Zawaya

Freedom of thought, conscience and religion

By: Mohamed Mohamedou Khattat

On October 23, 2011, Tunisians successfully organized free, transparent and democratic elections for the first time in their history, where Islamists claimed a decisive victory, just like happened in Morocco. Afterwards, secular parties and Islamist partners signed an agreement to share key state positions.

However, a distant showdown took place in Tunisia, in front of the headquarters of the Constituent Assembly, opposing thousands of Islamist protesters and secular modernists.

This standoff strongly highlighted two diametrically opposed societal visions: Islamists shouting “the people made their choice, so get out secularism”; and secularists claiming “no to Salafism, the synonym of regression”.

There had certainly been more fear than harm, because we quickly realized that this polarization is dangerous for this country that has more urgent and important matters to deal with, namely forming a consensual government that reflects Tunisian maturity, which triggered the “Arab Spring” and a successful revolution.

The new government should deal firmly with the pressing issues of employment, poverty, peace, and security; i.e., all the issues related to the economic, social and cultural development of Tunisia, which just emerged from a longstanding dictatorship.

Democracy is both an ideal to be pursued (aiming primarily to preserve and promote human dignity and fundamental rights), and a governance system that is constantly refined and that can still be improved. Democracy guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief, by protecting the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of national minorities, and granting them the right to express themselves, and to preserve and develop their identity without discrimination.

That will probably convince many people to cope with this experience. However, the serious events that took place in Tunisia have caught our attention in the Maghreb and Mashreq, and opened our eyes to the multiplicity of political Islamism – the biggest winner of the “Arab Spring” -, in order to prevent the many reactionary and fundamentalist groups in our Arab Maghreb countries from seizing the political scene to establish a system that interferes with individual liberties and / or impose their obscurantist objectives.

That is the complete opposite of a democratic state, where men and women are partners in managing public affairs, and work equally and complementarily, drawing mutual enrichment from their differences.

Hopefully, in the emerging democracies in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, (Morocco has a longer tradition of democracy, and is a model of coexistence with the Islamists, since the King had tolerated Islamist parties at a time when they were banned in other Arab countries, then allowed them to run the government), the powerful Islamist parties, on the one hand, and the majority democratic forces that are more modernist yet divided, on the other hand, will be able to chase Islamic terrorists like they did with dictators.