This paper broadly examines the practices and discourses within Algeria’s Islamist Movement for a Society of Peace (MSP) after the Algerian Civil War (1992-2002), in order to elucidate how political Islam moves beyond formal electoral contestation or observable acts of coordinated rebellion as it contends with shifting modes of authoritarian domination. Using ethnographic methods including observation of party meetings, informal conversations with members spanning multiple years, and semi-structured interviews, supplemented by text analysis of primary sources, media sources, and the movement’s social media discourse, this paper shows that instead of confronting the state and its institutions outright, the MSP members have turned to more subtle contentious acts, including appropriating the language and symbolism on which the state’s legitimacy historically relied. In particular, Algeria’s national scouting organization, the Algerian Muslim Scouts (SMA), is a site of these ongoing contests, as it continues to occupy a special place in the Algerian imagination for its religious-ideological, military, and educational-formational role in Algeria’s War of Independence—indeed as “soldiers of the Algerian future.” (Mahfoud Kaddache, 2003: 73) It is widely hailed as an heir of the revolution and an icon of Algerian authenticity. In addition to rendering it an iconic nationalist object, the SMA’s religious-military activities rendered it a space through which Algerianness was state-brokered and -monopolized. Mobilizing and establishing affinity with the historic SMA at the expense of the state—in most cases and localities, quite effectively—allowed the MSP to trespass on, resist, and appropriate components of the state's symbolic power and legitimacy without actively confronting the state’s coercive power. Through this investigation, this paper responds to the extant focus in both social movements studies and Islamist studies on upheaval, rebellion, and antisystem repertoires of contention—all of which have become culturally unavailable to Islamist movements in Algeria (a) after the civil war, wherein the state aggressively reconsolidated power through repression and anti-Islamist propaganda, and (b) amidst the shifting political-cultural landscape produced by the 1989 political opening.