As I said here last week, while most of the mainstream media and Western governments were hailing the victory of democracy in Tunisia. "Fall of secular regime paves the way for Islamic parties," from Reuters, January 23 (thanks to C. Cantoni):
REUTERS - For years they were jailed or exiled. They were excluded from elections, banned from politics, and played no visible role in Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution. But in the brave new world of multi-party politics, moderate Islamists could attract more followers than their secular rivals like to admit.And the downfall of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's police state may leave Tunisia open to infiltration by extremists from neighbouring Algeria, where war between authorities and Islamists has killed 200,000 people in the last two decades.
"The Islamist movement was the most oppressed of all the opposition movements under Ben Ali. Its followers are also much greater in number than those of the secular opposition," said Salah Jourchi, a Tunisian expert on Islamic movements.
'Its effect could be large'
Secularism has been strictly enforced in Tunisia since before its independence from France in 1956. Habib Bourguiba, the independence leader and long-time president, was a nationalist who considered Islam a threat to the state.
Indeed, in 1987, when Ben Ali pushed aside Bourguiba, he briefly released Islamists from jail and allowed them to run in the 1989 elections. The results surprised and worried Ben Ali.
Ennahda, or Renaissance, Tunisia's largest Islamist movement, officially won 17 percent of the vote, coming second to the ruling party.
Jourchi said there was widespread electoral fraud and the real figure could have been closer to 30-35 percent. That compared with a combined total of three percent for all the secular opposition parties that ran in the same elections.
Ben Ali reversed his policy, banned Ennahda, jailed its followers and cracked down harshly on anyone showing any tendency towards Islamism. Ennahda's leader Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi was exiled to London the same year.
Ennahda's renaissance?
Ghannouchi, who declared his desire to return to Tunisia soon after Ben Ali's ouster, has yet to set a date.
But now that Tunisia's interim government has agreed an amnesty law that allows banned parties and frees political prisoners, Ghannouchi could return any day.
Husain Jazeery, an Ennahda spokesman exiled in Paris, said the movement would take part in parliamentary elections expected to be held in the next six months but would field no candidate for the presidency because "we do not want to rule the country".
"We are a party that does not want to rule but wants to take part alongside all the other groups and to do so responsibly," he said by telephone.
"Any exclusion of Ennahda would be a return to the old regime and that would be impossible in the current situation ... regardless of internal or external pressures."
Despite the state's crackdown on Ennahda, the movement is considered moderate and could draw widespread support....
Democracy means letting people decide. They can decide to support anyone they want. It's their country, their govenment, and they will suffer the consequences of their decisions - right or wrong.
As much as I fear the consequences, I support freedom and democracy. If the people don't decide - then who does? No one has the right to decide my future except me. The same goes for every person on earth.
http://whyyouexist.blogspot.com
Like a canary in a cage without a door, Muslims cannot leave the prison of Islam.
Sarcastically laughing at the MSM or anyone else for even suggesting that Tunis will not turn to Islamic courts etc ... pure democracy+Muslims=Islamic savagery.
Islam: Sick boy Muhammad's grand lie.
THE treacherous spiritual falsehood of all times.
The EXACT opposite of what it claims to be.
Green Bay makes it through!... Go Steelers!...
Unless there is a cultural and philosophical non-theocratic counterpoint to Islam (the given influence of Mohammadism which satuates any "Muslim" country), "democracy" in such places is a choice between an "alien" influence (Marxist, etc.) and the "familiar" Islamic one.
In this instance, the result of a "democratic" election by an Islamo-brainwashed populace is:
One man, one vote, one time.
And Islam, thus "democratically" entrenched, decrees that no further "democratic" votes are needed, or allowed.
Interesting thoughts, profitsbeard...
But there is no reforming Islam...
And too think otherwise is pure uninformed idiocy or contrived evil...
I am an ex-Muslim with a website:
http://www.considerationsofacanadianex-muslim.org
This so-called moderate Islamic party is a a wolf in sheep's clothing, moderate Islam doesn't exist, it's an oxymoron. I fear for all the other Muslim countries nearby and for Europe as well. No revolution in an Islamic country has ever brought freedom and democracy and with the present situation bloody Islam is getting stronger by the day.
