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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (66602)	3/19/2015 4:16:46 PM
From: 2MAR$	Respond to of 69300

19 Dead, Militant 'Believers' in Tunisia Slay Tourists in Museum Rampage (more of God's little Right-Wing helpers in action) washingtonpost.com Things changed after the assassinations of two prominent leftist politicians by Islamist extremists. Anti-Islamist protests rocked Tunis, and a staunchly secularist party with ties to the old regime won the country's first free and fair elections at the end of last year. In the years after Ben Ali's departure, Tunisia struggled to build a stable and inclusive political system. Deep divisions between secularists and Islamists led to a political crisis in 2013 that forced Ennahda to step down. But civil society groups promoted a "national dialogue" that resulted in the elections last year and the passage of a new constitution, the most liberal in the Arab world. Secularists vs. Islamists Tunisia's preeminent post-independence leader and Ben Ali's predecessor, Habib Bourguiba, left his mark with secularist laws and anti-Islamist initiatives. He ridiculed the female practice of wearing a hijab and once famously drank orange juice during a Ramadan telecast. He also presided over the arrests of thousands of Islamist dissidents. After the 2011 uprising, Tunisia's Islamists came out of the cold. Leading politicians ended decades in exile, while a variety of Islamist organizations were for the first time able to conduct their activities in the open. This led to friction. In 2012, Salafist rioters, incensed by a supposedly blasphemous art exhibition, went on a rampage and attacked government offices. In the same year, a leading TV network chief had his house firebombed and was charged in court with "violating public morals" after airing an animated film. The backlash against the Islamists intensified after the killing of Chokri Belaid, a popular leftist leader, in 2013. A secularist party came in first in legislative elections in October 2014, and one of its members won the presidency. There are reasons to be optimistic about Tunisia's future, even in the aftermath of Wednesday's terror attack. Ennahda remains a significant force in opposition — a far cry from Egypt, another Arab Spring nation, where the Muslim Brotherhood government was thrown out by the military, and its leaders and thousands of activists were put in jail. Tunisia has strong civil society organizations, unlike most of its neighbors