Subsequent Question for Tunisia: The Role of Islam in Politics
Subsequent 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 latest days more than the role of Islam in politics. Tensions mounted here last week when military helicopters and security forces were called 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 inside a Muslim nation!”
Five weeks after 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 whether, Islamism must be infused in to the new government.
About 98 percent with the population of ten million is Muslim, but Tunisia’s liberal social policies and Western lifestyle shatter stereotypes from the Arab globe. Abortion is legal, polygamy is banned and ladies generally 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 nation away from its strict tradition of secularism.
“Nothing is irreversible,” said Khadija Cherif, a former head of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Females, a feminist organization. “We don’t need to let down our guard.”
Ms. Cherif was 1 of thousands of Tunisians who marched through Tunis, the capital, on Saturday demanding the separation of mosque and state in among the largest demonstrations because the overthrow of Mr. Ben Ali.
Protesters held up indicators saying, “Politics ruins religion and religion ruins politics.”
They were also mourning the killing on Friday of a Polish priest by unknown attackers. That assault was also condemned by the country’s main Muslim political movement, Ennahdha, or Renaissance, which was banned beneath 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 to the Islamic parties that govern Turkey and Malaysia.
“We know we have an basically fragile economy that’s really open toward the outside globe, towards the point of becoming completely dependent on it,” Hamadi Jebali, the party’s secretary basic, stated in an interview using the Tunisian magazine Réalités. “We have no interest whatsoever in throwing anything away right now 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 do not know if they’re a genuine threat or not,” she said. “But the most effective defense would be to attack.” By this she meant that secularists need to assert themselves, she stated.
Ennahdha is one of the couple of organized movements inside a extremely 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 motion against Mr. Ben Ali in January, the uprising that set off demonstrations across the Arab planet, has since evolved into several day-to-day protests by competing groups, a improvement that numerous Tunisians find unsettling.
“Freedom is often a great, great adventure, but it’s not with no risks,” said Fathi Ben Haj Yathia, an author and former political prisoner. “There are numerous unknowns.”
One of many largest demonstrations since Mr. Ben Ali fled took place on Sunday in Tunis, where many thousand protesters marched towards the prime minister’s workplace to demand the caretaker government’s resignation. They accused it of possessing hyperlinks to Mr. Ben Ali’s government.
Tunisians are debating the future of their nation on the streets. Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the broad thoroughfare in central Tunis named right after the country’s very first president, resembles a Roman forum on weekends, packed with folks of all ages excitedly discussing politics.
The freewheeling and somewhat chaotic atmosphere across the nation continues to be accompanied by a breakdown in security that continues to be especially unsettling for ladies. Using the substantial security apparatus from the old government decimated, leaving the police force in disarray, several girls now say they are 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 with 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 considered extremist, a draconian police program that included monitoring those who prayed often, helped safeguard the rights of females.
“We had the freedom to reside our lives like girls in Europe,” she said.
But now Ms. Thouraya said she was a “little scared.”
She added, “We don’t know who will probably be president and what attitudes he will have toward ladies.”
Mounir Troudi, a jazz musician, disagrees. He has no appreciate for the former Ben Ali government, but mentioned he believed that Tunisia would stay a land of beer and bikinis.
“This is a maritime country,” Mr. Troudi stated. “We are sailors, and we’ve often been open for the outside world. I have self-confidence inside the Tunisian men and women. It is not a country of fanatics.”
