As Tunisia's elections draw to a close, the overwhelming victor, with 90 seats out of a total of 217, was logically confirmed as the Islamist Ennahda Party (The Renaissance), though still falling short of an overall majority. Attention returned to Rachid AlGhannoushi, the leader of the Ennahda Movement and Party, and Hamadi Jebali, current Ennahda Secretary General and most likely Tunisia's coming Prime Minister, as they continued speaking in their now increasingly characteristic reconciliatory and progressive rhetoric. Both have continue to state the importance of coalitions with secular parties, especially in the coming period as Tunisia's new constitution is written and the transitional government is formed, as well as reaffirming their own and their party's commitment to personal freedoms, including a promise not to work on banning matters of intermittent contention such as alcohol, swimsuits or traditional banking, for example. This rhetoric, of course, was of comfort to many who fear Tunisia shifting towards conservatism. It was not long, however, until that same attention shifted to comparisons between Egypt and Tunisia's Islamists, especially as Egypt prepares to undertake its own parliamentary elections. But while such comparisons are indeed important, and often useful, they all seem to forget a significant difference between both the two countries and their Islamists movements. In Bourguiba and Ben Ali's Tunisia, being a practicing Muslim was an arduous uphill challenge. The regime hurdled, and in some cases even banned, many forms of outward and open expression of Islamic practice. The Islamic call for prayer (The Adhan), for example, was not allowed on Television, and even later on the Dawn Adhan was banned from being sounded altogether by mosques (other Athans were legally required to limit volume, though some justified that latter requirement with benign explanations). Mosques were legally open only for 30 minutes at a time, 5 times a day (once for each prayer), and entering the mosque was usually after showing your national ID card. If your card stated that you lived in an area far away from the mosque you're in, you could have been arrested without any legal reason if you failed to offer a “justification” for being in a mosque this far away from home. Religious study rings were monitored and their attendees arrested in many cases (arrested people in general in Ben Ali's Tunisia were no strangers to varying degrees of torture), and some Tunisians tell me that if you prayed the Fajr (Dawn) prayer in the mosque on time, you stood a strong chance of being harassed or even arrested. Most famously, wearing the headscarf (the Hijab) was banned in public institutions and many public places, veiled women were frequently harassed by the state at one point and had to take off the veil temporarily based on occasion and location, with the law arguing that the veil was “a sectarian garment of foreign origin.” In fact, Bourguiba once went as far as publicly trying to ban the Ramadan fast, a famous story goes, arguing that it “harmed productivity”, and sacked the Grand Mufti at the time Sheikh AlTaher Ibn Ashour for his refusal to issue a fatwa supporting his views. Polygamy was criminalised and is punishable by imprisonment, and some were even of theory that the regime was trying to combat the Friday prayer (notion started when mosques were controversially made to organise the Friday prayer at both the regular noon timing as well as 30 minutes before the following prayer to give allowance for those who needed to pray later due to work). Ennahda's leader himself, AlGhannoushi, was even tendentiously charged with conspiring against the State and forced into exile in London for more than 20 years, until his triumphant return to a large cheering crowd following the fall of Ben Ali. But Egypt, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. The muslim female population country is predominantly and comfortably veiled, the state sponsors religious activities and celebrations, while Islamic religious worship, ritual and study were, and remain, publicly conspicuous and ubiquitous. Persecution was rather more directed against potential terrorist cells or against those with possible political ambitions. And thus, while strict conservatives and radicalists exist on both sides, there seems to be a existential difference. Whereas Tunisia's Islamists (with the exception of Hizb Uttahrir perhaps) and their voters were arguably more guided by a desire to regain their basic and generally legitimate religious freedoms and rights, possibly hoping to emulate Turkey's AKP, Egypt's Islamists seem to be generally more about the expanded “application” of a traditionalist interpretation of Islamic law in public life, including the possible limitation of certain personal rights freedoms they dispute. Egypt's Islamists, of course, also have had a stronger previous affiliation with militancy. But both Egypt's more moderate Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and the more conservative groups, such as the Salafists, have been moving closer to the mainstream nevertheless, whether by intentional or forced steps. The Brotherhood, for example, has been issuing statements supporting absolute free speech, basic religious & civil freedoms in Egypt, as well as taking positions against theocracy as a form of government. The Salafists have eventually come to accept the constitutional principles charter with its affirmation of basic human and civil rights, decided to actively engage in the process of democratic elections and parliamentary legislation (both being previously banned activities by the Salafists), and even begrudgingly added female candidates to their electoral candidate lists per the requirement of the law. However, they still appear to remain further away from the more directly liberal positions and flexibility of Ennahda, or at least of its leader, AlGhannoushi. Some argue that Egypt's Islamists offer more mixed or opaque messages to the public. For example, there are those who have stated that popular Brotherhood electoral conventions have featured more conservative rhetoric than their public and televised moderate speech (same has been said of Ennahda). Others have argued that while Brotherhood calls for democracy, they remain adamant in fighting against the liberalisation of their own internal structures, decision-making and governance codes, with some expulsions of members who break away from ordinances issued by the leadership. Of course, there are those dispute the level of truthfulness of these accusations themselves altogether. But assuming their veracity, one justification argues that such discrepancies are seemingly the result of internal tugs-of-war between the old conservative guard one hand hand, and a more reformist and generally more youthful bloc on the other. Luckily, if so, time and numbers are on the side of the latter. We find ourselves now putting a famed and critical popular theory to yet another test, that involving everyone in open democracy and public debate brings everyone closer to the mainstream, whereas exclusion invariably fosters extremism. On the other hand, however, there are those who remain staunchly cynic & skeptic. Some of them like to argue that Khomeini is famously quoted for having said that he had no personal political leadership ambitions, and that his vision for Iran that did not involve censorship or governmental interference of opposition or involvement in a woman's choice of her way of life or clothing, whereas the course of history in Iran itself developed in a significantly different path eventually. ** Bassem Sabry is Media Executive, Producer and Blogger who writes about Egypt and Current Affairs. His Blog, An Arab Citizen, can be found at http://anarabcitizen.blogspot.com, and you can follow his Twitter feed @bassem_sabry BM
