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 recent days over the role of Islam in politics. Tensions mounted right here final week when military helicopters and security forces have been named 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 in a Muslim country!”

Five weeks 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 no matter whether, Islamism needs to be infused in to the new government.

About 98 percent from the population of ten million is Muslim, but Tunisia’s liberal social policies and Western way of life shatter stereotypes of the Arab world. Abortion is legal, polygamy is banned and ladies generally wear 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 may be concerned that inside the cacophonous aftermath of the revolution, conservative forces could tug the country away from its strict tradition of secularism.

“Nothing is irreversible,” stated Khadija Cherif, a former head with the Tunisian Association of Democratic Females, a feminist organization. “We don’t wish to let down our guard.”

Ms. Cherif was 1 of a large number of Tunisians who marched via Tunis, the capital, on Saturday demanding the separation of mosque and state in among the largest demonstrations since the overthrow of Mr. Ben Ali.

Protesters held up signs 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 main Muslim political motion, Ennahdha, or Renaissance, which was banned below Mr. Ben Ali’s dictatorship but is now regrouping.

In interviews in 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 which is extremely open toward the outside world, towards the point of becoming totally dependent on it,” Hamadi Jebali, the party’s secretary general, said in an interview together with the Tunisian magazine Réalités. “We have no interest whatsoever in throwing every little thing away today 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 stay unconvinced.

Raja Mansour, a bank employee in Tunis, mentioned it was too early to tell how the Islamist motion would evolve.

“We don’t know if they're a genuine threat or not,” she mentioned. “But the most beneficial defense would be to attack.” By this she meant that secularists really should assert themselves, she mentioned.

Ennahdha is among the couple of organized movements in a highly fractured political landscape. The caretaker government that has managed the country because Mr. Ben Ali was ousted is fragile and weak, with no clear leadership emerging from the revolution.

The unanimity with 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 day-to-day protests by competing groups, a advancement that a lot of Tunisians locate unsettling.

“Freedom is a great, fantastic adventure, but it is not without having dangers,” said Fathi Ben Haj Yathia, an author and former political prisoner. “There are numerous unknowns.”

Among the biggest demonstrations since Mr. Ben Ali fled took location on Sunday in Tunis, exactly where several thousand protesters marched towards the prime minister’s workplace to demand the caretaker government’s resignation. They accused it of having links 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 right after 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 nation continues to be accompanied by a breakdown in security that has been especially unsettling for females. With all the substantial security apparatus of the old government decimated, leaving the police force in disarray, a lot of ladies now say they are afraid to walk outside alone at night.

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 regarded as extremist, a draconian police program that included monitoring those who prayed often, helped protect the rights of girls.

“We had the freedom to reside our lives like females in Europe,” she mentioned.

But now Ms. Thouraya said she was a “little scared.”

She added, “We don’t know who will likely 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 stated he believed that Tunisia would remain a land of beer and bikinis.

“This is really a maritime country,” Mr. Troudi said. “We are sailors, and we’ve usually been open for the outside planet. I have confidence in the Tunisian men and women. It’s not a nation of fanatics.”