Leila El Houssi - 12/03/2012

     In Tunisia, with the elections on 23rd October for the Constituent Assembly, the Islamic Party Ennadha got 41.7% of the votes (90 seats out of 207). Its victory has aroused great concern in a country whose cultural history is marked, both before and after independence, by a broad process of secularisation that has attempted to conciliate Islamic faith and modernity. The Ennadha Party, by way of its leader Rachid Ghannouchi, states that it is Islam that characterises today’s Tunisia and not the secularity professed by its predecessors. Indeed, he argues that Tunisian society is searching for an identity that had been usurped and that only the Muslim religion can represent the identity fulcrum in that it is the fundamental reference of the society’s collective values.
     It is legitimate to ask in what way religiosity has taken on such a significant valence in a country like Tunisia until now considered to be “Islamically secular.” To give an explanation we have to go back to the years of the regime of Ben Ali, when the ex-President imposed a severe control on the country by issuing authoritarian measures upon the opposition, which drastically curbed the civil rights such as the freedom of press and the freedom of professing one’s own religion, including forbidding women to wear the veil in public places. They were measures that the regime justified in the name of the need to curb the threat of radical Islam.
     They ended up, however, provoking the reaction of large strands of Tunisian society that has used the religious element as an instrument of opposition against the regime. The scenario that seems to be taking shape now in the secularised Tunisia is causing some alarm in the secular part of civil society. And indeed the question of secularity represents the main subject of the ongoing political and cultural clash. It is important to bear in mind that, to the eyes of many Tunisians, the former regime acted with the complicity of a “secular” West that seemed “blind” before the violations of fundamental rights that were being constantly perpetrated. So it’s hardly surprising that after the old power regime had been toppled, the Tunisians’ vote has rewarded a Party, like Ennadha, that had always placed itself in opposition to the regime of Ben Ali and a West deemed to be its accomplice; a party, moreover, that – as Gannouchi has stated, “recognised the multi-party system, freedom of speech, human dignity, individual freedom and free democratic elections.” Of course, all of this within a framework in which – as Gannouchi points out - “the separation between religion and politics is not deemed necessary,” in that “Tunisia has always been an open country, and not for this reason will it cease being so even if under an Arab-Muslim guise.”
     As appears evident, Ghannouchi, who has lived for a long time in Europe, moves with ductility by promoting a political project that seeks to gain the consensus of the Tunisians by means of the appeal to Islam and at the same time the benevolence of the EU with which he “expects good neighbourly relations and exchanges.” In Ennadha’s manifesto neither economic liberalism nor the opening to commercial exchanges is contested, although a rebalance is envisioned between Western investors and those coming from the Gulf area. The most delicate and sensitive point of the current political debate in Tunisia concerns the question of rights, and in particular the female question.   
     In spite of the reassurances provided by the spokesperson of the Ennadha Party, there is the fear of a re-adaptation in an Islamic key of the family codex, passed in the aftermath of the Independence from the then President Habib Bourguiba, in which the abolition of polygamy had been sanctioned and a modern statute had been introduced to the advantage of women. In the name of the search for an Arab-Muslim identity the sacralisation of secularity nurtured by Bourghiba and his successors seems to be in jeopardy. Although the discussion on the question of identity is exercising an important role in present-day Tunisia, it will be in the field of rights that the country’s future will be played out. It seems rather unlikely that the question of dignity, democracy and freedom that animated the revolt of Tunisian society against Ben Ali can be satisfied by means of the sole religious dimension.
     Until now the Tunisian citizens have placed their trust in Ennadha rewarding its character of “pure” opposition versus Ben Ali’s regime rather than its religious message. It will be necessary to wait for a return to the polls, scheduled for the second half of 2012, to understand whether Ennadha will again earn the trust of the Tunisians. Perhaps then we shall understand whether the country will continue to marry Islam and secularity.

Leila El Houssi