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 there 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 great!” 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 whether, Islamism should be infused into 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 commonly 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
of the revolution, conservative forces could tug the country away from
its strict tradition of secularism.
“Nothing is irreversible,” said Khadija Cherif, a former head of the
Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, a feminist organization. “We
don’t want to let down our guard.”
Ms. Cherif was one 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 signs 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 under 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 to the
Islamic parties that govern Turkey and Malaysia.
“We know we have an essentially fragile economy that is very open toward
the outside world, to the point of being totally dependent on it,”
Hamadi Jebali, the party’s secretary general, said in an interview with the Tunisian magazine Réalités. “We have no interest whatsoever in throwing everything away today 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, said it was too early to tell how the Islamist movement would evolve.
“We don’t know if they are a real threat or not,” she said. “But the
best defense is to attack.”
By this she meant that secularists should
assert themselves, she said.
Ennahdha is one of the few organized movements in a highly 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 numerous daily protests by competing groups, a
development that many Tunisians find unsettling.
“Freedom is a great, great adventure, but it’s not without risks,” said
Fathi Ben Haj Yathia, an author and former political prisoner. “There
are many unknowns.”
One of the largest demonstrations since Mr. Ben Ali fled took place on
Sunday in Tunis, where several thousand protesters marched to the prime
minister’s office to demand the caretaker government’s resignation. They
accused it of having links to Mr. Ben Ali’s government.
Tunisians are debating the future of their country on the streets.
Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the broad thoroughfare in central Tunis named
after the country’s first president, resembles a Roman forum on
weekends, packed with people of all ages excitedly discussing politics.
The freewheeling and somewhat chaotic atmosphere across the country has
been accompanied by a breakdown in security that has been particularly
unsettling for women.
With the extensive security apparatus of the old
government decimated, leaving the police force in disarray, many women
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 in 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 considered extremist, a
draconian police program that included monitoring those who prayed
regularly, helped protect the rights of women.
“We had the freedom to live our lives like women in Europe,” she said.
But now Ms. Thouraya said she was a “little scared.”
She added, “We don’t know who will be president and what attitudes he will have toward women.”
Mounir Troudi, a jazz musician, disagrees. He has no love for the former
Ben Ali government, but said he believed that Tunisia would remain a
land of beer and bikinis.
“This is a maritime country,” Mr. Troudi said.
“We are sailors, and
we’ve always been open to the outside world. I have confidence in the
Tunisian people. It’s not a country of fanatics.”