Category Archives: Tunisia

Tunisia Manouba University Students Face Off Over Islamic Veil On Campus

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From Huffington Post:
Tunisia Manouba University

Female students, wearing niqab, walk up stairs at the office of the dean of the Faculty of Arts in Manuba, some 25 kms west of Tunis, on December 8, 2011. (FETHI BELAID/AFP/Getty Images)

BOUAZZA BEN BOUAZZA   01/ 4/12 01:37 PM ET   AP

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TUNIS, Tunisia — Around 200 students and professors demonstrated in Tunisia’s capital on Wednesday calling for an end to the standoff by ultraconservative Muslims at a nearby university.

For more than a month classes and exams at Manouba University’s humanities department have been put on hold by a sit-in demanding students be allowed to attend class in the conservative face veil, known as the niqab.

“Science before the niqab,” and “no to shackles, no to niqab, knowledge is free,” read the signs of the demonstrators, who urged the minister of higher education to resolve the dispute so that classes could resume.

University policy prevents students from covering their faces during class.

The sit-in has been the latest crisis faced by Tunisia since it overthrew its long-serving dictator last year, who had aggressively promoted secular policies.

In his absence there has been a resurgence of ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafists, who are seeking a greater role for Islam in public life.

The department’s dean, Habib Kazdaghli, attended the protest and said that the people blocking classes weren’t even university students.

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TUNISIAN FUNDAMUSTARDS NOW HAIL ARRIVAL OF THE ‘SIXTH CALIPHATE’

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There’s no such thing as “moderate Islamists”, any more than there is such a thing as a moderate Islam.

And simpleton morons in the West promote the meme of  “moderate Islamists”, the mother of all oxymorons and believe that we’ll fall for it. Sheer lunacy. KGS

More here.

Tunisia’s powerful party: A wolf in sheep’s clothing?

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J Post:

By OREN KESSLER
10/24/2011 04:16

Analysis: Ennahda seeks “moderate” Shari’a state, but members have history of violence, current platform raises questions about role of Islam.

 

Western media routinely describe Tunisia’s Ennahda party as “moderately Islamist.” The once-banned movement’s own past, however, reveals a tendency to violence, and its current platform raises serious questions about the role of Islam in arguably the Arab world’s most secular state.

Ennahda, or “Renaissance” has its roots in the Islamist university groups that proliferated in the Muslim world’s universities following the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The party was officially founded in 1989, two years into the 14-year reign of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

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Two years later Ben Ali banned the party, and over the course of his term jailed tens of thousands of its leaders.

Ennahda was legalized in January of this year, following Ben Ali’s ouster in a month-long popular revolt. One thousand supporters welcomed back the party’s founder and leader, 70-yearold Rachid Ghannouchi, on his return to Tunis from European exile in January.

The Islamist party now appears set to take a majority, or at least a plurality, in the Arab world’s first post-revolutionary elections. Ballots were held Sunday and results are expected the following day.

For the rest please click through to the J POST

Post-revolt Tunisia wrestles with resurgent Islam

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Add this to the story below on Libya. I think it is time for me to stick my giant map back up on the wall.

From Reuters:

(Reuters) – For Walid, Tunisia’s revolution is an opportunity to turn one of the Arab world’s most secular countries towards Islam.

“We paid a heavy price for the revolution so we are not ready to let secularists and supporters of the Zionists control our destiny,” said the young man, with a beard and a long white robe, after prayers in the Omrane district of the capital.

“We want to respect our religion and to apply Islamic law in our country.

“We want Islamic schools all over the country … We do not want our women prevented from wearing the hijab and niqab (Islamic veils). We would like our country to be an Islamic country that does not allow taboo things, like wine.” Continue Reading →

“Only a housemaid was left inside”

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Thanks for sending this Snaphanen

Tunisia police teargas protest at ‘blasphemous’ TV station

(AFP) – 7 hours ago

TUNIS — Tunisian extremists fire-bombed the home of a TV station chief Friday, hours after militants protesting its broadcast of a film they say violated Islamic values clashed with police in the streets of Tunis.

About a hundred men, some of whom threw Molotov cocktails, lay siege to the home of Nessma private television chief Nabil Karoui late Friday, the station reported in its evening news bulletin.

Karoui’s family had only just escaped, the news presenter said as Nessma denounced the attack.

