In Tunisia after Arab Spring, Islamists’ new freedoms create new Muslim divide

[gilliam]

TUNIS — Upstairs, Ibrahim Amara and his friends gather around the computer to watch YouTube preachers offering a vision of Islam that rejects democracy and elections. “Democracy’s freedom is absolute,” Ibrahim says, “and we don’t accept that. In our religion, freedom is limited to the freedom God gives you.”

Downstairs, Ibrahim’s father, Saleh Amara, explodes in frustration over his son’s new, post-revolutionary passion. Saleh and his wife have gone along with some of their 27-year-old’s new restrictions — okay, they’d stop watching soap operas and “Oprah” on TV, because there was too much sexual content — but Saleh says his son goes too far. Growing the long beard of the pious is fine, though it will probably limit his job opportunities. And if Ibrahim insists that his secular-raised, college-educated wife cover her hair and wear gloves, well, that’s his business. But how can he spurn free elections, the sweetest fruit ofTunisia’s revolution?

One year after the uprising that sent autocratic leader Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali packing to exile in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia stands divided between two visions of its future. Last year’s street clashes in this sun-spangled city by the sea have morphed into a different kind of battle — more intimate confrontations in which many families struggle with essential questions of identity.

Secular parents, surprised to find their daughter covering her hair in public, worry they are losing their child to extremism. Moderately religious families argue over a son’s decision to grow a beard and demonstrate against aspects of Tunisian life they have always taken for granted: beer and wine, bikinis on the beach, Hollywood movies on TV. In workplaces, kitchens and sidewalk tearooms, one question dominates: Can and should Tunisia’s blend of Western and Islamic values and practices be maintained under the North African country’s new freedom, or has that freedom unleashed a religious extremism that threatens to push this land of 10 million people toward a new kind of dictatorship?


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...JoT_print.html

[empacae]

And I just got back from there last week. And they told me that their national religion was football (soccer).

I feel sad for them now.

[gilliam]

Originally Posted by empacae

And I just got back from there last week. And they told me that their national religion was football (soccer).

I feel sad for them now.

Because they said that?

[empacae]

No because they seemed happy, and free. That revolution is a once in a lifetime thing. That they enjoyed the pluralism that Tunisia is. The joke about soccer being the national religion was a reaffirmation that they just enjoyed life. And after reading the article how a cancer grows even within a family and divides it and spreads... I feel sad for what Tunisia now will have to endure.

[Kouyate42]

Islam and democracy can exist in the same country. It's sad to have this happening.