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Security and religion in democratizing Tunisia: re-enacting surveillance through religious narratives and gendered dynamics

Sécurité et religion dans la démocratisation de la Tunisie : reconstituer la surveillance à travers les récits religieux et les dynamiques de genre
بونسي، أليساندرا، كوكو، فابريزيو، الأمن والدين في التحوُّل الديمقراطي في تونس
Fabrizio Leonardo Cuccu et Alessandra Bonci

Résumés

Malgré un processus de démocratisation entamé en 2011 et souvent qualifié de réussi (Stepan, 2012 ; Freedom House, 2015 ; Bugeja, 2016), jusqu'au récent processus de recul, certaines institutions nationales tunisiennes n'avaient subi que des changements mineurs, voire aucun changement. C'est le cas du ministère de l'Intérieur et de l'ensemble de l'appareil sécuritaire, dont la réforme a souvent été discutée mais jamais mise en œuvre (Grewal, 2018). Cette recherche se concentre sur l'intersection entre l'appareil de sécurité et le contrôle de l'État sur la religion, en examinant le rôle des femmes fonctionnaires travaillant au sein du ministère des Affaires religieuses, appelées wa'ydhat. Dans le cadre de cette recherche, la sécurité est comprise comme consistant en “des engagements quotidiens, routiniers et parfois inconscients” (Ochs, 2011, p. 3) des praticiens du secteur religieux et de la sécurité. L'analyse du travail des wa'ydhat nous permet de mettre en évidence les liens entre les récits locaux et mondiaux de la sécurité, qui soulignent le rôle central des femmes dans la lutte contre le terrorisme en raison de leurs prétendues qualités “pacifiques” inhérentes, et leur rôle réel d'observatrices au sein d'un système de surveillance et de contrôle. Comme l'affirme Moghadam, “en période de consolidation du régime et d'édification de l'État, les questions de genre, de famille et de relations hommes-femmes passent au premier plan. L'État devient le gestionnaire du genre” (1993, p. 94). Cependant, au lieu de produire de nouvelles politiques de genre en conformité avec le nouveau moment historique, la Tunisie reproduit exactement les mêmes débats et les mêmes rôles stéréotypés de genre que ces dernières années.

Il est intéressant de noter que le travail des wa'ydhat se situe à l'intersection entre le secteur religieux et le secteur de la sécurité en Tunisie, soulignant le rôle de l'État dans le contrôle des récits et des pratiques religieuses. Afin d'examiner au mieux cette intersection et le rôle des praticiens de la sécurité dans l'élaboration et la réactualisation des mesures de sécurité, nous étudions leur expérience quotidienne et leur compréhension de leur position au sein de l'appareil de sécurité. En nous renseignant sur leur travail quotidien, notre objectif est de mettre en évidence la manière dont “la sécurité nationale délimite l'expérience individuelle” (Ochs, 2011, p. 3), comment le discours national sur la sécurité est reproduit dans la vie de tous les jours et comment, à leur tour, ces pratiques quotidiennes façonnent l'appareil de sécurité. Analyser la dimension “quotidienne” ou “banale” de la sécurité signifie se concentrer sur la manière dont les pratiques de sécurité sont interprétées, adaptées et/ou négociées par différents individus et groupes, à travers le prisme de leurs expériences vécues (Crawford et Hutchinson, 2016, p. 1190).

En examinant les pratiques de sécurité reproduites dans le travail des praticiens, nous pouvons déterminer si et comment les récits de sécurité dominants sont adaptés ou plutôt remis en question (Luckham, 2017), et comment la légitimation et les récits des systèmes de sécurité sont compris par des individus et des groupes spécifiques. Alors que les politiques et les pratiques de sécurité sont souvent considérées comme un processus descendant et fortement hiérarchique, l'analyse des pratiques de sécurité au niveau micro implique une compréhension de la construction sociale de la sécurité en tant que processus horizontal. L'establishment politique façonne les pratiques et les récits du gouvernement et de la communauté internationale. Le travail des wa'ydhat est crucial pour comprendre le mécanisme de sécurité en Tunisie aujourd'hui. De plus, la présence des wa'ydhat depuis 2011 s'inscrit dans une dynamique de continuité des politiques sécuritaires avec le régime de Ben Ali. En conclusion, le rôle des wa'ydhat au sein de l'appareil de contrôle et de surveillance en Tunisie se situe à l'intersection entre l'évolution des pratiques de surveillance dans le monde, sous l'égide de la guerre mondiale contre le terrorisme, et l'histoire du contrôle de l'État sur la religion dans le pays, qui remonte aux années de Bourguiba.

