Tunis, special correspondent - Closed for ten years, the campus mosque of Tunis, was again greeted the faithful, Friday, January 21. They are not very numerous, not more than fifty. Men, rather young. But it is a key day on Friday, the first since the fall of former President Zine El-Ali AbidineBen where prayer is free.Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, this moment was expected. It's there in that mosque considered by the former regime as a fundamentalist home, what the big party Islamist students in the late 1980s, severely repressed. In 2001, the Shrine, located in the northern suburbs of Tunis, had been totally closed.
By far, the minaret of the mosque, which rises above the cypress, like a white wound. Its architecture is unusual in the postcolonial era in which was built at the University of Tunis El Manar (UTM), a huge campus with its fifteen institutions, four faculties, and its 43 000 students enrolled.
For now, the site is silent because the classes are still suspended due to emergency situation in which is immersed in Tunisia. But inside the mosque, men are busy. In the great room, carpets were laid on the ground, a microphone installed. "You should have seen the level of decadence of the place, indignant Ibrahim, a student accountant wearing a long black dress slipped on his trousers.
There were bottles of beer, wine, and even excrement." The reopening of the site took place without permission, Jan. 15, following the leak of former head of state. The faithful present, bearded and non bearded, with kami (long dress) or jeans are a curious mixture which combines students, supporters of al-Nahda, a moderate Islamist party told prohibited during the years Ben Ali, radicals, and even representatives of Hezb-ut-Tahrir - a non-violent organization born of a schism with the Muslim Brotherhood established throughout the Muslim world - who are distributing leaflets calling for the establishment of a caliphate.
Sofia, 43, a businessman in a neighboring city, advocates the application of Sharia in the state. "The law must be guided by the Koran, that's the goal," he says. And "Circular 108, which prohibits women from wearing the hijab (in some administrations ° must be repealed." Boukra Madhi ", the pseudonym he invented on the spot, was part of a group of five Tunisians suspected of planning attacks and arrested in the region of Florence in 2004, before being released and then acquitted.
"When I came here three years ago, I was taken directly to the post because I 'had a different vision of Islam than the dictator he smiles. Today, I will not be quiet when his followers have left the government. "For years, the regime guarded mosques, imposing censorship on preaching imams, when it does not dictate their content.
Thus, sermons were invariably mention the name of President Ben Ali. Islamists, they were hunted down without respite. "police controlled us all the time, they wanted to know where they prayed, how they prayed, with what hand position, they came to us harassed at any time ...", ensures Sofia.
On Friday, the Ministry of Religious Affairs had called preachers of the country "to perform the prayer of the absent after Friday prayers in memory of martyrs the revolution of the Tunisian people. "But his message did not reach far. The sermon was first started late because he missed 2 meter extension to capture the power of the university, and then, above all, there was no imam.
The last, Sheikh Hassan, having left in 2001, a "brother" who officiated. "Our country is in a difficult birth but has not yet gained its independence" begins there. "We expected that twenty-three years, but a small group the government wants to take the fruit of the revolution of the people, must not be silent," he recommends, and continues: "We must not get stray from the path of God or look in the bins of those who conspire against Islam, the United States, Europeans.
(...) You are the army of God against the unbelievers. " This first speech "free" encounters a small group, outraged at the release: "This is not speaking here of Tunisia, Saudi Arabia is, plague a young engineer, he has not even mentioned the martyrs (uprising Tunisia). " Decimated, often broken by years of prison, the Islamist groups in Tunisia have the project to beat the recall of all Tunisian imams who are abroad.
Isabelle Mandraud Article published in the edition of 23.01.11
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