Zawaya

Religious freedom first...

By: Nabila Saidoune

One cannot tackle the issue of religious freedoms of individuals and minorities in Maghreb societies without addressing the “technical” aspect of the problem and concealing its political side. Therefore, the real question is: Do these countries, or rather their leaders, have the will to ensure religious freedoms?

To answer this question, we should perhaps reconstruct the history of political attitudes of Maghreb regimes regarding religious freedoms. During their struggle for independence, the Maghreb elites made of Islam the basis of their national identities, opposing it to Christianity which symbolized the colonizer.

For religion to play a role in mobilization – and thus make of the fight for liberation a struggle of one faith against another that’s oppressing it – the Islamic slogans must had been integrated in the discourse of mobilization. The term Jihad was used to refer to the independence war in Algeria! The Crémieux decree, which gave the French citizenship to native Jews in Algeria, had contributed to this ideological movement based on the Arabic language and Islamic religion which are the main aspects of the Algerian society.

This colonial discourse opposed the “French” of Algeria to the “Muslims” of Algeria to avoid opposing the French and…the Algerians.

The same applies to Morocco and Tunisia, although the exclusive role of Islam was not as remarkable because the history of their respective independences has not confronted religions in the same way. In Morocco and Tunisia, the Jewish religion continued to coexist with Islam without any connotation of opposition. In Morocco, the King is the “Commander of the Faithful” …i.e. Muslims; this title does not refer to other religions. In Tunisia, Bourguiba quickly ensured religious freedom and other freedoms for Tunisians and minorities. Only politics remained subject to his total empire.

The intrusion of the Islamist ideology in the Maghreb found there a dominant Islam. In countries acquired by Islam, the State religion is the ultimate reference for political discourse.

Religious intolerance, which is one of the features of the Islamist ideology, could quickly find historical and emotional arguments to label other beliefs as “enemies” (Israel for the Jewish religion, and the Crusades and colonization for the Christian religion).

With the multiparty system, the fundamentalist discourse could easily associate the claim to secularism with an anti-islamic stance. In this context of political and religious hegemony, countries who were frightened, tried opportunistically to grab the fundamentalist discourse.

Intolerance has never marked this region as intensely. And if there is no way to ensure religious freedoms in the Maghreb, it is because its countries have neither the courage nor the will to do so. Especially in Algeria. A little less in Morocco and Tunisia, which are host economies and which cannot afford to be indifferent to the dangers of intolerance.