Secularism in Tunisia

Under the leadership of Habib Bourguiba (1956–1987), Tunisia’s post independence government pursued a program of secularization.^[1]

Bourguiba, who has Been one of the most avowedly secularist political strategies in the Arab world, modified laws regarding habous (religious endowments), 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.^[2]

Moreover, his best known legal innovations was the ‘Code du Statut Personel’ (CSP) the laws governs issues related to the family: marriage, guardianship of children, inheritance and most importantly the abolishing of polygamy and making divorce subject to judicial review.^[3]

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. John Esposito says that "For Bourguiba, Islam represented the past; the west was Tunisia's only hope for a modern future, but he was mistaken, Islam is modernization"^[4]

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 like Syrian and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhoods.^[5] There is also influence by Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose members issue a magazine in Tunis named Azeytouna.^[6] In the aftermath, the struggle between Bourguiba and Islamists became uncontrolled and in order to repress the opposition the Islamist leaderships were exiled, arrested and interrogated.^[7]

Ennahda Movement, also known as Renaissance Party or simply Ennahda, is a moderate Islamist political party in Tunisia.^{[8][9][10][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 group permission to form a political party. Since then it 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 honest 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.^{[12][13][14][15][16]}

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