Cet article se compose de trois sections, en commençant par une vue d'ensemble du débat autour du clivage modérés/radicaux en Tunisie. Cette section est cruciale pour comprendre le contexte sociologique et politique des politiques de sécurité et explique comment la lutte entre les forces dites laïques et les partis religieux a créé une hiérarchie entre l'islam dirigé par l'État et l'islam non dirigé par l'État, sécurisant ainsi la religion. La deuxième partie de l’article montre l'évolution de l'appareil de sécurité dans le cadre du maintien de l'ordre religieux. Enfin, nous présentons le cas des wa'ydhat dans le contexte post-révolutionnaire comme un exemple critique de la sécurisation de l'islam et de la coopération entre la sécurité et la gestion du religieux.

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The moderate/radical divide in Tunisia

1The global war on terror, and the international military enterprise it created, was based (among other things) on the consolidation of a binary narrative juxtaposing a legitimate and “moderate” with an illegitimate or “radical” Islam (Van Es, Ter Laan and Meinema, 2021). In Tunisia, as well as in most North African countries, this discursive strategy pre-dates the global war on terror and has been used by the authoritarian rulers to legitimize the security sector’s control and repression of dissidents, especially Islamist parties and movements since the late 1970s. In the early days of the independence, Habib Bourguiba and Salah Ben Youssef, among the founders of the Neo Destour Party, displayed very conflicting ideas regarding the path to follow for the new Republic. On one hand, Bourguiba looked at France as an example of modernization and laïcité and thought Tunisia should follow a similar path by becoming a secular and modern country (Webb, 2013). On the other side, Ben Youssef saw Tunisia as part of the larger Arab and Muslim world, linked to its Arab roots and with Islam at the center of its system of values (Allani, 2009). The crisis between the two founders of the party turned out helpful for Bourguiba to consolidate his position and allowed him to promote new laws whose purpose was to modernize the country, such as the Personal Status Code, which abolished polygamy and allowed married couples to divorce (Camau and Geisser, 2004). The Code legitimized Bourguiba as a modernist and a champion of the separation between religion and politics, contributing to the narrative of Tunisia as the “most open and Mediterranean of the Arab countries” (Halliday, 1990: 25).

2Bourguiba’s idea of a state-sanctioned approach to religion, a “Tunisian Islam” capable of uniting belief and modernity (Wolf, 2013), was fulfilled by dismantling the most important Tunisian religious university (the Zaytuna) as well as the religious elite (Boulby, 1988) and integrating them within the public framework allowing the state to control how religion was taught and discussed. Consequently, imams became ‘paid for and controlled by the State’ (Ibid.: 595), and ultimately enclosed themselves within the limited framework of the official discourse (Zghal, 1981). The discourse on religion in Tunisia during these years was ultimately based on Bourguiba’s vision of the “adaptation of Islam to requirements of development” (Bourguiba, 1966: 485).

3Ben Ali's presidency brought with it a certain continuity with Bourguiba's administration particularly in terms of the “Tunisian” approach to religion (Cavatorta & Haugbolle, 2012; Ben Salem, 2013), in opposition to the rise of Islamist movements and parties (Sadiki, 2002). Conversely, Ben Ali tried to distance himself from Bourguiba’s unpopular secular policies by reviving the idea of an Arab and Islamic identity in Tunisia through the restoration of the Zaytuna University and the establishment of the Ministry of Religious Affairs (Wolf, 2018). Despite this, in 1988, the new president signed a law allowing activity in mosques only for those imams appointed by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and prohibiting the creation of parties on religious grounds. The goal of these operations was to counter the growth of the Islamist movements by taking away their most significant platforms of recruitment (the mosques) and banishing them from formal politics.

