Secularism as the only viable model

After toppling the regime’s most prominent figure who ruled the country for 23 years, Tunisia witnessed the surprising rise of Ennahda party and the return of its leaders who were living abroad.

What’s truly striking is the emergence of Ennahda as a legally recognized political party, although the 1988 law used as a reference to authorize this movement to resume its political activities is the same text that actually bans religion-based parties…

Therefore, the law outlawing the establishment of religious parties is actually legalizing one of the leading parties of political Islam in the Arab world…

So there goes the Ennahda Islamic party developing its position, or being imposed by others, on the Tunisian political scene, to become one of its most prominent parties…

This is raising the ire of many democratic and secular parties, as well as the resisters of the partisan use of religion who categorically refuse that Ennahda drag Tunisians and Tunisia decades back to the pre-civilization and pre-freedom eras.

Is Ennhada able and willing to fight the battle of power, either to join the governance or the opposition ranks?

Is this party ready to accept the rules of the game and refrain from dragging the country backwards?

Will Ennahda’s leaders and prominent figures who lived abroad for a long time after their release from the regime’s jails, be able to acquire the political intelligence needed to understand that our society has taken major steps in terms of modernist and modern laws and legislation? Ennahda should be particularly aware of the following points:

+ We aspire to a State of citizens, not a State of the faithful.

+ The State should apply man-made laws, not religious laws.

+ All parties need to commit to refraining from the use of religion in politics, and agree that any attempt to impose Islamic Shariaa is against the law.

+ Ennahda should drastically change the concepts and postulates that have governed its speech regarding the status and rights of women, and totally and honestly accept full and complete gender equality.

Only after all the above-mentioned can Ennahda play a full and positive role in the Tunisian political and intellectual life, and effectively contribute to building an advanced and modernist democratic regime that meets the requirements of the current era…

Some Ennahda leaders have recently expressed their admiration for the Turkish model that achieved a fruitful coexistence between secularism on the one hand, and the rule of the State by a party that still considers itself Islamic, on the other hand…

If those leaders are honest, then their statements represent a genuine cultural revolution.

Accepting secularism as a State system puts an end to the discussion. Once an Islamic party that calls for the application of Shariaa laws accepts secularism, it becomes a non-Islamic, rightist or centrist party, but not an Islamic party anymore…

Can we dream of Ennahda turning into a non-religious party???