Tunisian secularists nervous over slow change, concerned about Islamists
Secularists hope Tunisia’s gradual approach for moving to an open political system from a police state will help box in Islamists but it has created a political and security vacuum that could end up helping them. Tunisians forced out president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali via street protests in December and January, and over 90 political parties have sprung up in the newly freed public space.
Secular parties, policy-makers and Western powers are preparing for a future where the leading Islamist party Ennahda, driven abroad and underground by Ben Ali, is a key force in the North African country but working out how to limit its impact.
“There are colossal suspicions about Ennahda. No one believes their commitment to democracy and pluralism. Their discourse in Arabic is very different to their discourse in French, particularly in rural areas,” said George Joffe, a politics professor at Cambridge University. He said the fear was not just of its Islamist platform but of a gradual slip into the one-party authoritarianism of the previous era if one better-organized group dominates.
It is partly because of these concerns that Tunisia is taking its time before getting to any elections. Elections for a constituent assembly to write a new constitution have been delayed to October, and there is no timeframe for parliamentary and presidential elections that follow.
“There is a reasonable chance Ennahda will emerge the strongest party but not having a majority. The best guess is there will be a secular-center left majority in parliament,” a Western diplomat said.
The incumbent political class, divided between those who accommodated and those who challenged Ben Ali’s corrupt government, hope Ennahda will not gain more than a quarter of the vote, said economist Marouane Abassi. “Ennahda could get around 25 percent which is manageable, but more than that would be difficult for Tunisia,” he said.
Will the Arab Spring bring U.S.-style “culture wars” to the Middle East?
Where is the Arab Spring leading the Middle East? What will be the longer-term outcome of the popular protests that have shaken the region since the beginning of this year? Of course, it’s still too early to say with any certainty, even in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt that succeeded in toppling their authoritarian regimes. Some trends have emerged, however, and they’re on the agenda at a conference in Venice I’m attending entitled “Medio Oriente verso dove?” (Where is the Middle East heading?). The host is the Oasis Foundation, a group chaired by Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Roman Catholic patriarch of this historic city, and guests include Christian and Muslim religious leaders and academics from the Middle East and Europe.
In one of the most interesting — and hotly debated — presentations, the French Islam specialist Olivier Roy described the Arab Spring as “a break with the culture and ideologies that dominated the Arab world from the 1950s until recently.” It marks a clear change in the demographic, political and religious paradigms operating there, he said. The old dichotomy of the authoritarian regime or the Islamist state has broken down, he argued, and Islam is taking on a new role in the political process. In the end, the region — or at least the states where the Arab Spring brings real change — could see democratic politics marked not by major efforts to establish an Islamic state but by Muslim “culture war” controversies not unlike the way hot-button issues such as abortion and gay marriage emerge in U.S. political debates.
The first trend Roy cited to back up this thesis is the sharp drop in fertility levels in the Arab world since the late 1980s and the 1990s. Several Arab countries, especially those in North Africa, now have birthrates of around two children per woman, close but still above the European average. Tunisia’s birthrate is actually lower than France’s. “The generation that is now on the job market is the last generation of big families,” said Roy, who is now director of the Mediterranean Programme at the European University Institute in Florence. “It’s a generation that has many fewer children and marries much later.”
There is also more equality between men and women because they’ve all been educated, he said, often to a university level. Even with the high unemployment in many countries, this generation of 20- and 30-somethings has less economic pressure to care for their ageing parents (because there are still many siblings) or for their own families (because they’re not having as many babies).
For these young Arabs, the older generation is no longer a model to follow. The system they set up has failed. So, Roy said, the younger generation “feels in a sense superior to its parents. It’s a generation that’s not fascinated by the patriarchalism that dominated political and social life until now. It doesn’t believe in charismatic personalities. We are no longer in a period of charismatic leaders like (Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini or (Egyptian nationalist leader Gamal) Nasser.” Added to that are factors such as the new mobility and access to information that young Arabs have, which means they are no longer subject to the information monopoly formerly enjoyed by the political and religious authorities.