4The 2011 revolution brought a period of relative opening of the political and social space for new and different religious practices and ideas (Donker, 2013). Nonetheless, after Ennahda’s victory at the constituent elections in October 2012, a central and contentious element in the political debate was the role that Islam would have been given within the new Constitution (Dalmasso and Cavatorta, 2013). Most in the party wanted to keep article 1 of the 1959 constitution which mentioned Islam as state religion. The issue was rather the mentioning of shari'a as the only source of law, which was pushed by a minority within the party. Finally, Ennahda decided that campaigning for the inclusion of Islam as the State religion within the new Constitution would be dangerous and counter-productive vis-à-vis a wider recognition and acceptance of the Islamists as a reliable and democratic party, both nationally and internationally (Netterstrøm, 2015). Simultaneously, the opening of the political space for religious groups allowed Salafi movements to emerge. Among these movements, Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia (AST) proved to be one of the most successful, gathering large crowds in several Tunisian cities.

5The emergence of Salafi groups was possible due to three factors. First, the disappointment of Ennahda's most radical fringe, the Salafists, who have seen their hopes for the creation of an Islamic state dashed. Second, the inability of the Troika government to address the economic situation and the high unemployment rates which represented the very first requests of the 2011 revolution and led people in marginalized and excluded areas to feel left off from the new democratic system (Merone, 2015). It was precisely in peripheries and poorer regions, in fact, that AST was able to recruit most of its followers (Cavatorta and Merone, 2017). Lastly, during these years religious practices in Tunisia were for the most part uncontrolled by the state, and the regime change led to an initial “liberalization” of the religious field in the country. Within this context, Salafism changed “from a quietist religiosity solely concerned with individual behavior' to being ‘open to social and political activism” (Merone et. al., 2021: 8). The situation deteriorated after the assassinations in February and June 2013 of Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, two prominent figures in the country’s political scene whose assassinations were committed by a Jihadi commando allegedly linked to AST.

6In the aftermath of the assassinations, pressure against Ennahda to declare AST illegal and step down from government increased as several members of the Constitutional Assembly resigned, and protests against the Troika government spread across the country. Ultimately, the following governments decided to distance themselves from Ennahda’s approach to religious movements by starting a security-oriented campaign whose targets were teaching and preaching activities with a Salafi orientation (Merone et. al., 2021). This crackdown of Salafi activities and groups was accompanied by a new narrative focusing on a more “moderate” and “state-sanctioned” version of Islam. Especially after the Syrian war and the massive enrollment of Tunisian young people in Daech, the so-called “radical” Islamists attracted international attention (Haugbølle, 2015). As a response, Ennahda left the “Islamist” label in 2016 in favor of the more marketable definition of ‘Muslim democrats’ (Ghannouchi, 2016). The strategy of the party was to present itself as a more moderate alternative to the Salafi movements (Blanc, 2020; Lorch & Chakroun, 2020) and groups which were under scrutiny for their more orthodox outlook on Islam. As Marzouki and Meddeb (2016) highlighted, the 2014 strategy of consensus between Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes framed Islamists as a threat to the country’s stability. By stigmatizing dissent and different religious practices and outlooks as harmful to national unity, the post-revolutionary state re-established the pre-2011 narrative on religion, legitimizing the old logic of control over religious movements and groups.

