For several years, 78 year-old Hassan pushed for his village to get a mosque. His dream finally came true after the revolution, and he started praying in the new mosque every day.

For several years, 78 year-old Hassan pushed for his village to get a mosque. His dream finally came true after the revolution, and he started praying in the new mosque every day.

A month ago, however, he stopped attending. “Like other worshippers”, he explained, “I’ve hated praying collectively because the Imam has been appointed by a militant group and his sermons are often political and takfiri, (when one Muslim accuses another of apostasy).  Anyone who criticizes such acts is asked to leave the mosque and prevented from entering it, so I’ve decided to go to another mosque miles away, to perform the Friday prayer.”

Swords and daggers

Hassan is not the only one who has boycotted the mosque. The tensions and violence that broke out between Salafist groups and the Ennahda Movement groups last Ramadan, dismayed a great number of worshippers.

Conflicts flared between both parties about which is worthier to lead prayer, in at least seven mosques across Tunisia.  The tensions escalated to the point where verbal insults, swords, daggers, sticks and paralyzing gas were used.

Jamal Kahlawi, a member of the Holy Koran Preservation Society and and an Imam in Ghardimaou—170 km from Tunis— was allegedly forced to step down under pressure by members of the Ennahda Movement because Kahlawi refused to serve their project after he discovered that a package of political statements had been distributed to the worshippers in the Great Mosque.  When he refused to use the mosque for political purposes, he said, a campaign was launched against him until he had to step down, even though worshippers supported him.

“In the middle of Ramadan”, said Kahlawi, “when I was on the platform preparing to lead in the prayer, someone stood up and asked me not to do so. I got off under duress, especially after pressures increased. However, worshippers always supported me and they made me become their Imam once again,” Kahlawi added.

According to Kahlawi, Ennahda supporters didn’t like this, so they allegedly launched a campaign accusing him of belonging to the dissolved Rally Party. “One night in Ramadan”, Kahlawi recalled, “there was a confrontation between the Ennahda supporters and Salafists who insisted that I remain their Imam. When I completely failed to calm the atmosphere, I used the Hadith and Koranic verses, but I failed, so I asked everyone in the name of Muhammad and the Koran to sit down, but no one did except for me.”

Forty-four year old Riad, said: “I’ve boycotted the mosque and now I prefer praying at home for two reasons.  First, when I look inside the mosques, I basically only see long beards and shirts. I started to feel as if I had been in an eastern Asian country, in addition to the accompanying practices that reminded me of a Jihad channel in the Arabian Peninsula.  The second is related to what I consider exaggeration in prayer like long introductions prior to the initiation of the prayer and repeated crying when prostrating, in particular. I’ve preferred praying at home away from such weird views”, he said.

Sheikh Omar has boycotted prayer at mosques due to the “large and frequent movement to raise funds in mosques at the request of the Imam after the end of each prayer, except for the dawn prayer.”

“The number of worshippers at the noon prayer during the former regime was larger than now,” Omar said. “Fundraising is made without receipts”, he noted and added that “the cells spread inside the mosque are too many that I no longer feel that I’m inside a mosque.”

An employee at the Ministry of Religious Affairs, who preferred anonymity, said that as a religious preacher he could no longer communicate with worshippers or Salafists and that every now and then he became afraid because he felt his life was at risk.