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WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 -- A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on the government of Tunisia to respect the religious rights of women in that nation who choose to wear an Islamic headscarf, or "hijab."Media reports indicate that Tunisian police are stopping women on the streets and asking them to take off their headscarves and to sign a pledge that they will not wear a scarf again. A 1981 Tunisian law prohibits Islamic attire in schools or government offices. -- from this CAIR press release
Tunisia is a police state, but a police state largely dedicated to constraining Islam. It was Bourguiba and his Destour Party who ruled Tunisia at and since independence. Bourguiba was, when it came to treatment of Infidels, far superior than were other Muslim leaders outside of Turkey. But it remains a state where Islam can only be constrained, and it cannot be constrained in all ways.
Of course Tunisia's foreign policy reflects the general unappeasable hostility toward Israel. Indeed, even Abdelwahhab Meddeb, the Tunisian-born student of Islam who has been so keenly critical of Islam, continues to hold violently anti-Israel views -- those views continue to linger among many who no longer remain loyal Muslims, those attitudes are among the last thing to go), and it was in Tunisia that the PLO found its refuge after Beirut.
But the Tunisian government knows, in a way that Western governments do not, that it has to use force -- hence that "Police state" characterization -- if it wishes to keep the outward and visible signs of Islam on the March (such as the Return of the Hijab, a statement that is clearly and aggressively political in nature) from scaring the secular and demoralizing them. The Tunisian police are doing what in Turkey is, or used to be done, by the army: preserving the regime of constraints on Islam. Call it Kemalism in one country, or Bourguibism in another, or call it merely common sense -- in any case, it requires the kinds of measures that soft-hearted and soft-minded Infidels no doubt deplore. Those Infidels do not understand how powerful and menacing and all-encompassing a belief-system Islam is, and how the West has much to learn from the willingness of those in the Islamic world who, in order to keep this Rasputin under the ice, have to keep knocking it down, tying it up, keeping it from emerging yet again.
And those who mention tourism are also not wrong. The Tunisians are not fools. They do not possess oil and gas. They have all sorts and conditions of tourists. Some can safely be escorted to resorts, where gentils-organisateurs will keep them occupied. But should other Western tourists wander around outside those gated-and-guarded resorts, and see those herds of hijabs and the unsmiling faces under them, then Tunisia becomes less attractive to tourists. And of course the sunbathing hedonistic Infidels are likely targets if Islam has its way. Without the strongest of measures, as is understood in Tunisia as in Turkey, but not yet in London or Paris, unless the strongest of measures of all kinds are relentlessly undertaken, then Islam usually has its way.
Muslim states, for the survival of their own regimes, monitor the mosques to make sure, for example, at the khutbas on Friday, the name of the Ruler or Regime is properly invoked. Mosques are well understood to be centers of political life and subversion. In Turkey, Ataturk went further. Not only does the state monitor the mosques, but a central government authority vets, and often writes, the sermons -- making sure that all those phrases that whip people into a frenzy, and that lead so often in some countries to mob attacks on Infidels (where there are Infidels to attack, as Hindus in Bangladesh who make the mistake of being near a mosque when it lets out) are censored. Tunisia, a well-regulated and "secular" state, uses the methods of the police state when necessary, and also monitors those khutbas with great interest. The natural vocabulary of the sermons of Islam is quite different from the sermons of Christianity. Such words as love, mercy, faith, hope, and charity are not exactly common in Qur'an or Hadith. Someone should get out his trusty computer and perform a lexical analysis of key terms in both Bible and Qur'an, and compare, compare, compare.
Shall we bring Democracy to Tunisia too, so that the quasi-enlightened despotism there can be overthrown and something a little more "democratic" can be achieved? What does the Administration that brings "freedom" in the spirit of the Little Engine That Could that brings toys and good things to eat to the boys and girls on the other side of the mountain think of that?
Posted by Hugh at October 19, 2006 11:33 PM
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Amazing how a little place like Tunisia is smart enough to keep watch on those wacky imams and yet the West does not. The West doesn't even do the minimum on checking out those mosques. Tunisia aint perfect but given the fact that Islam and democracy are totally incompatible this is the best we can hope for from an Islamic country.
Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 19, 2006 11:49 PM
Again different treatment of Islam and Communism. No European country or US offered asilum ot Trotsky, sympathy was spared on Communists prosecuted for being too Communist.
