Our memory is full of stories about oppressed people with detailed testimonies by those hunting for self-realization. Why were most Tunisians unable to enjoy freedom? Is it a crime to demand that one’s intellectual, political, and religious opinions should be respected? Why would Bourguiba and his successor Ben Ali consider that ruling means domination of their subjects? Why did they launch war against freedoms?
Our memory is full of stories about oppressed people with detailed testimonies by those hunting for self-realization. Why were most Tunisians unable to enjoy freedom? Is it a crime to demand that one’s intellectual, political, and religious opinions should be respected? Why would Bourguiba and his successor Ben Ali consider that ruling means domination of their subjects? Why did they launch war against freedoms?
Those questions and many others explain the Tunisians’ joy when Ben Ali ran fled, and why they expressed their feelings, ambitions and dreams in front of the cameras. This helps understand the huge sacrifices of Tunisian martyrs in achieving freedom.
Freedom of expression can be considered without exaggeration the most important accomplishment for Tunisians: expressing their opinions, suffering, and demands in different ways, depending on the generation, social category and gender. Tunisians had not been raised in a democratic environment that might help build citizenship and understand the liberation conditions behavior controls. That is why they soon dived into chaos, or at least into hyper-expression of personal choices without learning the rules of co-existence.
Thus, we see different ways of expression reflecting hybrid concepts and perspectives of freedom and how it should be performed. Freedom for some people means to break the rules, go beyond the limits, or use whatever means to achieve one’s ends. Therefore, we saw campaigning tents moving from one educational institution to the other, and from one public square to the next. Sharia preachers emerged to straighten people out and redirect them to Islam. Others, reportedly, destroyed shrines, burned corners, abused un-scarfed women for being “unmanageable,” wrecked cinema halls, and banned actors from performing. These events and more show the misunderstanding of freedom and its values, especially individual freedoms.
Many discussions about freedom took place within and outside of the Constituent Assembly and many demands were raised (such as considering Sharia a main source for legislation, criminalizing sanctities, freedom of conscience, neutralizing mosques…), but all these discussions were not profound enough. Most law and sharia specialists, intellectuals and media men avoid discussing the freedom of atheism, religion conversion, or expressing certain beliefs through social media.
Protecting and interpreting individual freedoms
Freedom of religion would be incomplete if we promoted the freedom of Islamic rituals for the majority while blocking the minority from adopting different doctrines. That is why most Tunisians do not understand the different dimensions of religious freedom.
The same applies to individual freedoms. Debates have mostly been limited to the elite (hotel conferences and conventions, etc) and to social media. Some other incidents like attacking homosexuals, or publishing cartoons about the prophet on Facebook remain occasional and simple and do not represent in-depth analysis or knowledgeable education.
The abuses of individual freedoms continue to be the concern of rights activists and advocates of ethnic, religious, national or other minorities. Those issues have not gained more advocates, and those convinced that individual freedom is interrelated with citizenship and represent democracy, have not spoken up.
Many governments took over after the revolution. Achievements include drafting the constitution, conducting the elections, establishing pro-democracy institutions, and issuing laws in favor of women and marginalized people. However, abuses of individual freedoms continued even under Ennahda, which tried to maintain the living standards of Tunisians and to defend their freedoms.
Breaking into houses without an arrest warrant and arresting a couple for adultery and sentencing some homosexuals in Kairouan city with imprisonment (three years) and exile (five years) are only a few exceptions.
The above-mentioned examples show that respecting individual freedoms in Islamic Arabic societies needs to be based on the right understanding of individualism. Do our societies allow individuals to stay away from community control? Why should private life be sacrificed for public life and social compliance? Why are individuals expected to follow the main stream? Why would governments confiscate the individuals’ right of choice? Is it that a free individual represents a threat to the system? Does privacy or individualism represent an uncontrollable rebellion of individuals?
The battle for individual freedoms seems to be connected with the individual’s relation with the group on the one side, and with the government and its political and historical structure on the other. The disrespect of privacy and individualism is evidence of the lack of individual freedoms in modern societies. Individuals are restricted and restrained to previously-shaped, collective choices, the individual is not the main concern of policy makers, but only a means. Individuals are contained by groups without being considered dependent, mature and able to make choices.
Discrediting and defaming the advocates of individual freedoms (criminalizing homosexual relations and those who do not fast in Ramadan, and denying the right of organisation and protest) simply reflect the fear of change and the hatred of difference. It indicates the continuation of exclusion and marginalization mechanisms under the pretext of defending privacy. The concept of coexistence based on the interrelated values of freedom, responsibility, dignity and equality is hard to be established.
We do not need the Hisbah rules; we rather need individually focused laws and regulations. We need a comprehensive rather than a myopic way of understanding rights.
Our happiness with the revolution of dignity and freedom is indescribable. The long years of revolutionary efforts are priceless and there will always be hope, but there is also major disappointment with the governments after the revolution. This was because of violations under the cover of law, ethics, religion and because of limited understanding of what the individual should do, which is especially being used against the youth of the revolution.
Freedom and liberating individuals from the domination of religious and social heritage is a long way to go hand in hand with other battles against poverty, organized crime, ignorance, corruption, extremism and violence.
Civil society needs to shake up awareness and continue the struggle for individual rights, especially natural ones. Legal reforms are not enough alone to establish freedom. Social, psychological and religious reforms are also needed to eliminate all forms of exclusion.