Congratulations Wellington...your Steelers have done it again! What a great game it was. I'll bet you are on cloud nine old buddy.
Give muslim democracy and freedoms and guess what they do? Yes, as in Gaza and many other Muslim run countries they elect islamists into power. So what do these islamists hate besides kefir and apostates? Democracy and freedom of course.
Right now we robbery have all western democracies praising this turn to democracy while giving the boot to a corrupt dictator. The new ayatollah waits in the wings in London.
MY bad, this "Yes, as in Gaza and many other Muslim run countries"., should be,"Yes, as in Gaza and many other muslim run countries".
Maybe now the Liberals will take a closer look at why Maher Arar was denied entry to the USA at JFK Airport from his flight out of Tunisia after he fled Canada with his family to live there with relatives tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Michael Moore show kiss the graves of every dead soldier that died on the fields of Europe in WW2 to give him the freedom and rights to make a Movie to bash his own Nation and mock the hard worker wealthy people that his is now one of them.
Maher Arar now wants canada to help him get a Visa to vacation in Saudi Arabia and get his son emersed in Whahhabi islam and do his Haaj journey. Arar dropped his Lawsuit against the USA once he suckered canada into giving him $10.4 million to avoid his long dragged out Court case for the Lawfare when CAIR and Sheem Khan pushed for a $400'000'000.00 Suit for alleged harm that was never proven to have been cause by canada.
Today we now have that weasel Omar Khadr in GITMO Bay who has sent the message to Lawyers in canada that he too wants to follow maher Arar's example and use Lawfare for a $10'000'000.00 lawsuit because canada didn't bail out his sorry Jihadist a$$ as a Terrorist waging war outside the Geneva Convention rules to be afforded the POW status since he did noy wear a uniform or belong to a recognized Military force that signed on to the Convention.
At least the Nazis had the guts to wear badges and Uniforms to show they were fascists, but the Islamofascists are gutless cowards in civilain clothes that go after unarmed Civilains as if it show islams Might and Muhammeds power during his violent crusades to spread islam by the sword.
Don't let Maher Arar or his children onto US soil because it will trigger another lawfare case of Al-Qeada based lies to alleged torture or islamophobia which CAIR would love to explpoit in the Mosques to the useful idiots that fear questioning the Imams or pro-hamas Muslim Brotherhood thugs in the USA.
Sorry , it should have read that 'Michael moore should kiss the"
Typo.
Religion of Peas wrote:
Democracy means letting people decide. They can decide to support anyone they want. It's their country, their govenment, and they will suffer the consequences of their decisions - right or wrong.
As much as I fear the consequences, I support freedom and democracy. If the people don't decide - then who does? No one has the right to decide my future except me. The same goes for every person on earth.
...............................
With respect, RoP, many decent people who believe in "freedom" and "democracy" make this error.
Without safeguards for minorities and, especially, the individual, there can be no real freedom and democracy.
What you are describing instead is nothing but *mob rule*.
The problem in these countries is that the only opposition force that has the widespread institutional support to take power is the Muslim Brotherhood, which in this case is the "Renaissance Party". But it applies to every other country in the Middle East. If you allow democratic elections you're essentially ceding these nation's to the Muslim Brotherhood and its satellites.
When I think of Body Shop scents like Jasmine, Lavender, Acacia, et al, (which is only when I stop outside a shop in the mall while my wife is inside shopping for them) the last thing on my mind is Muslims. If they have to make revolutions sound fashionable nowadays, be it the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the Orange Revolution in (the?) Ukraine, etc, go right ahead, but please, do we have to put up w/ these labels in front of Muslims uprisings as well, like the Cider revolution in Lebanon or now the Jasmine revolution in Tunisia? Will people next be calling the Darfur killings the Peach genocide or the situation in Somalia the Cherryblossom uprisings?
Probably best to measure these countries by the amount of grief they cause the planet........Tunisia might have been a brutal secular regime but I have not been aware of any Islamic training camps there or 'Little Tunis' on the streets of the UK
It's only brutality that keeps the galopping Islamism in check. Look at where the tolerant, softly softly, welcoming approach have got Holland, Sweden etc. The old regime might not have been "kind" to the Islamists, but are they kind to women, little girls, Christians, Gays, all Westeners?
Hmmmpffff !!!