Middle East Program Analysis Paper

Middle East Program May 2014 ANALYSIS PApeR The Struggle for Religious Identity in SUMMARY Tunisia and the Maghreb Defining religious identity in the Maghreb has become an urgent by Haim Malka challenge for governments fight- ............................................................ ing violent extremism. Nowhere is In the final days of the eighteenth century, Wahhabi scholars sent a letter to reli- the battle as intense as in Tunisia, gious scholars at Tunisia’s Zaytouna Mosque, one of North Africa’s oldest and which is struggling to reshape its most important centers of Islamic learning. The sharply worded letter accused Tu- religious identity after more than a nisians of straying from monotheism, a particularly serious charge, and called on half century of state-imposed secu- them to embrace Wahhabism’s puritanical creed. Zaytouna’s scholars replied with larism. Following its revolution in a 10-page letter accusing the Wahhabis of hypocrisy and ignorance, while elo- 2011, Tunisia’s religious landscape quently arguing that Tunisia’s Islamic traditions were deeply rooted in the Qur’an was infiltrated by extremist preach- and Sunna.1 ers, and a surge in religiously in- That exchange, over two centuries ago, set in motion an ideological struggle in spired violence threatened Tunisia’s North Africa between local Islamic traditions and salafi and Wahhabi interpreta- fragile political transition. Some tions.2 While traditional Maghreb Islam has a distinct regional flavor, salafism religious and political leaders called seeks to purify religious thought and practice from cultural and historical adapta- for promoting “traditional” Islam tions. It propounds an Islam based on the literal interpretation of the Qur’an and to fight extremism and boost cen- Sunna and on the practices of the “pious ancestors,” or the first three generations tral religious control. The outcome of Muslims.3 of this struggle in Tunisia to define traditional Islam, and the extent to Salafism, in both its violent and non-violent forms, represents a rebellion against which governments across North local Islamic traditions and practices and their relationship to political systems. Africa can create viable religious Though salafi interpretations have competed with North African Islamic traditions alternatives to extremist narratives, for centuries, this struggle has intensified since the Arab uprisings of 2011, which will shape the next generation of Is- created public space for violent extremist ideology to spread and reignited a debate lamic values and determine whether over how to fight it. violent extremism becomes further Some North African governments have responded to growing extremism by defin- embedded in North African society ing and promoting their own brand of “traditional” Islam. Their goal is to com- or is pushed to the margins. ■ municate and encourage not a “moderate” Islam, but an Islam that accepts state THE MAGHREB IN TRANSITION While the Maghreb has long been at the margins of U.S. policy in the Middle East and North Africa, trends in this region increasingly reverberate throughout the Middle East. In this new environment, developments in the Maghreb will continue to have an impact both on the broader Middle East and on U.S. interests. The CSIS Middle East Program examines changing political, economic, and security trends in the Maghreb—defined here as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya—through original research and analysis and by convening events that highlight issues of importance in the Maghreb to business and policymaking audiences. More broadly, the program focuses its research on the drivers of social and political change in the Middle East. For more information on the program’s work on the Maghreb, visit https://csis.org/program/maghreb. ■ 1616 rhode island ave nw, washington dc 20036 | p. 202.775.3179 | f. 202.775.3199 | www.csis.org/mideast 2 | CSIS Middle East Program | Analysis Paper authority, and they have accordingly redoubled efforts to control religious space, both physical and ideological. No- where is the battle to define traditional Islam as intense as in Tunisia, which is struggling to reshape its religious identity Nowhere is the battle to define after more than a half century of state-imposed secularism.4 traditional Islam as intense as in While the U.S. government has sought to counter violent Tunisia, which is struggling to reshape extremism partly by promoting liberal democratic values its religious identity after more including separation of religion and state, governments in than a half century of state-imposed the region are promoting religion as a way to curb violent extremism while simultaneously bolstering their own polit- secularism. ical legitimacy. Their approach is based