Sofiane Ben Hmida, one of Nessma’s star reporters, told AFP the station chief was not at home when the attack on his house took place around 7:00 pm (1800 GMT). But his wife and children were.

About 20 of the protesters were able to get inside.

“The family managed to get out the back and are safe. The attackers wrecked the house and set it on fire,” he added.

A neighbour, who had alerted police, said the aggressors arrived in taxis, armed with knives and Molotov cocktails.

According to a Nessma source “only a housemaid was present inside. She was attacked and hospitalised.” Continue Reading →

Todays riots in Tunis. Oct 14 2011

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One of Vlad’s Dutch contacts has been kind enough to struggle with English to try and impress on me, how serious todays riots in Tunisia are. I posted down below on the initial cause of the riots. The broadcast of a movie which has things that are objectionable to religious Muslims. This has become the dog-bites-man of counter jihad news of course.

This however, he has explained to me, is an order of magnitude more serious than just this. I will post the Dutch news report below but it is not subtitled, however the Arabic parts are titled in Dutch. If any bilingual Dutch people reading this would like to work with me to translate this video for subtitles please paste the translation in the comments with times before each sentence more or less so I can plug it in to the video.

Below, is a screen cap from the riot scene with a translation of what he is saying:

“we kill all the Jews. We massacre the entire race”

We kill all the Jews, we massacre the entire race

So how did being upset at an Iranian expat’s animated autobiographical movie become about genocide of the Jews? My guess is because they are Muslims and genocide of the Jewish people is, certainly at this time as well as in antiquity, a dominant note in the Islamic triad.

Tunisia, Epi-Center of the “Arab Spring”, Rejects “Any Form of Normalization With the Zionist State”

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From Andrew Bostom’s site

July 3rd, 2011 by Andrew Bostom |

“Reformist” Yadh Ben Achour made the announcement rejecting “any form of normalization with the Zionist State,” …Yadh-a, Yadh-a, Yadh-a….

Res ipsa loquitur, from ANSA Med:

Tunisia’s commission of political reform announced that it adopted (by majority) a “republican pact’” that will be the basis of the future new Constitution, and in particular it states the rejection of any normalization with Israel. While announcing the pact the president of the commission, Yadh Ben Achour, did not offer any details, but the Arab speaking Tunisian press published its content, which defines Tunisia as a free and democratic country, whose official language is Arab and whose religion is Islam.

The pact, that will serve as the basis of the future Constitution, categorically rejects “any form of normalization with the Zionist State’”, and supports the Palestinian cause.


All Articles Copyright © 2007-2011 Dr. Andrew Bostom | All Rights Reserved
Printing is allowed for personal use only | Commercial usage(For Profit) is a copyright violation and written permission must be granted first.

 

 

The new Egypt tortures protesters, tests womens’ virginity

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More here at CNN 

Related, it appears that Tunisia, where all this “Arab Spring” started, is in great danger of an ‘Islamist’ (the fictionalized notion of a hijacked peaceful Islam) takeover.

Here is an excerpt from Common American Journal:

Tunisia: Birthplace of the Arab Spring fears Islamist insurgence

The uprisings that swept North Africa and the Middle East began in Tunisia. But, as Andrew Gilligan finds out, the country is still searching for its happy ending.

Andrew Gilligan
Telegraph [UK]
28 May 2011

At the Cannes Film Festival this month, Nouri Bouzid, the celebrated director and opponent of Islamist extremism, received the Legion d’Honneur, the highest award France can bestow.

A few weeks before that, in his native Tunisia, came a rather different form of recognition: he was stabbed in the head.

For the rest please click over to the link at the top.

Religious groups protest secular laws in Tunisia

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Story Published: Apr 1, 2011 at 1:00 PM PDT CATU.COM

Story Updated: Apr 1, 2011 at 1:00 PM PDT

Religious groups protest secular laws in TunisiaTunisian demonstrators pray near the Prime Minister’s office as they stage a protest calling for the resignation of Tunisia’s Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi in Tunis, Friday, Feb. 25, 2011. (AP Photo/Salah Habibi)

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) – Police fired tear gas Friday on stone-throwing youths in Tunisia’s capital after a demonstration by hundreds of Islamists protesting the country’s secular laws.