The evolution of the security apparatus

7The evolution of the security apparatus in Tunisia has been intertwined with the political control over mass-mobilizer domains, such as the leftist movements, the unions and the Islamic groups. During the early years of the independence, Bourguiba constructed the Tunisian army around an apolitical ethos, indicating the army’s separation from civil politics, with a focus solely on external threats (Willis, 2014). Bourguiba’s decision to leave the military out of the political matters led to the establishment of a security apparatus built around the Ministry of Interior, the National Guard and the gendarmerie (Lutterbeck, 2015). This approach created an asymmetry of power between the military and the police, especially due to the prominent role of the Ministry of Interior. In the late 70s, however, the distinction between military and security apparatus became more blurred, as Bourguiba started promoting military personnel to positions within the Ministry of Interior. Concurrently, the discontent for the worsening economy in several sectors of society reignited the old divisions between the modernist elites in the richer regions and the poorer parts of Tunisian society, especially in the South and border region (Sadiki, 2021). This regional division largely overlapped with the cleavage between a more secular and modernist elite living in the Sahel (the coastal North-Western region) and more religious sectors of society generally living in the internal and Southern regions. Consequently, religious groups such as al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya, usually oriented towards social and cultural actions such as da’wa (preaching) and charity, grew nationwide.

8During the 70s, some members of al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya detached from the group and created the political party Islamic Tendency Movement (MTI) in 1981, which later became Ennahda. Their intention was to bridge social actions such as da’wa (preaching) and charity work with more politically oriented practices. Thus, Bourguiba started to worry about the growing influence and numbers of the MTI and aimed his security forces not only against leftist movements but against the Islamists as well. Because of the growing unrest and the riots in the South in 1984, Bourguiba decided to appoint a military figure, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, to the role of director of national security within the Ministry of Interior. Three years later, with the famously “bloodless coup”, Ben Ali ousted Bourguiba, becoming the second President of the Republic of Tunisia. The threat allegedly represented by Islamists led Ben Ali to strengthen the police control over religious dissidents, and to re-shape Bourguiba’s security apparatus (Murphy, 1997). The control and repression of supposedly radical religious movements went hand in hand with the reorganization of the security sector. Simultaneously, elections were called to be held in 1989 and parties other than the RCD (Rassemblement constitutionnel démocratique, namely Ben Ali’s party) were allowed to participate if they signed a pact to uphold democratic principles and leave religion and politics separated (Cavatorta, 2001). Ennahda signed the pact in the hope of being able to participate in the elections.

9However, due to Ben Ali’s refusal to formally recognize the Islamist party, Ennahda’s members ran as independent candidates in several constituencies, and campaigned focusing on issues of social and economic marginalization becoming the main opposition force against the president’s party (McCarthy, 2018). Ben Ali’s authoritarian rule became even more apparent in 1991 when, after elections in Algeria and the victory of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), presented himself publicly as the last defense against violent Islam and the protector of the Tunisian Islam (McCarthy 2014). The new president was able to successfully use the threat of radical Islam as a justification for the repression of political opponents at large, with the full support of Western countries. The new definition of terrorism adopted in 1993 in the Tunisian penal code, which allowed the police to target most individuals and movements perceived as threats to the regime, represented a new tool in Ben Ali’s arsenal (Alzubairi, 2019).

10This definition was used against Islamists, human rights activists and journalists who criticized the president. Another feature of the Tunisian security apparatus was a system of administrative control (Hibou, 2006) put in place to counter opponents to the regime. This meant that, once released from imprisonment, dissidents were typically required to report several times per day at assigned police stations, making it impossible for them to re-establish social contacts and represent a threat to the regime (Lutterbeck, 2015). This allowed Ben Ali to exert more subtle means of repression over his political opponents, avoiding strategies such as their physical disappearance or elimination while also creating significant obstacles for the dissidents vis-à-vis their reintegration in society. Even though, during the 90s the most important members of Ennahda were either in jail or in exile, Ben Ali managed to continue his campaign against the supposed growth of a more radical Islam. Within the new international context of the Global War on Terror, Ben Ali emerged as a major ally against “Islamic terrorism”, managing to create the myth of a secular, economically and socially stable Tunisia, while at the same time strengthening the security apparatus and persecuting his political opponents.

