My sojourn in Tunisia inevitably ended up focussing to some degree on the question of the Islamist Ennahda (al-Nahda) party and the future of secularism in Tunisia. It’s a sign of how advanced the secular agenda is in Tunisia that the term is bandied about in public at all. The term al-‘ilmaniyya avoided studiously by many in the liberal intelligentsia in not only Saudi Arabia but even Egypt, where social conservatism and political Islam have interracted in complex ways since the great setback of 1967. In the former French colonial domians on North Africa the term al-la’ikiyya is generally used instead, a direct Arabization of the French laicite.

While I was there a group of Salafists – that term used for the purer form of fundamentalist not tainted by the politicizations of the Brotherhood and more of the traditional Wahhabi than the neo-Wahhabism of al-Qa’ida – attacked a cinema in Tunis that was showing a film by Tunisian-French documentary film-maker Nadia El-Fani. El-Fani’s film directly addresses the issue of whither secularism in post-uprising Tunisia. But it’s original name, Ni Dieu Ni Maitre, was for sure designed to provoke. When that title was translated in to Arabic and displayed on a sign at the cinema, it provoked the Salafists into a violent response. It was not titled in Arabic La Ilah, La Sayyid, but La Allah, La Sayyid – ‘No The God’, instead of ‘No god’, let’s say. The sense of ‘neither… nor…’ in the French could also have been better rendered with Wala… Wala… instead of La… La… But anyway.

Journalists and other analytical types I talked to said the Salafists – who have organised themselves into a party now, Hizb al-Tahrir (and quoted in the story below) – were not so much provoked as waiting for the chance to be provoked. El-Fani happily obliged. Both sides claim they represent the Tunisian Street. Salafists say Bourguiba dragged Tunisia kicking and screaming into his ‘secularism’, which was in any case rather patriarchal, authoritarian and disrespectful of what women as much as men ‘want’, politically or socially. The secularists – who we would called leftists or liberals in other Arab contexts – say state backing for literal and puritanical visions of an Islamic lifestyle is no more possible in Tunisia because 50 years of secularism have done their work successfully.

What struck me was how conflicted ordinary Tunisians seemed about these issues. On the one hand, men I talked to said the Salafis were crazy and extremist, but on the other they reserved words of gender abuse for people like El-Fani. The standard line was why inflate the feelings of ordinary people who respect their moderate Islam? The secular elite are pushing for a fight they will ultimately lose. There is much on the surface that might hearten a modern liberal intellectual about Tunisia, but what’s going on underneath is a more complex issue entirely, as the fact that many educated Tunisian women in the cities are facing trouble finding marriage partners suggests: men, as I was told often, tend to prefer girls who don’t argue from the country.   

“No God” film angers Tunisian Islamists

TUNIS | Wed Jul 6, 2011

Six months after Tunisia’s uprising, religious tension is rising over the limits of freedom of expression, as Islamists challenge the dominance of liberals in what was once a citadel of Arab secularism.

Last week several dozen men attacked a cinema in Tunis that had advertised a film publicly titled in French ‘Ni Dieu, Ni Maitre’ (No God, No Master) by Tunisian-French director Nadia El-Fani, an outspoken critic of political Islam.

Police later arrested 26 men, but Salafists — a purist trend within political Islam advocating a return to the ways of early Muslims — gathered outside the justice ministry two days later to demand their release, leading to scuffles with lawyers.

Security forces were heavily deployed in central Tunis to stop protests by Salafists after Friday prayers last week.

Secular media and intellectuals have reacted with alarm, warning that freedoms in Tunisia — a bastion of secularism under 23 years of tough police rule by Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali — are in danger of being lost if Islamists across the spectrum of Islamist politics are not stopped.

“This is a foretaste of what awaits us if firm measures are not taken against these sorcerers’ apprentices, since nothing will stop them attacking hotels, nightclubs or ordinary people sitting in a restaurant,” wrote Taieb Zahar in the French-language monthly Realites.

