Group items tagged

The 71-year-old Ghannouchi had previously said he didn’t want to continue as leader of the party, but the shura council, the committee within the party charged with designating a new head, had other plans, as Ghannouchi was selected from a list of 12 proposed names.

speech of invited Hamas leader Khaled Mechaal, who invoked solidarity between Ennahdha’s resistance of former President Ben Ali’s dictatorial rule and his own group’s activities

some younger members of the party indeed held more conservative views that were in conflict with the moderate line so far extolled publicly by the party

In a press conference held Friday, August 8, the Scientific Board of Zitouna Mosque announced they would not allow any government-appointed Imam to ascend the pulpit of Zitouna.

”Some people are not happy about reopening the University of Zitouna. We only aim to educate the younger generation on Islam, especially given recent decades that witnessed attempts to erase our religious identity. Our goal is to guide young people to a moderate version of religion, one that rejects extremism, marginalization, and exclusion,”

“The current education offered by Zitouna does not aspire to our expectations. We demand a quality of education that surpasses the one offered by public schools. Yet, the current committee lacks the vision and the means to do so. It does not represent the real original Islamic teaching that Zitouna was known for,” stated Adel Almi, head of the Moderate Organization for Guidance and Reform. ”Zitouna University can be a way to restore unity to Tunisian society amidst growing friction. Yet, the current committee excludes everyone. They only want blind followers. We should not let this affect the history of the place. We want the mosque to be the way it used to be,’’ stated Mohamed Bel Haj Omar, head of the organization of the Alumni of Zitouna and Supporters.

Some 30,000 people filled a broad boulevard as they marched along a lake in central Benghazi on Friday to the gates of the headquarters of Ansar al-Shariah. "No, no, to militias," the crowd chanted, filling a broad boulevard. They carried banners and signs demanding that militias disband and that the government build up police to take their place in keeping security.

Residents of another main eastern city, Darna, have also begun to stand up against Ansar al-Shariah and other militias. The anti-militia fervor in Darna is notable because the city, in the mountains along the Mediterranean coast north of Benghazi, has long had a reputation as a stronghold for Islamic extremists. During the Gadhafi era, it was the hotbed of a deadly Islamist insurgency against his regime. A significant number of the Libyan jihadists who travelled to Afghanistan and Iraq during recent wars came from Darna. During the revolt against him last year, Gadhafi's regime warned that Darna would declare itself an Islamic Emirate and ally itself with al-Qaida. But now, the residents are lashing out against Ansar al-Shariah, the main Islamic extremist group in the city. "The killing of the ambassador blew up the situation. It was disastrous," said Ayoub al-Shedwi, a young bearded Muslim preacher in Darna who says he has received multiple death threats because has spoken out against militias on a radio show he hosts. "We felt that the revolution is going in vain."

Militiamen have been blamed for a range of violence in Darna. On the same day Stevens killed in Benghazi, a number of elderly Catholic nuns and a priest who have lived in Darna for decades providing free medical services, were attacked, reportedly beaten or stabbed. There have been 32 killings over the past few months, including the city security chief and assassinations of former officers from Gadhafi's military.

Despite the reassurances of articles 40 and 45 as safeguards for women’s rights in Tunisia’s next constitution, women’s rights groups nonetheless still see much work to be done. They fear that article 7, which defines the family as “the nucleus of society” might be used later to limit women’s rights. For example, this could mean limiting women’s right to a divorce in the name of protecting the family. They also argue that article 21, which states that “the right to life is sacred” could be used to ban abortion, which is currently legal in the early stages of pregnancy. More likely, women’s rights groups could use articles 20 and 45 to push for a revision of the inheritance law, which is currently based in Islamic law.

While Western observers praise the current text as the best and most modern constitution in the Arab world, many Tunisians say that they do not want to have the most modern one in the region, but would rather see a good, coherent constitution. As it stands, the text reflects well the antagonisms that shape Tunisian society itself—compared to the 1959 post-independence constitution, which was closer to the elite’s vision of society than to social reality. The new text also highlights Tunisia’s contradictions. It will be for the Constitutional Court, to be established for the first time in the country’s history, to find (for the roughly 150 articles of text) a coherent interpretation that aims to guarantee Tunisians a democratic future.