11After the revolution (2011), Beji Caid Essebsi (at the head of a new interim government) started ousting the most compromised figures from the security apparatus (Santini & Cimini, 2019). However, the measures taken were in no way systemic, as most of the police forces managed to maintain their jobs with no consequences. These changes worked only on a more superficial level, as most political parties were reluctant to tackle the issue with deeper actions, despite the presence of groups within the Ministry of Interior open to more effective reforms (Sayigh, 2015). The rise of Ennahda at the 2011 elections, which allowed the party to select the Minister of the Interior, worsened the mistrust between the party and the staff within the Ministry, leading to informal networks preventing the Minister from accessing information, and hindering its ability to make effective reforms (Kartas, 2014). Ennahda tried to change the balance of power and gain control over the security sector through numerous recruitments within the police forces and the army (Grenwal, 2016), but these measures, alongside Ennahda’s underestimation of the threat posed by the rise of Salafi groups within the country, led to a stark division between security forces and the ruling coalition which lasted until the political crisis and Ennahda’s resignation in 2013.

12Subsequently, the new government led by Mehdi Jomaa launched a security campaign targeting Salafi-oriented preaching and teaching activists (Merone et. al., 2021), an approach that continued with the election of a new government and a new president in 2014. As Santini and Cimini (2019) point out, while Moncef Marzouki (President of the Republic from 2011 to 2014) was largely marginalized and unable to make full use of the new powers granted to him, Beji Caid Essebsi (elected in the 2014 elections) was able to revive the National Security Council and to centralize decision-making power in matters of security through a discretional and overarching use of the label of national security. Moreover, the national and international pressure after the 2015 terrorist attacks in Tunis and Sousse led to the promulgation of a new antiterrorism law (n°26/2015) and the creation of a National Committee against Terrorism (CNLCT) as part of a new National Strategy Against Terrorism published in 2016. The 2016 National Strategy is composed of four pillars: Prevention, Protection, Pursuit, and Response. The structure of the National Strategy is influenced by the UN 2015 Plan of Action, featuring the prevention of violent extremism as its first pillar, and focusing on the necessity to identify “vulnerable” communities and groups in order to prevent possible processes of radicalisation.

Security, gender and Islam in post-revolutionary Tunisia: the role of the wa’ydhat

13The previous sections show how contemporary security measures in the country are not (only) the product of the revolution. Rather, the post-2011 Tunisian security apparatus is still rooted in the old regime’s mechanisms, and represents a reproduction of security measures from the authoritarian era. Under Ben Ali, security mechanisms were designed to guarantee the Ministry of Interior a widespread control over the nation and its inhabitants (Hibou, 2008). From taxi drivers to café owners, the ordinary informants of the regime were uncountable and omnipresent. And yet, the system also needed a more specialized kind of informants, such as cultivated and reliable civil servants who could closely check upon the number one enemy of the regime, the Islamists. This kind of civil servant, called wa’dh, existed since the beylical government but became especially important under Ben Ali’s rule. The very name of this job position, “the preacher”, is very insightful towards the practitioners’ main tasks. In fact, wa’dh must promote a moderate and state-sanctioned version of Islam, to stop the spread of other and different religious outlooks and practices. Wa’dh are often religious scholars or professors of Islamic studies and civilizations who graduated from the Zaytouna university.

14The new National Strategy published in 2016 in Tunisia, reappropriated some of the features of the pre-revolutionary surveillance and security apparatus, framing them within the context of the international discourse on security. For instance, the national strategy emphasizes the necessity to develop a moderate religious discourse, and to prevent processes of radicalisation in religious settings (CNLCT 2016). In a similar way, the action plan published by the United Nations in 2015 to prevent terrorism and violent extremism (UN 2015), highlights the central role of religious figures and institutions in anti-radicalisation programmes. Moreover, the Tunisian national strategy indicates the necessity to ‘reinforce the role of women in the prevention of extremism’ (CNLCT 2016), another concept transplanted from the UN approach, which indicates the necessity to include women in counter-terrorism and prevention practices, in order for them to ‘engage in prevention and response efforts related to violent extremism’ (UN 2015).