“This will translate into a change in the political paradigm,” Roy said. “Today the protesters are asking for full rights as citizens, which is an individualist demand … There are no more sacred causes. Islamism was not mentioned in the protests. Pan-Arabism not mentioned. Support for the people of Palestine not mentioned. At the moment, they want liberty and democracy for themselves.” Because protesting youths want their individual rights, they’re not forming political parties. “That’s a problem because if one wants to institutionalise democracy, one needs political parties. But we see that these youths are not interested in creating a political party.”
The parties that are operating in Tunisia and Egypt are the ones that already existed, including the Islamist parties Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood. But they do not attract that many youths, said Roy (who foresaw this development in his 1992 book The Failure of Political Islam). Why not? “The Islamic revolutions aren’t working. They can take power but, as we can see in Iran every day, they have not succeeded in creating social justice, happiness and prosperity. Whatever the form of Islamic state — Islamic revolution in Iran, sharia in Pakistan, sharia in Saudi Arabia — it doesn’t work and the people know it.”
President Obama also raised the specter of short-changing recipients of federal benefits, telling CBS’s Scott Pelly in an interview that “there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”
More than 80 million Americans who receive benefits payments from the government each month could be at risk, the Treasury Department said. Most of those checks cover Social Security recipients, veterans and civil service retirees.
Liberal U.S. Catholics say their Church is not listening
Members of a liberal group of U.S. Catholics called on Sunday on Church leaders to open talks with their members on controversies ranging from the ordination of women to allowing priests to marry. Members of the American Catholic Council, meeting in Detroit, said they had grown concerned that the Church hierarchy was not listening to its members on issues such as the role of women, married clergy and the treatment of homosexuals.
The meeting comes as the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is struggling with a sexual abuse crisis, loss of membership and a dwindling number of priests.
“When in God’s name are the conversations going to begin?” asked Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun who addressed the meeting of about 2,000 people — part of a liberal wing that represents a minority in the 1.2 billion-member Church. She likened the structure, with bishops and archbishops answering to the pope in Rome, to “a medieval system that has now been abandoned by humanity everywhere, except by us.”
Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron had warned before the meeting that any members of the clergy who attended the group’s mass would be at risk of being defrocked. “All of the invited keynote speakers have manifested dissent from Catholic teachings or support for dissenters,” the archdiocese said in a posting on its website.
Robert Wurm, a retired priest from Ferndale, Michigan, who officiated at the closing mass, said he was not worried the archbishop would take action against him. “He was careful about that. He said they could be defrocked, not that they would,” Wurm told reporters. Under Church law, an archbishop has authority over all masses held in his area.
“It’s disheartening that a Detroit priest would preside over a Sunday service with so many serious liturgical abuses,” said Ned McGrath, spokesman for the archdiocese. “They will be among the matters that now must be — will be — reviewed by the Detroit archdiocese.”
At a separate event in a nearby neighborhood, about 600 members of the Church met to speak out against the ACC conference and espouse conservative views on social issues, according to local media reports. The Archdiocese of Detroit sanctioned but did not organize that meeting, according to an archdiocesan spokesman.
Referendum in Catholic Malta backs introduction of divorce
Staunchly Catholic Malta approved the introduction of divorce, backing the move by a small majority in a referendum. “The referendum outcome is not the one I wished for, but the will of the majority will be respected and parliament will enact legislation for the introduction of divorce,” Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said in a video statement on Sunday. The vote was seen as a test of the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in a country where 72 percent of people say they go to Mass on Sundays and nearly all marriages are held at the altar. The Mediterranean island of 400,000 people is the only country in Europe not to allow divorce. Early results from Saturday’s referendum showed a majority backing divorce of between 52 percent and 54 percent. The Divorce Movement declared victory and the anti-divorce movement conceded. Opposition leader Joseph Muscat had said changing the law was a vote for modernity and a chance for those with broken marriages to start afresh. Gonzi had said divorce offered “no solutions” and called for better preparation before weddings so that the “value of an indissoluble marriage is bequeathed to the young.” Divorce legislation was proposed in July last year by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, a member of Gonzi’s own parliamentary group. It provides for people to become eligible for divorce after four years of separation.
