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 latest days more than the role of Islam in politics. Tensions mounted right here final week when military helicopters and security forces were known 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 fantastic!” and “No to brothels inside a Muslim nation!”
Five weeks right after protesters forced out the country’s dictator, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisians are locked in a fierce and noisy debate about how far, or even regardless of whether, Islamism should be infused in to the new government.
About 98 percent of the population of 10 million is Muslim, but Tunisia’s liberal social policies and Western lifestyle shatter stereotypes of the Arab world. Abortion is legal, polygamy is banned and women frequently put on bikinis on the country’s Mediterranean beaches. Wine is openly sold in supermarkets and imbibed at bars across the nation.
Women’s groups say they are concerned that inside the cacophonous aftermath from the revolution, conservative forces could tug the nation away from its strict tradition of secularism.
“Nothing is irreversible,” said Khadija Cherif, a former head from the Tunisian Association of Democratic Girls, a feminist organization. “We do not need 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 many biggest demonstrations since the overthrow of Mr. Ben Ali.
Protesters held up indicators saying, “Politics ruins religion and religion ruins politics.”
They had 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 movement, 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 for the Islamic parties that govern Turkey and Malaysia.
“We know we have an basically fragile economic system that is certainly very open toward the outside globe, towards the point of becoming totally dependent on it,” Hamadi Jebali, the party’s secretary general, stated in an interview with the Tunisian magazine Réalités. “We have no interest whatsoever in throwing everything away right now or tomorrow.”
The celebration, 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, mentioned it was too early to inform how the Islamist motion would evolve.
“We do not know if they’re a real threat or not,” she stated. “But the most beneficial defense would be to attack.” By this she meant that secularists need to assert themselves, she stated.
Ennahdha is among the few organized movements in a very fractured political landscape. The caretaker government that has managed the nation considering that Mr. Ben Ali was ousted is fragile and weak, with no clear leadership emerging from the revolution.
The unanimity of the protest motion against Mr. Ben Ali in January, the uprising that set off demonstrations across the Arab globe, has because evolved into many everyday protests by competing groups, a advancement that numerous Tunisians uncover unsettling.
“Freedom is a excellent, great adventure, but it is not without having risks,” stated Fathi Ben Haj Yathia, an author and former political prisoner. “There are a lot of unknowns.”
Among the biggest demonstrations given that Mr. Ben Ali fled took location on Sunday in Tunis, where a number of thousand protesters marched to 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 first president, resembles a Roman forum on weekends, packed with men and women 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 especially unsettling for girls. With all the substantial security apparatus with the old government decimated, leaving the police force in disarray, a lot of females now say they may be 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 program that included monitoring those who prayed on a regular basis, helped shield the rights of girls.
“We had the freedom to reside our lives like females in Europe,” she mentioned.
But now Ms. Thouraya stated she was a “little scared.”
She added, “We don’t know who will probably be president and what attitudes he may have toward ladies.”
Mounir Troudi, a jazz musician, disagrees. He has no love for the former Ben Ali government, but said he believed that Tunisia would stay a land of beer and bikinis.
“This is really a maritime country,” Mr. Troudi stated. “We are sailors, and we’ve often been open towards the outside world. I’ve self-confidence within the Tunisian people. It’s not a country of fanatics.”
