Saturday, April 23, 2011

What is the role of Islam in the future of the Arab revolution?

Unsuspected Arab revolts. An angry man himself on fire and a region ablaze. Since the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, 17 December 2010, the Arab world is carried by a unquenchable breath of emancipation. From Tunisia to Egypt, Syria, Yemen, people proclaim their need for freedom of expression. As if on the other side of the Mediterranean, and without warning, a world switch from news to history.

The more distracted viewers of news programs such as the wisest observers have noted that political Islam was absent from most of the claims of the insurgents. Paradox: at a time when some of the French Government currency on the compatibility of Islam with the values of the Republic, the sans-culottes and Danton of the Mediterranean did not make the center of their political revolution.

But if the era after Sept. 11 seems to have begun tossing the realpolitik that was to tolerate autocrats to avoid any theocracies, questions remain about the role of Muslim identity in a Maghreb and a Mashreq being recomposed. Especially since, even if "freedom takes time," said Mustafa Abdeljalil as the President of the Transitional National Council of Libya, in our columns, many voices speaking about Air Force NATO engaged in Libya, stuck.

And other battles stalled. Marginal Islamist parties seeking their place, split, or redefine their strategies, and wait between conversion to democracy. To what extent the cultural soil of Muslim insurgencies Will it color these new plans, reforms and constitutions? What role did Islamic religion played in the Arab revolt? What role can it have in the constitutional reforms and electoral processes underway, including Tunisia and Egypt? Given the high stakes, we asked the writer Abdelwahab Meddeb and theologian Tariq Ramadan to discuss these issues.

Respectful dialogue, but opposition front. On the one hand, the essayist and poet who contends that "fundamentalism is the disease of Islam" and that the letter of the Koran itself may predispose to this disease, which some accuse Western tropism. On the other, the controversial theologian, accused of holding a double standard, tolerating on television shows and fundamentalist aside.

The differences in approach are significant: Abdelwahab Meddeb is a recognized scholar of cultures of Islam and Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies at success that speaks for her Muslim faith. The dispute also are considerable: Tariq Ramadan does not preclude the introduction of Sharia in the democratic constitutions of Islamic countries.

Abdelwahab Meddeb wishes in the matter decisively separate the theological politics. An agreement, however, is striking between these two very different players. Both agree in the rejection of Islamophobia, a symptom of a French nation ill at ease in globalization, paralyzing obsession of a Europe downgraded by globalization, reduced to hunt down the enemy within, making scapegoats.

If the debate is sometimes a shock right reasons (political and theological), Abdelwahab Meddeb and Tariq Ramadan does not cede ground to the idea of a clash of civilizations. According to them, there is no cultural barrier to integration, but social and mental barriers: in uptown resident embassies in Paris, where diplomats from Muslim countries, few local residents to complain of religion or cultural practices of their neighbors.

So put this controversy about how the countries of Islamic culture articulate the theological and the political. Read here the interview with Tariq Ramadan and Abdelwahab Meddeb Nicolas Truong Article published in the edition of 23.04.11

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