Binder

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 over the role of Islam in politics. Tensions mounted right here last week when military helicopters and security forces have been 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 excellent!” and “No to brothels in a Muslim country!”

5 weeks soon 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 whether or not, Islamism should 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 from the Arab globe. 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 are concerned that in the cacophonous aftermath from the revolution, conservative forces could tug the nation away from its strict tradition of secularism.

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

Ms. Cherif was 1 of a large number of Tunisians who marched by means of Tunis, the capital, on Saturday demanding the separation of mosque and state in one of many biggest demonstrations because the overthrow of Mr. Ben Ali.

Protesters held up signs 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 major Muslim political motion, Ennahdha, or Renaissance, which was banned beneath 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 for the Islamic parties that govern Turkey and Malaysia.

“We know we have an essentially fragile economy that’s very open toward the outside planet, to the point of being entirely dependent on it,” Hamadi Jebali, the party’s secretary common, stated in an interview using the Tunisian magazine Réalités. “We have no interest whatsoever in throwing every 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 remain unconvinced.

Raja Mansour, a bank employee in Tunis, stated it was too early to inform how the Islamist movement would evolve.

“We do not know if they are a genuine threat or not,” she said. “But the best defense is to attack.” By this she meant that secularists ought to assert themselves, she stated.

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

The unanimity of the protest movement against Mr. Ben Ali in January, the uprising that set off demonstrations across the Arab world, has since evolved into several every day protests by competing groups, a improvement that a lot of Tunisians locate unsettling.

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

One of the largest demonstrations since Mr. Ben Ali fled took spot on Sunday in Tunis, exactly where many thousand protesters marched to the prime minister’s workplace to demand the caretaker government’s resignation. They accused it of getting links to Mr. Ben Ali’s government.

Tunisians are debating the long term of their country 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 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 has been particularly unsettling for females. With the extensive security apparatus of the old government decimated, leaving the police force in disarray, several females 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 within the joy from 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 plan that included monitoring these who prayed on a regular basis, helped shield the rights of women.

“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 likely be president and what attitudes he may have toward females.”

Mounir Troudi, a jazz musician, disagrees. He has no really like for the former Ben Ali government, but said he believed that Tunisia would remain a land of beer and bikinis.

“This is often a maritime nation,” Mr. Troudi stated. “We are sailors, and we’ve usually been open towards the outside planet. I have confidence within the Tunisian folks. It’s not a nation of fanatics.”