15Since the Bourguibian age (1956-1987), the wa’dh directly worked under the Ministry of Religious Affairs, covering multiple roles: from teaching in public schools or koranic associations to administrative tasks. There are wa’dh idari, the administrators, and there are those more in contact with civil society, wa’dh madani. The latter engage in local communities such as teaching in the katatib (the traditional Islamic school), organizing takuin, namely workshops for imams, and they check whether the mosques are in accordance with legal standards of hygiene and structure. Moreover, they make inspections on Friday prayers (khotba), they check the pedagogy in the kottab, they give classes in Koranic associations for adults, and they also give classes to prepare people to hajj, the pilgrimage. Ben Ali not only implemented the number of wa'dh duties, but he also opened the recruiting to women in 1992, the wa’ydhat. Nowadays there is effective parity in the number of male wa’dh and female wa’ydhat. Indeed, out of 588 preachers, 52 % are women, distributed in various areas monitoring the madrassas and mosques. The numerical advantage of women has begun to expand to include sectors that used to be the preserve of men (Al-Chorouk 2018). Women are supposed to ‘fight’ extremism and terrorism by spreading the values of moderate Islam, an approach on par with the UN Security Council Resolutions of 2014 (UN 2014) and the UN Action Plan of 2015, recognising the influence that women have in stopping the spread of extremism.

16Looking at the role of female practitioners within a system of surveillance and control highlights the gendered dynamics of the security sector and the surveillance apparatus (El Haitami, 2016). On one hand, most counterterrorism programmes worldwide “remain gender-blind, meaning there is little explicit consideration of the role of gendered norms and impacts in these programs for either women or men” (Brown, 2020: 12). On the other hand, women are usually indicated in the global counterterrorism discourse as “assets for fighting extremism; often because of a role they are perceived to have as “inside mediators” in families and communities” (Giscard d’Estaing, 2017: 106). In fact, the belief in “women’s “natural” peacefulness and therefore aversion to violence” (Rothermel. 2020: 726) leads to an emphasis on their supposed role as mediators and educators within both the family and the community. In this sense, gender represents not only a social construct but also “an embedded social location” (Sa’ar, Sachs and Aharoni, 2011: 51) which women have to navigate in their everyday experience as practitioners in counterterrorism and prevention policies and programmes. Investigating the work of wa’ydhat sheds some light on the way in which they perceive and adapt to their role within the system of surveillance. In turn, it is crucial to study their agency and strategy and how they negotiate their role within the security apparatus.

  • 1 Donia, Faten, Mounira and Ghalya are fictitious names to preserve the anonymity of our participants

17By looking at whether and how wa’ydhat draw upon national and international categories of gender and religion, we can observe how they shape and make sense of their own personal experiences of security. In examining their individual responses to existing understandings, institutions and policies of security, we can examine the connections between national and global politics and the spatial stories of specific individuals. Do they re-appropriate, re-enact and make sense of security policies exactly in the way they are constructed at the international and national levels? On the contrary, do they challenge or negotiate them, mediating with their own personal understandings of religion and gendered roles within the security apparatus? The wa’ydhat, as religious civil servants, may re-enact the national security strategies, but may also have the agency and power to shape the very security measures they are tasked with implementing. Each wa’ydha has to monitor an area of the country, yet they can decide when to check, how many times, and with what intensity. To examine the understanding that wa’ydhat have of security, religion and gendered roles, we interviewed five wa’ydhat in the governorates of Tunis, Bizerte, Sfax and Kairouan, aiming at analyzing the strategies that wa’ydhat may use to navigate their role in the security sector and its relationship with religious narratives. During interviews with them, our goal was to give value to their experience and understanding of their role. For example, Donia1, wa’ydha in the Kairouan governorate, describes her work in this way:

I can teach or I give classes of Koran to women, I’m not tied to a specific religious program; I’m very flexible with my classes and I decide how to manage my own schedule. I am a local preacher, wa’ydha mahalliya. Once you graduate at the Zaytuna, you can choose among many branches. There are two idari branches, the administrative tasks and the evaluation program, which is in severe shortage these days. Evaluators in fact, need to inspect and study specific files.

