Secularism in Tunisia

In 1956, Tunisia achieved formal independence from France. In 1956–1987, under the leadership of Habib Bourguiba, the first President of the Republic of Tunisia, Tunisia’s post independence government pursued a program of secularization.[3] Bourguiba, "who has been one of the most avowedly secularist political strategists in the Arab world",[4] modified laws regarding religious endowments (habus), secularized education and unified the legal system so that all Tunisians, regardless of religion, were subject to the state courts. He restricted the influence of the religious University of Ez-Zitouna and replaced it with a faculty of theology integrated into the University of Tunis, banned the headscarf for women, made members of the religious hierarchy state employees and ordered that the expenses for the upkeep of mosques and the salaries of preachers to be regulated.[5]

Moreover, his best known legal innovation was the ‘Code du Statut Personel’ (CSP), the laws governing issues related to the family: marriage, guardianship of children, inheritance and most importantly the abolishing of polygamy and making divorce subject to judicial review.[6]

Bourguiba clearly wanted to undercut the religious establishment’s ability to prevent his secularization program, and although he was careful to locate these changes within the framework of a modernist reading of Islam and presented them as the product of ijtihad (independent interpretation) and not a break with Islam, he became well known for his secularism.

Following increasing economic problems, Islamist movements came about in 1970 with the revival of religious teaching in Ez-Zitouna University and the influence which came from Arab religious leaders from Syrian and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhoods.[7] There was also influence by Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose members issued a magazine in Tunis named Azeytouna.[8]

Government-induced secularization triggered the formation of the Islamic Tendency Movement; the movement and its leader Rached Ghannouchi turned into a rallying point for government opponents.[9] In the aftermath, the struggle of Bourguiba and then Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who succeeded him, with political Islamists went out of control, and in order to suppress the opposition the Islamist leaders were harassed, tortured, and exiled.[10]

The Arab Spring changed government in Tunisia and resulted in adoption of the Tunisian Constitution of 2014 following a considerable debate between Islamic and secular political groups and movements.[11] On 1 March 2011, after the secularist dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali collapsed in the wake of the 2011 Tunisian revolution, Tunisia's interim government granted the Ennahda, a moderate Islamist movement in Tunisia, permission to form a political party.[12][13][14][15] Since then, the Ennahda Islamic Party has become the biggest and most well-organized party in Tunisia, so far outdistancing its more secular competitors. In the Tunisian Constituent Assembly election, 2011, the first free election in the country's history with a turn out of 51.1% of all eligible voters, the party won 37.04% of the popular vote and 89 (41%) of the 217 assembly seats, far more than any other party.[16][17][18][19][20] In 2016, Ennahda rebranded itself as the post-Islamist political party of Muslim Democrats drawing a line between religion and politics.[21][22][23][24]

A compromising notion of a Civil state that merges concepts of a Secular state and an Islamic state was suggested by Rached Ghannouchi.[29] Interviewed in Turkey in 2011, he said, "We need democracy and development in Tunisia and we strongly believe in the compatibility between Islam and democracy, between Islam and modernity. So we do not need secularism in Tunisia."[30]

• Secularity
• Secular state
• Islam and secularism
• Separation of church and state

• Islamism and secularism in Tunisia, openDemocracy