Thirty-two year-old Khadija Bakourii is not your typical leftist, nor does she fit into any other particular party. She wears a veil, which she fought to wear despite expulsion from college during Ben Ali’s regime and she still wears her hijab during daily protests in Bardo Yard, where she and her cohorts demand that the Islamist Ennahda party step down from government.

Thirty-two year-old Khadija Bakourii is not your typical leftist, nor does she fit into any other particular party. She wears a veil, which she fought to wear despite expulsion from college during Ben Ali’s regime and she still wears her hijab during daily protests in Bardo Yard, where she and her cohorts demand that the Islamist Ennahda party step down from government.

“My decision as a veiled woman to join a leftist party was a shock for some people and it was met with resentment by Islamic activists who were angered because I joined a party they consider a radical, secular party,” said Bakouri, who has been subjected to physical and verbal harassment and targeted by Salafists and Ansar al-Sharia members during protests. 

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Khadija Bakouri, religious and secular

Separation of religion and state

Bakouri is religious yet a staunch secularist. She refuses what she refers to as “the use of religion as a market product” by the Muslim Brotherhood and some preachers. “Members of Leftist parties in Tunisia are not infidels as described by their opponents,” which she said was evidenced by their acceptance of her as a veiled woman in the youth organization of the Workers’ Party,” which she joined in April 2012.

Bakouri claims the Ennahda Movement has utilized religion in a way that serves its interests in order to mobilize a wide sector of the society. “It is time that we develop our ideas in a way that responds to the new transformations witnessed by the world. Islam emerged centuries ago during the days of the Holy Prophet Muhammad,” she says. 

The historical divide

“A Muslim performs his religious duties and an Islamist uses the Islamic religion to impose on others his extremist ideas,” says Bakouri noting that since their emergence in the 1970s, the Islamists slowly created two cateogories of Tunisians: Muslims and infidels. 

“The members of the Ennahda Movement do not believe in dialogue and democracy. They used violence and bombs to reach power instead of the peaceful method such as those used by the leftist organizations in ending the autocracy rule of Presidents Bourguiba and Ben Ali.

And the Islamists continued to use violence even after they reached power. They formed lawless militias and supported the Salifist stream to use it when the need arises, especially during political crises in order to cover their failure in handling the country’s affairs.

We see all these assassinations and bombings happening but we don’t see the Salafis coming out to support Allah and the Prophet Muhammad, except when we demand the dissolution of the government and holding it accountable.”

I was forced to take off the veil

Being yanked between her religion and poltical beliefs is an old struggle for Bakouri. She was forced to take off her veil in 2008, fearing the political police under Ben Ali’s secularist government.

She remembers how the administration of the college prevented her from passing the French literature exam and asked the university’s security to prevent her from entering the university until the end of the exams period.

“The secretary of the head of the French department expelled me from college and asked me to take off ‘the piece of cloth which is hiding my beauty’.  I considered his words as harassment and a violation of my human rights. The complicity of the police and the professors who are members of the former dissolved ruling party made the university’s administration insist on depriving me of my right to study.”

Khadija said that these professors were described as atheists and that the opposition protested against the administration’s decisions. They also protested against decree number 108 which forbids wearing sectarian dresses in public places and in educational institutions.

“I was obliged to take off the veil and continue my studies but I also continued to perform other religious duties in a normal manner,” she recalls. “My father insisted that I take off the hijab, especially after they noticed that the police were watching my movements.” 

It was not until the first spark of the 2011 uprising that led to the toppling of Ben Ali’s regime that Bajouri was able to do take a stance. On Facebook and other social media pages, she began posting about the excessive use of repression and violence against the people and she joined protesters in  the streets demanding the departure of Ben Ali.  

The euphoria of victory continued. She participated in the Qasaba 1 and 2 sit-ins demanding the formation of a Constituent Assembly (parliament) in Tunisia. She could not know that fewer than two years later, she would again be in the streets to participate in the “Leave” sit in calling for the dissolution of the assembly, for which she had previously advocated. 

Marzouki betrayed me 

“We were demanding the formation of a Constituent Assembly to ensure the drafting of a Constitution that guarantees public and individual freedoms. We did not expect this negative result that caused the crisis of the country. The MPs have betrayed our confidence in them after we voted for them.” 

On October 23, 2011, Khadija Bakouri, like all other male and female Tunisians, participated in the first free and fair elections in Tunisia since the country’s independence in 1956. She has chosen the pair of red glasses as a symbol to support Moncef Marzouki to become the president of the republic.

“I voted for the Congress for the Republic Party and my aim was to give Marzouki the chance to achieve the dreams he had been anticipating since the day he presided over the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights,” she said.  “I was expecting that when a human rights activist becomes a president, he would put an end to repression and tyranny, which prevailed in Tunisia until after January 14, 2011. However, my candidate has found himself a president without any powers and he agreed to share the spoils with the Ennahda Party. “

She acknowledged that “those who want to be in power and who are dreaming of holding senior positions in the country are ready to change their stance, abandon their values and principles and betray their supporters.” She said that even lawyers and human rights defenders had been a disappointment.     

The political developments that took place after the formation of the troika government, obliged Bakouri to re-think her stance, which led her to join the Tunisian Left quickly in order to “struggle for the future generations so as they can live in a modern  civil state where equality prevails between men and women.” 

Women are equal, not a compliment to men

The fatwas issued by Islamic preachers shock her, she says. “They treat women as commodities and not as human beings.  All their fatwas focus on women’s bodies and sex and this is translated into the state of intellectual underdevelopment and sexual repression which they are experiencing,” she said. 

The attempts of the Ennahda and Ansar al-Sharia members to mobilize Bakouri and to convince her to leave the Workers’ Party and engage in charitable work and advocacy have failed. However, she has been more than eager to engage with them about Koranic verses and the Prophet’s Hadiths.

A number of Salafists stopped her when she was participating in the women’s day celebrations held on August 13. “They were denouncing my participation in a march organized by ‘infidels'”.   

On this incident, Khadija said that she discussed with them rationally the issue of the veil.  “Their superficial understanding of religion made them unable to confront me.  I told them that the revolution that has given them the freedom to express their opinion was not based on any ideology.  It was a revolution for freedom and a decent life.”

Khadija stopped going to the mosques and abandoned the Tarawih prayers during the month of Ramadan because of what she considered to be “strange things taking place in places of worship where speeches were inciting violence and sedition.” Leaflets distributed by Ansar al-Sharia contained materials that conflict with her conviction that there is no compulsion in religion. She said that she was surprised from the calls for women to wear the veil and to make the veil a condition for God’s satisfaction.

She sees no contradiction between being veiled and being a member of a communist group. She considers that religion is for God and the homeland for all the people.

“I hope that my country will be able to restore civil peace and put an end to the way the Tunisian people are being categorized into infidels, Muslims and atheists.”