– by Christopher Scicluna in Valletta
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Witness – Searching for reforms in King Abdullah’s Saudi Arabia
Ulf Laessing was Reuters chief correspondent in Saudi Arabia until last week when the government terminated his accreditation over coverage of recent protests in the kingdom. He was based in the Saudi capital Riyadh since 2009 and previously worked in Kuwait after joining Reuters in his native Germany in 1997. In the following piece he describes the little progress of reforms launched by King Abdullah often titled as “reformist” in the Western press.
By Ulf Laessing
RIYADH (Reuters) – The moment my wife and I left our apartment compound in downtown Riyadh, a jeep screeched to a halt in front of us and a bearded man stepped out. “Is this your wife? I want to give you some advice. Don’t let her wear makeup,” said the religious policeman, dressed in a traditional white robe. “If she uses makeup, other men will only look at her,” he added, raising his forefinger to stress his point and staring hard at me.
A woman wearing makeup or not completely covering up would go unnoticed in most parts of the world, but in Saudi Arabia it can be enough to get you detained for “immoral behaviour.” Encountering religious police roaming the streets to uphold the kingdom’s values of an austere version of Sunni Islam was one of the most striking experiences of living in Saudi Arabia. It was also a reminder that the Gulf Arab state remains a deeply conservative country despite hype in the West praising King Abdullah for reforms such as overhauling outdated state education or liberalising the economy.
“Moderate” and “reformer” are regular descriptions of Abdullah by Western diplomats, intellectuals and business people since he took office in 2005. Some even call him “liberal.” But during my two years as Reuters correspondent in the Saudi capital, I did not notice any changes in a strict social code banning unrelated men or women from mixing and forcing shops and restaurants to close five times a day for prayers.
In fact, I felt the country got slightly more conservative, not just because of religious police cops roaming the streets.
Handouts dash Saudi king’s reformer reputation
Saudi King Abdullah’s lavish social handouts and a boost to security and religious police, but no political change, leaves his prized reputation as a reformist in tatters, analysts say.
The king, believed to be 87, has carefully crafted an image as a cautious reformer in a country ruled by a single generation of his brothers as absolute monarchs for nearly six decades. But faced with unrest rocking much of the Arab world, he is playing the old game of buying support from key sectors of society to keep family rule as it is.
In a rare TV address to the nation last Friday, the king announced the new spending but gave no concessions on rights in a country where public space is dominated by the royal family, political parties are banned and there is no elected parliament.
There was no word either on a much anticipated reshuffle of a cabinet whose main posts are held by senior princes, some of whom have been in their jobs for more than four decades in the key U.S. ally and world’s top oil exporter. “I was expecting perhaps a cabinet reshuffle but unfortunately he focussed on paying money and he has increased the role of the religious establishment,” said Tawfiq al-Saif, a leading intellectual among minority Saudi Shi’ite Muslims.
“He is returning to the policy of the late King Fahd in the 1980s when money and religion was the only tool of the government,” he said.
Measures to raise benefits for the unemployed, add jobs and increase the minimum wage were accompanied by the creation of 60,000 security positions and more money for the religious police who keep a firm grip on personal behaviour. And in a sign Saudi’s ruling elite will not tolerate dissent, Abdullah said the media must respect the Sunni clerics who oversee the application of sharia law in the Islamic state.
NRead the full analysis by Jason Benham and Amena Bakr here.
Watching Bahrain, Saudi Shi’ites demand reforms
When Saudi Shi’ites mark the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad, meeting at mosques and exchanging sweets is only part of what’s going on. The Shi’ites also are testing the tolerance of Sunni clerics and taking advantage of reforms introduced by King Abdullah that allow them greater freedom to practise their branch of Islamic faith.