Posted by: Terry Crane at October 20, 2006 1:36 AM
Only islamic states semm to understand that the only way to confine radical Islam is through a "Police state" which practises what "the weak democratic westerners" call totalitarian oppression".
Whilst the human rights organisations bleat and are appalled , they are unable to understand that this is the only method which can subdue the fanatic Mullahs.
The Muslim extremists understood this long ago and that is why they target weak democracies such as Holland Sweden etc etc.
This is why the Bush administrations stated aims for "democracy' in Iraq is ABSOLUTE FOLLY.
To these extremist democracy is like pinewood to termites. That should by now be obvious to everyone.
at October 20, 2006 6:21 AM
I have a question. What is the point of spending so much time and effort on trying to quell a fundamentalist uprising? Why not implement a less radical, and a national form of the religion? Like the way the English got rid of the dominance of Roman Catholicism that was holding her development back? (a happy accident)
After all, they have managed to social-engineer a whole generation of pudding-heads in this country (some of which now write for our daily newspapers). Why can't they do it in Tunisia?
I've seen it written here that just by it's very nature, Islam cannot be tempered, just controlled. But I find it such a shame that we are finding virtue in a police state, or that we are hoping that Islam will wipe itself out by virtue of making war against itself.
I don't want to see mass killing, nor anyone subjugated just to make sure that it doesn't become my problem. Is it a disease to be contained, or a disease to be cured? I for one would like to think that we tried, even though the effort and sacrifice was great. I don't think that humans are slaves (or should be enslaved) to a state of hypnosis. So if Islam cannot make the necessary changes to itself in order to live in peace with those of another belief, then surely it is the duty of those that can force a rectification to do so - for everybodys sake.
Posted by: FREE LEE
at October 20, 2006 8:17 AM
The only permanent solution to the problem of Islam is conversion out of the religion. While it is illegal to proselytize in most Islamic nations, this does occur, either openly or under cover. The news about it is spotty but encouraging. There are certainly millions, if not hundreds of millions, who are only Muslims out of fear. It may be that the return of the southern and eastern shores of the Med to the Cross is the only way to deal with the problem. How this is to be accomplished, I have no idea, but it is worth supporting, for the sake of all those souls bound by Islam. That the Bible is banned in Saudi Arabia itself proves that the Islamic authorities know there is a danger that they will lose their flocks if they have free will.
Posted by: Quijybo at October 20, 2006 8:51 AM
Hughes,
I said it in other entries, the proto-secular countries of North Africa all of them use the stick. And they use it very hard. The stick falls hard on the heads of dissidents, it does not matter what kind of dissent. Any group threatening the regime is dealt with swiftly and hard. Muslims hardliners who want to shake things know this. The regimes are speaking their language. The rules of the authoritarian game apply to them too. There is no need for a discourse on democratic reforms in Tunisia or elsewhere. That's the main problem with the rhetorics we hear from the Western governments, whose experimental debacle in Iraq is all for us to taste. Genuine democratic reform in these countries means free elections, free elections mean sweeping wins of Islamist parties. I mean land slide wins for the would be Jihadists and Salafists. The French Revolution had its reign of Robespierrian terror. Those of the Islamists would be exponential terror. The masses were marginalized for a long time by the same secular rulers, why jeopardize the iron rule of the proto-kamalists. The masses do not deserve democracy, they deserve the goulags.
Posted by: sammish at October 20, 2006 9:00 AM
"I find it such a shame that we are finding virtue in a police state, or that we are hoping that Islam will wipe itself out by virtue of making war against itself."
-- from a poster above
The description of Tunisia as a "police state" was intended to startle, for most people have merely some vague idea that Tunisia is one of those soft, "progressive" places. "Progressive" in some Shari'a-departing sense it may be for a Muslim country, but the means necessary to assure the legal and to some degree even the social equality of women has required a one-party state (the party being that of Bourguiba and his heirs and assigns), and Ben Ali is no democrat, but he knows how to keep what some like tocall "islamists" (that is, unswerving full-fledged Believers in Islam) in check. In the same way, Kemalism in Turkey depends in the end on the army, and on the army's willingness and ability to intervene. Sentimentality about "democracy" by Infidels will not do. Look at Tunisia. Look at Turkey. Look at the methods employed in Central Asia, including the destruction of mosques, in the 1920s and 1930s, and look at the results in such places as Kazakhstan, where a genuinely secular population (I'm talking about Kazakhs, not ethnic Russians, Volga Germans, ethnic Koreans, Jews, or any of the other peoples represented in Kazakhstan) was allowed to come into being.
