born in Algiers in 1884, he got his education in Algiers’ kuttab he then studied in Thaalibia a short amount of time then relied on himself in his own formation ,he is one of the Algerian intellectual bilinguals he was known for his political and journalistic activity . he was a calligrapher, a painter, a journalist and a religious and social reformer his motto was” fighting for the sake of reforming religion” based on the ideas of Mohamed Abdou,he made it the motto of his career as a reformist he started writing articles since 1907 and publishing His articles about Jews especially Algerian one on the papers especially el mourchid and the Tunisian newspaper mourchid el omah .he established in 1908 the magazine Algeria, only that his experience was a failure because the colonial authorities has forbidden its publication due to what it contains from reformative ideas ,they were worried about the impacts it was going to have between the Algerian masses.
He was the first one to write with power and boldness especially that the press was at its beginning, he was distinguished with a certain boldness and fidelity to sheikh Mohamed Abdou he then got kicked out of school .
He contributed In establishment of the newspaper el Farouk with Omer Ibn Kadour he then established dou el fakar in 1913 in which he was calling to reform following the style of sheikh Mohamed Abdou his ideas were filled with thought of Mohamed Abdou he was fascinated by him and even drew his image on el farouk ‘s 3rd cover this newspaper did only issued 4 of it, he has also participated in many Arabic and French papers. He was critical of the French speakers; he believed that all the problems facing Algerians are because of those combining between the two nationalities and sold their religion and nationality when they preferred the negatives of modernity and sold their homes when they were played with by the authorities for a position or a title or medal. He bemoaned what the Algerian people had become like and the miserable conditions lived like the absence of worshipers in the mosques and the crowded streets with thieves, corrupted people, drunkards and the spread of social corruption and immorality within the Algerian youth. He couldn’t hide his regret on these miserable conditions of the country, this rather pushed him to the reformative work because that in Omar Racim’s perspective was better for the people than to live humiliated and without dignity. He was calling for interdependence between the several classes of the society and was very caring for the poor people while constantly denouncing the rich and calling them for the necessity to be generous and spending money on building schools rather than spending them in the luxury of life. He called to apply socialism as an alternative to erase social differences.
And based on his point of views he can be considered as the first journalists calling for the salafi doctrine on the pages of the Algerian Arabic newspapers without being scared of getting imprisoned where he spent all of the First World War years. He was imprisoned because of his hostile thoughts towards the French administration; it considered it as an attempt to incite people against the administration he was released in 1921.he turned to the art of calligraphy and painting after that. In 1931 he established a school to teach Arabic and oriental painting and decoration, he died in 1959 leaving behind him many works and a great number of students