For the hundreds of Shi’ites who gathered on Sunday in the rundown eastern town of Awwamiya, near the Gulf coast, this year is special. Just an hour’s drive and a bridge away is the island nation of Bahrain, usually a place where Saudis go for a bit of weekend fun but now the scene of a majority Shi’ite uprising that is challenging the minority Sunnis’ grip on power.
“You need to demand reforms and start popular movements if you want to achieve something. If you don’t do anything the government will not act,” said Mohammed, a young man who, like others, gave only his first name.
“You need to make use of the fact that the regime is in a weak position,” he said, referring to anti-government protests sweeping across the Arab world after popular uprisings toppled the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt.
Mohammed used the Arabic word ‘nizam’ for ‘regime’ — the same word shouted by thousands of Egyptian protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to demand change. Normally fear of landing in jail would curb such talk, but television images of protests and rapid Internet communication are making people think about what might be possible.
Read the full report here. Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld
Germany opens first Reform synagogue since WW2
Germany opened its first new Reform synagogue since the Holocaust on Sunday, marking a major step in the revival of Reform Judaism, which traces its roots to the country. The synagogue in the northern city of Hameln was built on the foundation of its predecessor, which was destroyed by the Nazis during the “Kristallnacht” pogrom in 1938. The congregation received financial backing for the synagogue primarily from local and state government.
“It’s incredible that, after the Shoah, in Germany a synagogue could be built with money that came from German political organizations,” the congregation’s president Rachel Dohme told Reuters. The city’s reform congregation was founded in 1997 and has some 200 members, the majority of which are from the former Soviet Union.
Reform, or liberal, Judaism was pioneered in Germany by Israel Jacobson two centuries ago.
Read the full story by Eric Kelsey here.
Top Islamic finance scholars oppose bid to improve corporate governance
Two of the Gulf’s top Islamic finance scholars spoke out against efforts to reduce the number of boards they and their peers are allowed to sit on, challenging industry attempts to improve corporate governance. Bankers in the emerging $1 trillion Islamic finance industry say the concentration of hundreds of board positions in the hands of a few sharia scholars leads to conflicts of interest and hampers appropriate supervision.
Bahrain-based industry body AAOIFI is drafting rules to regulate scholars’ shareholdings and the number of sharia supervisory boards a single scholar can sit on. “There is no need to limit the number of boards,” Sheikh Nizam Yaquby, one of the most revered Islamic finance scholars in the Gulf Arab region, told a conference in Manama. He sits on several dozen sharia supervisory boards.
He said there was no similar criticism of other groups such as lawyers or accounting firms working for several banks: “Why should (sharia scholars) not be treated like other professionals in the field?”
Bankers say reforms launched by AAOIFI will likely fall short of expectations as scholars governing themselves are unlikely to cut into their own source of income, unless central banks force them to do so.
Islamic finance seems overwhelmed by tighter supervision of sharia advisers
Islamic finance is toughening supervision of its powerful religious advisers as shareholders worldwide demand increasing accountability from directors, but key reforms may do little to boost independence and transparency.
Key to these challenges is the small number of scholars advising a growing number of banks on increasingly complex financing structures, raising issues such as transparency of rulings, independence of advisers and how to groom new scholars.
But varying sharia standards, different regulatory approaches and vast disparities in development across markets stand in the way of reforms to streamline and boost supervision, which are critical to growth.
“Investors want to see the same degree of responsibility and professionalism going into sharia compliance as they expect from Moody’s for credit ratings and S&P for market information,” said John Sandwick, a Geneva-based Islamic asset and wealth manager.
Sharia advisers control the reins of the $1 trillion industry through their rulings on whether financial products satisfy Islamic law. Their role has been in focus following a recent attempt by Kuwait’s Investment Dar (TIDK.KW) to challenge its sharia board’s decision.
Some say regulating the issuance of fatwa would stifle ijtihad, or scholars’ reasoned judgment, and could stunt the growth of an industry which is still trying to come to terms with established conventional banking concepts like derivatives.
Islamic banking being a new concept is quiet complex, which Shariya standard will they adopt, the one convenient to them?
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