No one here has written about "Islam wiping itself out." It's impossible. What can happen, however, is that the Western world, on the defensive along with many other non-Western Infidels (see India, see Thailand, see the Sudan, see Nigeria), can be sure to do nothing to discourage, and everything to exploit, the natural fissures -- ethnic, sectarian, and economic -- that can be identified within the Camp of Islam. That is quite different from some supposed intention to have "Islam wipe itself out."
Posted by: Hugh at October 20, 2006 9:07 AM
So Islam might not wipe itself out, but what are the fissures going to lead to? A damn good mutual hand-bagging?
Again, cannot the effort taken to subjugate people be spent in engineering a change of mindset? A few destroyed mosques does not take away the idea of a mosque. Why cannot the idea be tackled and eliminated?
Posted by: FREE LEE at October 20, 2006 9:25 AM
Hughes,
It is the same story, same scenario, same end result whether the country is secular (progressist as you like to call it) or in the fold of Jihadist Islam. It is bloody and despotic regardless. But I would rather live in "progressive" Ben Ali's Tunisia than any Mullah's ideal society.
The dilemma with secular progressist rulers that are trying to keep in check the Jihadist ideology is the fact that they are doing it to save their necks from being slit not to save the civil society from the obscurantist detencies of the Jihadist ideology or for some enlightened universal democratic ideals. They do not care about these values because these values are not and never will be part of their culture. That's the crux of the matter. These countries had all the time in the world to change things at the deeper level but they failed miserably. Islam is afterall the recognized state religion in Tunisia, it is only controlled, which is good perhaps. It is far too late to change things appropriatly. It is time for the West to recognize differences between types of evils, and admit that some evil rulers are far more acceptable than others. And that's the whole truth.
Posted by: sammish at October 20, 2006 10:31 AM
Wild and absurd talk of "wiping out Islam" at the very moment when adherents of Islam have been remarkably successful at settling, by the tens of millions, deep within the Bilad al-kufr, or Lands of the Infidels, behind those borders which Muslims are taught to regard as enemy lines, the lines demarcating the Dar al-harb, will do no good.
Intelligent discussion of ways to constrain the power of those who, logically prompted by the tenets of Islam, conduct Jihad through whatever instruments are available and prove effective, should not be mocked because such discussion will not lead to that impossibility, "wiping out Islam." Deprived of revenue, or with revenues greatly diminished, the forces of Jihad become less potent. This can be done both by ceasing to provide the disguised Jizyah of foreign aid now foolishly given by Infidels to Muslims, and by working in every conceivable way to diminish the use of oil, and hence of OPEC revenues, beginning with American taxes on gasoline that will be closer to what is imposed in Europe, subsidies to mass transit, and large-scale financing by the government, directly and indirectly, to develop other sources of energy. Deprived of the ability to move freely in the Western world, no longer able to obtain access to Western education (especially in the sciences, where dual-use knowledge is a problem), Western medicine, Western technology of every kind (what satellite, put up by whom, does Al-Jazeera rely on?).
The large-scale invasion and conquest of a largely-Muslim country should not be repeated. It is folly, a squandering of resources. It need not be done. Keep those states deprived of certain weapons of military use, and work at the same time to limit or undo the power of the other, equally or even more dangerous weapons of Jihad -- the money weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, demographic conquest. This is something the American government appears not to have paid sufficient -- or any -- attention to, and very likely a withdrawal from Iraq will bring some to their senses, able to see more clearly that the war being waged against us does not require these large and costly -- in lives, money, materiel, morale -- movements of troops hither and yon.
So Islam will not be "wiped out." But it can be reduced to a manageable threat. And the spectacle of internecine conflict, a reflection of the essential violence that arises out of societies suffused with Islam unless ruling despotic regimes hold things firmly in check, will be a lesson for Infidels, watching closely, everywhere.
Posted by: Hugh at October 20, 2006 10:43 AM
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