Independence or Neutrality? State Control and Independence of Mosques in Post-revolutionary Tunisia

The Paper explores contentious mobilization around state intervention and “partisan neutrality” of mosques in Sfax, Tunisia, between 2013 and 2015. This specific conflict mirrored a broader struggle about redefining the relationship between secular and religious authority in public life after the 2011 revolution. Through this exploration, the paper aims to add to discussions on contemporary interactions between public religion and political secularism. The Paper revolves around two questions: Are political secularism and mobilized religion each others opposites, or are their interrelations more complex? And how, in practice, have actors strategically juxtaposed or combined secular and religious authority in their mobilization efforts? The analysis builds on the assumption that of the three processes generally seen to constitute secularization--societalization, structural differentiation and rationalization (Dobbelaere 2002, 165-173)--only the last has been discredited (Stark 1999). This seems to imply that religion can indeed acquire public authority in specialized and differentiated (in other words, secularized) societies. In post-revolutionary Tunisia a conflict emerged--pitting strong political secularism against a newly emerging mobilized Islam--regarding the meaning and implementation of the state’s task to ensure “neutrality of mosques”. Ridha Jaouadi, of the Lakhme mosque in Sfax, became infamous as an activist Imam that questioned publicly the direct state supervision of mosques, and did so in name of Islam’s superior authority in public life. Taking this conflict and its development as linchpin, we explore the positions and actors (including political Islamists, leftist political parties and state bureaucrats) involved in attempts to redefine the position of public religion in contemporary Tunisian society and politics. We thereby gain crucial insights into the relationships between political secularism, state power and mobilized religion. The article is substantiated through around forty interviews with a wide ranging set of key stakeholders between 2013 and 2016, in addition to hundreds of primary and secondary (Arabic) sources.