The Constitutional Drafting Committee of NCA has incorporated a chapter criminalizing the assault on religious sanctities in the initial draft of the constitution, which tries to find an imaginary balance between two contradictory concepts, such as freedom of creativity and respect of sanctities.
Relativity of the sanctities
The Constitutional Drafting Committee of NCA has incorporated a chapter criminalizing the assault on religious sanctities in the initial draft of the constitution, which tries to find an imaginary balance between two contradictory concepts, such as freedom of creativity and respect of sanctities.
Relativity of the sanctities
The draft constitution includes many references to the Islamic religion (its basic principles, the religion of the president, criminalizing the assault on holy sites, etc.). The Islamic Ennahda Movement representatives (89 out of 217) have taken advantage of sporadic events to prove that the people’s sanctities are at risk thanks to absolute freedom of creativity.
The controversy about the limits of creative freedom has come to a climax, especially after the Al-Abdlyah incident in June 2012, when a group of plastic artists, in the context of the Arts Spring Festival in Al-Abdlyah Palace (northern suburb of Tunis), organized an exhibition featuring drawings and sculptures that did not please militants, who considered the exhibition a provocation of religious feelings and an assault on sanctities.
Afterwards, large violent incidents erupted, and positions varied between proponents viewing those paintings as artistic creation and opponents deeming them as an assault on sanctities. The statement of the Ennahda Movement on June 12 adopted the second position, as it considered artworks to be “willful infringement of the sanctities of the Tunisian people and disregarding of the most basic moral boundaries in the name of freedom of expression and freedom of artistic creation.” The movement politically legislated a new kind of censorship on freedom of creativity and limited it by what it considered sacred for the Tunisian people.
Violence to protect sanctities
Through this position, radical groups, especially Salafists, found sufficient grounds to appoint themselves as violent moral policemen. They used force to stop a theatrical show by artist Lutfi Abdali – which was presented dozens of times in the past – claiming that it violated sanctities. In addition, a concert of Shiite orchestra was stopped in Kairouan.
In Kairouan, the intellectual and philosopher, Yusuf Siddeeq was prevented from giving a lecture. Even Abdulfattah Moro, an Islamist with open discourse, was attacked by an extremist, during a seminar entitled “Tolerance in Islam”. Siddeeq and Moro were accused of not being Muslims.
Providing for the criminalization of attacks on sanctities, the draft constitution was viewed by many as paving the way for suppression of freedom of creativity, since it is difficult to define sanctities and control their concept.
In this context, the Ennahda Movement representatives in NCA have presented its definition of sanctities, namely: “God, messengers, prophets, holy books, the Sunna, the Kaaba, mosques, churches and synagogues.” They also defined an assault as “Cursing, verbal abuse, derision, mockery, contempt, physical or moral profanation, or personification of God and the messengers.”
The risks involved in such definitions should be noted here as they adopt a broad concept of an assault, to the point that a sarcastic smile may subject one to punishment, let alone caricatures and intellectual articles.
Furthermore, these sanctities mentioned do not include all Muslims; rather, they apply to Sunnis because the Shiite sect allows some of them. And even though the draft constitution guarantees freedom of belief and of religious rites practicing, it protects the three great religions only; favoring them to others.
Goals
Many human rights activists believe that the justifications meant to respect sanctities, provided to limit freedom of creation, are frail. They consider the concern about the “sanctities of the Tunisian people” to be a fictitious conflict aimed at fueling religious instincts for mere electoral purposes. This was made clear through the so-called ‘Advocacy of Sanctities’ Friday, which mostly turned into demonstrations to curse opponents and support the government led by the Ennahda Movement.
Some extremists even publicly demanded that political opponent Ahmed Najib Chebbi, head of the political body of the Republican Party (centrist), was to be killed after showing solidarity with the artists of Al-Abdlyah.
However, political use of sanctities to demonize people is a double-edged sword. The Ennahda Movement earned electoral points and appeared as a guarantor of sanctities holiness after broadcasting the film ‘Persepolis’, which includes clips embodying God, on the Tunisian Nessma TV before the elections. On the other hand, political use of sanctities may be a losing card before the international public opinion and strategic allies who find no substitute for the freedom of creativity. The Ennahda Movement did not request its supporters, for the first time, to protest against the American movie, which insults the Prophet. Nevertheless, some militants stormed the US Embassy and bloody confrontations occurred, killing four people.
Some legists believe that this ranging between the sacred and the freedom of creativity in the draft constitution constitutes a long-term project aimed at undermining the elements of the modern state through establishing a new perception of the Tunisian society based on giving priority to religious dogmatism over freedom of creativity.
Yadh Ben Achour, one of the most important public law scholars in Tunisia, says that the draft constitution is ‘dangerous’ and may lead to the ‘assassination of intellectual freedom’ and pave the way for the “dictatorship of theocracy”.
Other scholars see that the matter is simpler and that the Islamic movement that has succeeded in the recent elections aspires to maintain its seats, through showing sticking, even formal, to Islamic reference, especially after giving up the demand for inclusion of Sharia in the constitution.
Reviving an old controversy
NCA has thus revived an old philosophical controversy in setting boundaries between sacredness and freedom of creativity. A good example is “The Epistle of Forgiveness” by Abu ‘Ala Al-Ma’arri in the fourth century AD, in which he sarcastically imagined the Day of Resurrection, heaven and hell. At the time, this work raised wide controversy about sacredness and freedom of expression; the writer was accused of atheism.
Does art eliminate religions or does religious intolerance and extremism eliminate human creation?