Tunisia was the launchpad for pro-democracy protest movements that have spread across North Africa and the Middle East since Ben Ali was forced from power in January.

A slow transition to a democratic system is causing tension. An interim president and cabinet will not hold elections until October for a special assembly to write a new constitution that will allow for parliamentary and presidential polls at a later stage.

‘TUNISIA IS NOT SECULAR’, ISLAMIST SAYS

Abdelmajid Habibi, a leader in the Salafist Tahrir party which police accused of staging the cinema attack, said the arts community was trying to provoke Salafists but misjudging the mood among ordinary Tunisians who are more conservative than the father of the modern state, Habib Bourguiba, imagined.

“The country doesn’t need to show a film like this or with this name, especially with the situation Tunisia is going through now. This is a deliberate attempt to provoke people,” he said, pointing to the film’s Arabic title ‘La Allah, La Sayyid’ (No God, No Master) which he said hints there is no god.

He said that despite government policies since independence from France that aggressively promoted emancipation of women — banning polygamy, easing women’s access to divorce, discouraging wearing the veil — Islamic conservatism was strong in Tunisia.

“Yes, the Tunisian people do not live the Islamic way, but they are not secular. Society isn’t those who appear on television (talkshows). They have no popularity, they are a minority among Tunisians,” Habibi said.

“Tunisians are almost all Muslims. The people’s mentality is Islamic,” he said, adding secularists were “victims of a system that is the agent of colonialism.”

As Arab leaders such as Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, who was forced from office in Egypt in February, tried to shut Islamist forces out of politics, liberal elites such as the arts community began to see the state as a line of defense against increasing conservatism in Arab societies.

Today many in Tunisia’s cultural elite look to France as a political and cultural model, and Tunisian directors are often feted in France, which funds many of their films.

Fani’s documentary, which calls for protecting secularism in post-Ben Ali Tunisia, was “like a declaration of war, and people wanted to say that they were against it,” Habibi added.

DIRECTOR DEFENDS RIGHT TO ATHEISM

An avowed atheist, Fani is a lightning rod for Islamists who has campaigned for removing an article in Tunisia’s constitution naming Islam is the religion of state. She says it precludes the rights of Jews, Christians, atheists and others.

“There is a battle now to make people understand better that if we are to safeguard the liberty gained in ousting the dictator, we must protect all liberties,” she said, speaking from France.

“What is clear is that there are many who want to live religion as they want. In Tunisia today I do not have the right to say that I do not believe in God.”

Fani said she had changed the documentary’s title to ‘Laicite Insh’Allah (Secularism, God Willing) at the behest of French distributors after it showed at Cannes this year.

She acknowledged that Tunisians are almost entirely Muslim, but said many wanted the right to choose whether they fast during Ramadan or women needed freedom to dress as they wish.

The leading Islamist party Ennahda, she said, was benefiting from the actions of the Salafists while making a show of standing apart from them.

“The Islamists are not moderate, they will try to take us back to how people lived 1,400 years ago. Tunisia must continue to be modern. We must understand that secularism is an element of progress,” she said.

Ennahda, linked to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, has said it does not agree with the use of force over films or other artistic output seen as offensive, but that Islamic values it describes as “fixed principles” must be respected.

The party was banned by Ben Ali but, like the Brotherhood, has emerged as the strongest single force in politics after the success of protests. The authorities refused to license the Tahrir party over the explicit religious bases of its program.

Tunisian political commentator Rachid Kchena said the secular intelligentsia was playing into the hands of Islamist forces trying to flex their muscles before the elections.

“These secular intellectuals are a very small minority, they do not reflect the attitude of Tunisian society,” he said. “But the Salafis are trying to scare society to impose their way.”

Kchena pointed to other works by Fani that probed Tunisia’s pre-Arab/Islamic identity. “I didn’t agree with her but it’s her right to say what she thinks. These issues concern the future generation, so we have to discuss everything,” he said.