The violence at the end of a day of peaceful, small protests disrupted a period of relative calm in the North African country, where an uprising ousted the longtime president in January and prompted revolts around the Arab world.

It was unclear whether anyone was injured or arrested in the clash.

Protesters held two demonstrations in Tunis on Friday, one by a group demanding more economic freedoms and another by young Islamists shouting “God is great” and other religious slogans.

Their demonstration came as the Interior Ministry announced Friday that women are no longer required to take off headscarves for official state ID cards. The Islamist protesters want the government to remove restrictions on the headscarf in public buildings and other measures.

A strong secular flavor pervades this former French colony, partly because ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his predecessor, Habib Bourguiba, kept Islamists in check.

Even though 98 percent of the population are Muslims, only a minority of women wear Islamic headscarves, and Friday, the Muslim day of rest and special prayer, is part of the Tunisian work week.

Police showed up in force Friday to ring the historic Casbah to try to prevent violence at the planned protests. The Casbah saw tensions during protests earlier this year, in which scores of people were killed when police under Ben Ali’s hard-line regime fired on protesters.

Friday’s demonstrations were mostly peaceful, with a few hundred people, including Islamists in white prayer caps.

In the evening groups of youth marched near the Casbah and clashed with police, who responded with volleys of tear gas.

—

Karin Laub in Tunis contributed to this report.

Tunisian fundamentalists burn down brothels

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I guess that makes these the hottest women in Tunis. (H/T GQC)

From the Guardian:

Islamic fundamentalists attempted a show of force in Tunis on Friday by burning down a street of brothels.

Tunisian fundamentalists burn down brothels

Dozens of Islamists calling for Tunisia’s brothels to be closed had rallied outside the interior ministry following Friday prayers before marching to Abdallah Guech Street Photo: Demotix / Christian Minelli
11:57AM GMT 19 Feb 2011

Dozens of Islamists calling for Tunisia’s brothels to be closed had rallied outside the interior ministry following Friday prayers before marching to Abdallah Guech Street.

At least three people were injured when security forces fired in the air to disperse the crowd.

The incident was the latest sign of Islamists organising in the North African state, the only Arab country with legal prostitution, after an uprising toppled President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali last month.

“Almost 500 Islamists, many wearing beards, were demonstrating in Old Medina to demand the closure of a brothel,” said Mourad Barhoumi, a Tunis resident who witnessed the demonstration.

“There were several dozen riot police who shut off entry to the neighbourhood. They fired in the air to break up the crowd, which didn’t want to go until the brothel was shut,” he said, adding that three people were injured.

The demonstrators later dispersed after a military official announced that the brothel had been shut, he said.

It was the third brothel shut by the movement in recent weeks.

Tunisia, North Africa’s smallest country, was plunged into turmoil after one man’s self-immolation in a protest against the authorities sparked a revolt that led Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia last month and encouraged a similar revolution in Egypt.

Ben Ali, who took power in 1987, cracked down on the Islamist movement and was seen by many as an oppressive ruler.

Elections to replace him are expected by July or August, and at least one Islamist candidate is expected to run.

Polish priest killed by Tunisian extremists-media

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From The News.Pl

Father Rybinski; photo – salezjanie.pl
Roman Catholic Salesian missionary Father Marek Rybinski was found dead with his throat cut in Tunis on Friday. The Tunisian interior ministry says it believes he was murdered by “fascist terrorists”.

The ministry in the Tunisian capital “strongly condemned” the murder, adding that the perpetrators would be “severely punished”.

Father Rybinski, who was 34 years old, went missing on Thursday morning and after a search of the Salesian school in the Manouba district, police found his body in a storage room, his throat cut.

“Given the manner of his murder [we believe] that a group of fascist terrorists are behind the crime,” the ministry said in a statement.

Rybinski’s family has been notified.

Police say that the priest is the second Christian religious figure to be killed during the social unrest which led up to and followed the ousting of President Ben Ali in January.

On 31 January, the Salesian missionary’s web site says the order in Tunis received death threats in an unsigned letter.

Father Rybinski worked in Tunisia for three years and had been a priest for five after being ordained in Lodz, central Poland. He served in the Salesian missionary centre in Warsaw and also worked for a year in the Olsztyn Salesian institution, where he prepared educational and volunteer mission trips.

The Salesian Society mission is the third largest Christian missionary organisation in the world. (pg)