Next Question for Tunisia: The Role of Islam in Politics
By THOMAS FULLER
TUNIS - The Tunisian revolution that overthrew decades of authoritarian rule has entered a delicate new phase in current days over the role of Islam in politics. Tensions mounted here last week when military helicopters and security forces were referred to as in to carry out an unusual mission: protecting the city’s brothels from a mob of zealots.
Police officers dispersed a group of rock-throwing protesters who streamed into a warren of alleyways lined with legally sanctioned bordellos shouting, “God is wonderful!” and “No to brothels in a Muslim nation!”
Five weeks following protesters forced out the country’s dictator, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisians are locked inside a fierce and noisy debate about how far, or even regardless of whether, Islamism should be infused in to the new government.
About 98 % of the population of 10 million is Muslim, but Tunisia’s liberal social policies and Western life style shatter stereotypes from the Arab globe. Abortion is legal, polygamy is banned and women typically put on bikinis on the country’s Mediterranean beaches. Wine is openly sold in supermarkets and imbibed at bars across the country.
Women’s groups say they are concerned that within the cacophonous aftermath of the revolution, conservative forces could tug the country away from its strict tradition of secularism.
“Nothing is irreversible,” mentioned Khadija Cherif, a former head with the Tunisian Association of Democratic Girls, a feminist organization. “We don’t want to let down our guard.”
Ms. Cherif was a single of thousands of Tunisians who marched through Tunis, the capital, on Saturday demanding the separation of mosque and state in one of the largest demonstrations since the overthrow of Mr. Ben Ali.
Protesters held up indicators saying, “Politics ruins religion and religion ruins politics.”
They have been also mourning the killing on Friday of a Polish priest by unknown attackers. That assault was also condemned by the country’s principal Muslim political motion, Ennahdha, or Renaissance, which was banned underneath Mr. Ben Ali’s dictatorship but is now regrouping.
In interviews within the Tunisian news media, Ennahdha’s leaders have taken pains to praise tolerance and moderation, comparing themselves towards the Islamic parties that govern Turkey and Malaysia.
“We know we have an essentially fragile economic system that is very open toward the outside globe, towards the point of being totally dependent on it,” Hamadi Jebali, the party’s secretary common, stated in an interview with all the Tunisian magazine Réalités. “We have no interest whatsoever in throwing everything away nowadays or tomorrow.”
The party, which is allied with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, says it opposes the imposition of Islamic law in Tunisia.
But some Tunisians say they remain unconvinced.
Raja Mansour, a bank employee in Tunis, stated it was too early to inform how the Islamist motion would evolve.
“We don’t know if they may be a real threat or not,” she said. “But the best defense is to attack.” By this she meant that secularists need to assert themselves, she said.
Ennahdha is one of the handful of organized movements in a highly fractured political landscape. The caretaker government that has managed the country considering that Mr. Ben Ali was ousted is fragile and weak, with no clear leadership emerging from the revolution.
The unanimity from the protest movement against Mr. Ben Ali in January, the uprising that set off demonstrations across the Arab globe, has considering that evolved into quite a few daily protests by competing groups, a advancement that many Tunisians uncover unsettling.
“Freedom is a fantastic, fantastic adventure, but it is not with no dangers,” said Fathi Ben Haj Yathia, an author and former political prisoner. “There are a lot of unknowns.”
One of many biggest demonstrations considering that Mr. Ben Ali fled took location on Sunday in Tunis, exactly where numerous thousand protesters marched for the prime minister’s office to demand the caretaker government’s resignation. They accused it of having hyperlinks to Mr. Ben Ali’s government.
Tunisians are debating the long term of their nation on the streets. Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the broad thoroughfare in central Tunis named following the country’s very first president, resembles a Roman forum on weekends, packed with individuals of all ages excitedly discussing politics.
The freewheeling and somewhat chaotic atmosphere across the country continues to be accompanied by a breakdown in security that continues to be particularly unsettling for females. Together with the extensive security apparatus from the old government decimated, leaving the police force in disarray, a lot of girls now say they’re afraid to walk outside alone at evening.
Achouri Thouraya, a 29-year-old graphic artist, says she has mixed feelings toward the revolution.
She shared inside the joy of the overthrow of what she described as Mr. Ben Ali’s kleptocratic government. But she also says she believes that the government’s crackdown on any Muslim groups it deemed extremist, a draconian police plan that included monitoring these who prayed often, helped shield the rights of women.
“We had the freedom to live our lives like females in Europe,” she said.
But now Ms. Thouraya stated she was a “little scared.”
She added, “We do not know who will probably be president and what attitudes he will have toward ladies.”
Mounir Troudi, a jazz musician, disagrees. He has no adore for the former Ben Ali government, but mentioned he believed that Tunisia would remain a land of beer and bikinis.
“This is really a maritime nation,” Mr. Troudi said. “We are sailors, and we’ve constantly been open for the outside globe. I’ve self-confidence inside the Tunisian individuals. It’s not a country of fanatics.”
