Tunisians Better Have Fun While They Can

The people of Tunisia are having a well merited time of fun, frolic, and freedom--freedom won after fifty years of more or less repressive autocratic regimes.  Unfortunately, the fun police are not only lurking in the wings but actually flowing back home with the intention of blowing the whistle on both fun and freedom in the country.

While the long exiled leader of Tunisia's largest Islamist oriented political party, Rashid Ghannouchi, states that he is no Ayatollah Khomeini and his Renaissance Party (Ennahdha) does not advocate political Islam, violent or otherwise, there are others in the field which are not so inclined.  Faced with competition from the "Left" of Islamism, there is a very real probability that Ghannouchi will trim his party's sails to better catch the prevailing winds.  As Crane Brinton pointed out in his classic treatment of revolutions, there is a built in trajectory to ever more extreme positions in revolutions, or, to use the correct term, offensive insurgencies.

Make no mistake about it, the so-called Jasmine Revolution was an offensive insurgency in that the goal has been the total replacement of the status quo government and its supporting elites.  The goal of the Tunisians in the streets constantly became more totalistic in nature, culminating in the demand that all vestiges of the old ruling party be removed from government and politics.  While this sort of political cleansing is expectable and perhaps beneficial in the longer term, it leaves a vacuum in its immediate wake.

The political movements espousing political Islam were a particular target not only of Ben Ali but his predecessor.  Ben Ali bent every effort to expunging these movements after the election of 1988 in which the Renaissance Party won at least seventeen percent of the votes in an election which resembled one conducted by the old Daley machine in Chicago for its honesty.  Many prominent figures in the movements disappeared into the maws of the internal security machine while even more sought safety in exile.  This did not mean that the movements were destroyed but rather that they were forced underground to wait a more propitious day.

That day has arrived.  It is now safe for the advocates of political Islam to emerge from the shadows, to return from foreign sanctuaries.  It is implicit in the situation extant today that the advocates of political Islam are better organized, more committed to their agendas and goals, better prepared in all respects to compete for power in the post-overthrow environment.  To think that they will be less than absolute in their pursuit of power is to deny reality.

On the surface Tunisia has been more secular, more "Western," more prosperous, than its North African neighbors--or the Arab and Muslim states generally.  Tunisians are better educated, seemingly more tolerant, apparently more oriented to "Western" norms and values than those living elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim states.  The appearances have always been seductively appealing to Western governments, Western elites, Western media.

Importantly, the appearances may be every bit as deceptive as was the facade of Ben Ali's government as an efficiently repressive one.  The ease with which the ancien regime was displaced showed dramatically just how great a gap existed between appearance and reality.  The danger now is the same gulf exists and will be demonstrated just as dramatically between the appearance of "Western" secularism, tolerance, educated sophistication, and the reality of Islamism.

The Tunisians are faced by a challenge far greater than electoral reforms or economic development.  They are faced by a fundamental choice between the message of political Islam and its alternatives including but not limited to one of secularism.

One need not be overly pessimistic to bet that the Tunisians will eventually opt for the Islamist vision of an "Islamic Republic" on the lines of Pakistan.  They will do this because Islam is central to the lives of many, perhaps most, Tunisians, even those with advanced "Western" style education.  The power of the message may rest on Islam qua Islam but gains its real power from the subtext of fear and hate.

In this regard it must never be overlooked that the basic theological content of Islam is fear--fear of displeasing the deity, fear of spending eternity in hell (no religion comes close to Islam in its pornographic treatment of the torments of the damned,) fear of not being a member in good standing of the community, the Ummah.

The religion offer antidotes for the pervasive message of fear.  One of these is explicit in the name of the religion: Islam.  The word means submission, submission to the will of the deity as interpreted by the clerics.  The other counter to pervasive fear is hate.  Muslims are called upon to hate the infidels, to hate the apostates, to hate the omnipresent "others."  The necessity of hate will exist until every last human being has submitted to the will of the deity, the dictates of the Prophet, and the will of the clerics.

Islam holds that not until every last person on Earth has pounded his forehead in the dirt and raised his posterior to the Deity will any Muslim be safe, secure, able to breathe free and easy, able to enjoy certainty.  Until that day Muslims must live in fear and counter that fear by submitting to the authority of the cleric as well as hating all who are branded apostates, infidels, or otherwise being "worthy of death."  It is against this background that the other, plentiful fears of quotidian life must be placed.

Advocates and practitioners of political Islam maintain that by embracing Islam, by following Shariah, by submitting to the will of the deity as put forth by clerics, the great fears of displeasing the deity and of going to hell can be addressed along with the lesser fears of daily life.  The full acceptance of the requirements of Islam will assure that every individual can feel merged with the community, that every individual will live in the dignity and respect of the community of believers, that every person will find economic and social security, that the equality of belief will render nugatory the bogus equality of both democracy and the rule of (man made) law.

The picture of life in a true Islamic republic is paradisaical.  The ideal Islamic republic as portrayed in, say, the writings of assorted Pakistani clerics, is one of equality, security, harmony, justice.  In all essential respects the Islamic republican ideal is akin to the Perfect World described by various Communist theoreticians.  And, again like the Workers' Paradises limned by Communist philosophers, the Paradise-on-Earth descriptions put forth by advocates of political Islam fail the test of application in the real world.

Tunisians would be well-advised to consider carefully just what centuries of Islam have produced.  To what extent has the great human treasury of knowledge been enhanced by contributions from Muslims living in Muslim majority states?  What great technological or scientific discoveries or innovations have been produced by Muslims living in Muslim majority states in recent centuries?  What new, useful, social or political or economic systems have emerged from the minds of Muslims living in Muslim majority countries?  What inventions?  What great works of creative genius?  How many ideas or words have come from Muslim tongues or pens to inspire people around the world regardless of religion?

It might be instructive for a Tunisian contemplating the promises of Islamists to ask whether or not Islam per se--with its emphasis on submission, on not thinking for oneself but rather following the cues of clerical leaders--can produce a creative, dynamic, innovative society?  Is not the groveling submission demanded by Islam generally and political Islam in particular antipodal to the needs of creativity and innovation?

Is it possible, a Tunisian might ask, for a religion or a political movement predicated on religion which has fear and hate as its stock in trade able to produce anything positive?  Is the combination of submission, fear, and hate the perfect mixture to result in killing, destruction, and failure?

These and other similar questions if honestly and objectively answered point in one direction.  The necessity, the absolute imperative, to reject political Islam quickly and finally.  The alternative, following the leaders of political Islam, will result in a future compared to which the recent past under Ben Ali will seem both free and enjoyable.

If Tunisians neglect closely questioning both the Islamists and the religion they purport to represent, the Jasmine Revolution will prove to have been an abject failure.  Worse, it will have been a foreseeable and thus preventable failure.