Zawaya

On a website that’s open to everyone, with the objective of encouraging communication and the exchange of ideas, it would be better to state your point clearly instead of seeking expressions that would rather perfectly suit the “Les Précieuses” of Molière. As an Arab woman, and supposedly Muslim, it would have been more interesting to me to see you refer to Muslim authors while talking about Islam, rather than limit yourself to Barthes. I would find it ridiculous to see a European academician write about Christianity and state a Muslim author as the only and unique reference. That being said, you turn around the bush instead of providing an answer to the question, and you did not bring up anything new concerning the role played, or that could be played, by Tunisian women in religious education. Is it because religion has been completely monopolized by your president who uses it for his personal propaganda? The previous dictator, Bourguiba, had asked to inscribe on his grave the following expression: Liberator of Women. This feminism of the State is the number one enemy of movements of female emancipation, because it denies them the right to claim. The only things women acquire, become gifts offered by the dictator’s grace, instead of being natural or cultural rights. Tunisian women’s organizations have been led, since the independence, by women that are dependent on the regime and appointed by it. They have always been praising the dictatorship that established equality between men and women. However, this equality is nothing but a false and misleading slogan that distracts attention from the real issue, that of rights. To pretend that Tunisian women are equal to men is like saying that they are devoid of rights, since the dictatorship has deprived men from their political and human rights. The equality that we are talking about does only apply to genital organs that it puts on an equal footing. Saying that a ewe is like a sheep, a doe is like a goat, and a cow is like a beef (a castrated one of course), is only a trickery to make Tunisian women believe that they would acquire any rights. On the other hand, this is consistent with the philosophy (if I may call it so) of the Tunisian regime that considers men from a biological angle only. With his deceitfulness, Ben Ali had convinced the former French President Chirac, during an official visit to Tunisia in 2003, of the correctness of this view. This has made Chirac, while responding to journalists who were concerned about violations of human rights in Tunisia, state that the primary human right was eating. According to his findings, Tunisians still enjoyed that right. We must do justice to Ben Ali for not withdrawing this right yet. Let’s get back to Tunisian women. Instead of universal rights, there are privileges that are granted by the dictatorship to women collaborating with the regime, which explains their fanaticism to defend it in national and international occasions. To summarize, I would say that the totalitarian State, being jealous of its prerogatives, does not even accept a liberal interpretation of the Qur’an that could induce women to claim rights with reference to religious texts. Tunisian women enjoy the equality of ewes, which is granted to them thanks to the generosity of the dictator. The kindness of the latter is stressed on vehemently every Friday in mosques’ sermons, which are written by the lackeys of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Tunis.