on the assumption that religion is an integral part of Maghreb society, and they are following a centuries-old practice of trying to centralize Algeria’s famed Sufi leader Emir Abdel Qadir fought the control of religion. In the new post–Arab uprising political French for more than a decade. Variations within Sufism environment, this effort to articulate a credible alternative highlight the fragmentation of authority in Islam; a Sufi to extremism and control religious space has become espe- sheikh both passes knowledge to his followers and acts as cially urgent. a parallel source of authority to state ulema (though historically it is not unusual for Sufi sheikhs to be integrated into the state ulema). Islam in Tunisia and the Maghreb For hundreds of years the Maghreb boasted some of the Rulers and governments have historically sought to control greatest centers of Islamic learning, including Fes’s Kara- and define religion as a way to bolster legitimacy and obe- ouine Mosque and Tunis’s Zaytouna Mosque.8 Both served dience. By controlling the ulema and religious discourse, as universities as well as mosques, and (like Cairo’s al rulers in the Muslim world have attempted both to create Azhar) they awarded advanced degrees in religious fields a religious establishment that legitimizes political author- of study as well as a range of secular subjects, includ- ity and to shape religious subjects who obey that authority. ing physical sciences. Karaouine and Zaytouna sat at the Across the Maghreb, the Maliki school of jurisprudence, crossroads of the medieval Islamic, Christian, and Jewish one of Sunni Islam’s four schools of law, plays an impor- worlds, and they were instrumental not only in transmit- tant role in government efforts to centralize religious au- ting advanced scientific knowledge to Europe but also in thority.5 Malikism accepts the importance of local social promoting Maliki Islam. and political context. In practice this has meant that Maliki The decline of the Ottoman Empire in most of North Africa9 jurisprudence coexists with local cultural practices and tra- and the advent of European colonization undermined the 6 ditions, most importantly Sufism. region’s traditional religious institutions. But in Tunisia, it Sufism has a long tradition in the Maghreb.7 Western de- was the independence movement led by the country’s first scriptions typically characterize Sufism as Islamic mysti- president, Habib Bourguiba, in the 1950s that imposed state cism that preaches nonviolence. While Sufis generally seek secularism and broke the power and influence of Zaytouna. a deeper meaning in their religious practice, their outlooks Bourguiba overhauled Tunisia’s religious institutions, neu- and teachings vary dramatically. Sufis are typically orga- tered the power of the ulema (in part by confiscating all nized around different brotherhoods led by a master or land endowments, or habous property10), and depoliticized sheikh, who demands complete obedience from his fol- religion by reducing Islamic education and practice to a lowers. Thus religious interpretation is highly personalized bland emphasis on ritual. Mosques were locked except dur- among different Sufi orders depending on the sheikh. In the ing prayer times, and libraries were emptied or shuttered. past, some Sufis wrote love poetry and drank wine, while Most importantly, Bourguiba’s government dismantled others were warriors. During the nineteenth and twentieth Tunisia’s prestigious seat of learning and transferred Zay- centuries, the Sanussi brotherhood in eastern Libya waged touna’s educational functions to the University of Tunis.11 war against French expansion and later Italian colonization. Religious education was transformed from a theological center for strategic and international studies | middle east program CSIS Middle East Program | Analysis Paper | 3 discipline to an academic one. For the next half century, the emphasize violence to defend Muslim communities under state security apparatus tightly controlled Tunisian Islam threat.14 This third category spawned movements such as and religious education.12 al Qaeda, which seek to use violence to overthrow govern- Despite this strict regulation, Tunisia and other North Afri- ments in order to reestablish an Islamic caliphate. can states were not immune from salafism and other exter- Each of these three broad categories contains more fissures. nal ideological influences. In the 1970s and 1980s, work- Moreover, the lines between the categories are increasingly ers who returned from the Gulf with savings also brought blurry, as scripturalist and jihadi streams adopt political ac- back stricter Islamic practices and ideas. Wealthy Gulf do- tivism to spread their message. Both nonviolent and vio- nors supported local charities,

Load more