18Donia’s account is interesting for two reasons: it explains the job options of a wa’ydha, and it suggests that she has a sort of investigative role. Moreover, Donia enlists her activities:

The most important thing in my job is listening to the needs of your community. I go and listen to them, I go around, I enter dar chabeb [the youth houses] to talk to young people, to solve family problems or problems linked to the mosque or the religious sphere, I also tour the state Islamic associations. I listen to the members of the associations for the family and the children, the orphanages, I discuss with the imams, but at the end of the day, I don’t have to solve problems, I only listen and report.

19By saying that she only listens and reports, Donia seems wanting us to grasp that her job does not involve any major responsibilities. But is reporting as neutral as it sounds? In fact, the wa’ydhat know that reporting that a khotba is salafi could cost the imam his license. In addition, the wa'ydhat can also advise the Ministry of Interior via the Ministry of Religious Affairs to issue a search warrant for the police to enter the imam's home at any time.

20We met Mounira in her office, within the city hall of a neighborhood in Southern Tunis, close to the seaside. Mounira works as a wa’ydhat, while also teaching in a Koranic school and working at the city hall. When asked about the details of her job as a “preacher”. Similarly to Donia, she said:

We as preachers are responsible for imams’ discourse, and for this reason we write regular reports and extraordinary reports when needed. Our reports go to regional coordinators, and then to the Ministry of Religious Affairs […]. There are guidelines to the discourses of imams, e. g., their speeches cannot be politically oriented or intimidating, but they have to focus on the adjustment of behaviors, on respect, on the creation of good relationships, and they have to be comprehensible to everyone.

21Among the many activities the wa’ydhat need to attend, there is also the inspection of the mosques and checking of Friday prayers, which is understood as central by both interviewees. The control over imam’s speeches serves a specific purpose: on the one hand, the idea that Friday khutbas cannot be ‘politically oriented’ traces back to the idea of “partisan neutrality”. Partisan neutrality is a strategy used by Tunisian governments before and after the revolution, which involves “full detachment of mosques from political affairs, as the opposite would mean the transgression of mosques’ specialized functional boundaries” (Donker, 2018: 509). This stance is said to protect “religion from corrupting influences” (Ibid.). In reality, this control over a supposed partisan neutrality allows for governmental surveillance over religious approaches and over imams’ speeches. In this way, governments are able to only allow for khutbas that reproduce state-sanctioned religious narratives.

22The redaction of regular and extraordinary reports is particularly interesting for two reasons: first, it is one of the few tasks that wa’dh and wa’ydhat implement for the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which communicates with the Ministry of Interior, perpetuating the system of state control over religion that dates to the authoritarian years. Moreover, the system of reports not only assures double control (via the two ministries), it also enforces the idea of an ‘orthodox’, and moderate version of Islam, which matches the state’s (Blanc, 2020). Second, despite both wa’dh and wa’ydhat performing the Friday sermon’s inspection, women have a particular role in it. In fact, more than one interviewee assured the author(s) that sometimes the imams are more amenable to receive criticism from a female preacher rather than a male one. This is because in conservative and patriarchal societies, women are perceived as having inherent qualities such as tenderness, understanding, diplomacy, piety, and mercy. Hence, it is crucial to ask whether, within the same profession of wa’dh, specific gendered choices are put in place. As Donia told the author(s), it is true that more women than men are employed when it comes to counseling Imam: “Of course! At a personal level the imam accepts a woman’s critique more easily than a man’s.”

23Faten, wa’ydha from Bizerte, was more cautious than Donia about the wa’ydhat control on the khotba. According to Faten, the reason wa’ydhat have an easier access to imams does not depend on gender, but on different factors such as regionalism and people’s conservatism. Finally, according to Ghayda, wa’ydha from Sfax, the role of control on the Friday preach is equally implemented by both men wa’dh and women wa’ydhat. Yet, despite the lack of agreement among the wa’ydhat concerning the ‘khotba-checking’, the very existence of this specific practice assigned to women because of their gender seems worth of attention. The presence of unofficial gender policies within the frame of official security policies is relevant for two reasons: first, their discretionarily nature makes gender policies almost invisible, as they are built upon cultural stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. Second, the presence of gender policies within security policies recalls Ben Ali’s state feminism, namely state’s co-optation of equalitarian measures (El Haithami, 2016). Finally, the very maintenance of the wa’dh institution after the revolution, and the employment of women as a strategic asset to control the non-official religious sphere, shows consistency with much older practices of monitoring and control.

Conclusion

24This paper highlights how the political discussion over religion represents a source of legitimacy for the security apparatus, in a process started early under Bourguiba, perfected and expanded under Ben Ali and, despite a brief interlude in the early years of the transition, still used in post-revolutionary Tunisia. Interviews from the field highlight how the system of control and surveillance underwent little to no change, and the discursive strategies used in the authoritarian years and focusing on the juxtaposition between a moderate and a radical Islam still exist today, albeit with some differences. This led to the legitimisation of old surveillance and control measures based on a security discourse that has been reactivated in the mid-2010s. The preference for control-based measures (in contrast with prevention and especially reintegration-based programs) is clearly due to a strong reliance on the pre-existing security apparatus, which has maintained the same role and most of the same features of the pre-revolutionary era.

25Within this context, the wa’ydhat adapt to and re-enact a system which reproduces religious and gendered dynamics of the pre-revolutionary years. More specifically, the religious narrative inherited from the authoritarian era became the core of the international security and counterterrorism discourse after 9/11 (Maira 2009; Van Es, Ter Laan and Meinema 2021). Furthermore, that same narrative has juxtaposed a moderate, traditionally Tunisian Islam, to a radical and foreign understanding of Islam, which should therefore be sanctioned. Similarly, pre-revolutionary gendered dynamics within the control apparatus are now being reproduced following the international discourse regarding the role of women in counterterrorism and prevention policies (Brown 2013, 2020). Looking at the similarities between the National Strategy in Tunisia and documents from the UN regarding counterterrorism and the prevention of violent extremism, it is clear how one of the core features of the post-revolutionary security sector in the country (especially after 2015) has been the re-appropriation and re-branding of pre-revolutionary practices and dynamics in view of the post-9/11 international discourse on security. In fact, while both the religious moderate/radical narrative and the gendered dynamics of the security apparatus pre-date the international discourse on prevention of terrorism and violent extremism, this new conceptual framework and discursive narratives allowed Tunisia to re-brand practices of the authoritarian years and make them acceptable during its transitional phase.

26Within this system, the gendered dynamic and the religious narrative utilized by the state are re-appropriated and reproduced by the wa’ydhat in their everyday practices, serving as a legitimation of their surveillance and control duties, and demonstrating the widespread reach of both international and national narratives of security and prevention. Finally, while it is impossible to generalize from this single case, the everyday practices of security as highlighted by the role of wa’ydhat within the surveillance apparatus highlight some critical elements in the process of internationalization of the security and prevention discourse and their transplantation in post-authoritarian countries.

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Notes

1 Donia, Faten, Mounira and Ghalya are fictitious names to preserve the anonymity of our participants.

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Référence électronique

Fabrizio Leonardo Cuccu et Alessandra Bonci, « Security and religion in democratizing Tunisia: re-enacting surveillance through religious narratives and gendered dynamics »L’Année du Maghreb [En ligne], 31 | 2024, mis en ligne le 01 juillet 2024, consulté le 04 décembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/anneemaghreb/13245 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/11x4g

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Auteurs

Fabrizio Leonardo Cuccu

Assistant Professor, Dublin City University (Ireland)

Alessandra Bonci

Senior Researcher, Arnold Bergstraesser Institute (Germany)

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