In mid-March, a 19-year-old Tunisian activist named Amina Tyler posted several topless photographs of herself on Facebook. In one pose, the dark-haired Amina is set against a black background, wearing lipstick and eye shadow. She cradles a cigarette in her left hand and stares off camera, with the words "My body is my own and not the source of anyone's honor" written in Arabic across her naked chest. In another iconic photo, Amina stands before a white tile background. Gone is the heavy makeup from the first photograph, and she stares directly into the camera, both of her middle fingers raised. The phrase "Fuck Your Morals" is scrawled on her body in English.
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Amina has said that she represented the movement Femen, an organization founded in the Ukraine that hosts topless protests to support women's rights. But this symbolic protest soon took a dark turn: A woman claiming to be her aunt posted a YouTube video disowning her, saying, "I hope she pays for her actions." The Salafi cleric Adel Almi also issued a fatwa warning that Amina's act could "provoke epidemics and disasters," and "give ideas to other women." Almi called for the young woman to be stoned to death. By the end of last week, local media reported that Amina could face two years' imprisonment for posting the photos.
Two related phenomena are important to understanding this incident -- the increasing restrictions on women in Tunisian society, and a significant rise in Salafi vigilantism. Though Tunisia has had one of the most progressive legal systems in the Arab world toward women's rights since its independence, these restrictions have largely resulted from societal pressures and harassment. According to recent media reports, increasing numbers of Tunisian women feel they need to change the way they dress -- including donning the hijab as a protective measure.
The earliest known post-revolution act of vigilantism targeted female prostitutes. Though maisons closes (brothels) have been legal in Tunisia since 1942, Der Spiegel reported that in February 2011, a crowd of "several hundred outraged citizens" gathered near a maison close in the capital of Tunis on a Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, to protest the presence of prostitutes. The protesters came armed with "sticks and torches in hand," but were stopped by both the Tunisian military and "a militia of pimps, porters and day laborers."
An unsuccessful attack on prostitutes, legal or not, might elicit little sympathy from many observers. But those attacks quickly spread, with maisons closes being set aflame in such cities as Kairouan, Médenine, Sfax, and Sousse, while some of the prostitutes "were hunted down and beaten."
Other women have been attacked for far lesser affronts to public morals. In the working class Tunis neighborhood of Intilaka, a street vendor scolded journalist Zeineb Rezgui for wearing a sleeveless summer dress, referring to her as a prostitute. As Rezgui recounted, "I tried to talk to him, but all of a sudden he jumped and slapped me hard on my neck. I fell on the ground, he started kicking me. About five other men, also with long beards, some wearing long tunics, joined him. They were kicking and punching me all over my body. The rest of the people were just watching and nobody dared to approach." Similar attacks on women have occurred in the northwestern city of Jendouba. And though violence targeting women was the first sign, religiously motivated vigilantism rapidly spread to other sectors of Tunisian society.
Tunisia's hardline Salafi movement primarily drives these attacks. Although there are different strains of Salafism in Tunisia, including a politically quietist strain, it is by no means clear that this turn toward vigilantism within the country is limited to the most militant -- those who can be characterized as jihadists. Vigilantism has spread far and wide, affecting a broad spectrum of Tunisian society: Artists, liberal clerics, Sufis, religious minorities, educators, secularists, foreigners, and civil society activists have all been its victims. It is also geographically dispersed, occurring in locales throughout the country rather than being confined to a few areas. And alarmingly, there are several documented instances in which those who carried out the attacks were able to intimidate the security services, thus resulting in police inaction following acts of violence -- or on occasion, causing the government to take legal action against the victim of the violence.
Attacks on the arts
Probably the most critical of these battlefields is the debate occurring over free expression in Tunisian society. The ability to discuss vital issues lies at the heart of any civil society, and an array of Salafi groups have moved to short-circuit the conversation: They have launched attacks and intimidation campaigns against artists whose work they think transgresses the moral standards appropriate for an Islamic society.
One of the earliest attacks on artists occurred in June 2011. Der Spiegel reported that at that time, an art-house cinema in Tunis was planning to show a movie about secularism that many Salafis viewed as heretical. In response, "a gang of Salafists forcibly entered" the theater and "sprayed tear gas and roughed up the management." The cinema has been closed ever since.
Subsequent attacks on artists abound. On April 9, 2011, director Nouri Bouzid -- a director with outspoken anti-Islamist views -- was stabbed in the head by a bearded student who shouted "Allahu Akbar!" (God is great) before delivering the blow. Bouzid fortunately survived the attack, which he attributes to his "pro-secular stands and rejection of [extremist Islamic] culture." Shortly before Bouzid was stabbed, a speaker at a rally organized by the Ennahda movement -- then the country's largest Islamist party and now the leading party in the government -- called for him to be "shot with a Kalashnikov."
An even more striking string of incidents occurred five months later, when the TV station Nessma showed Persepolis, an animated film that many conservative Muslims found blasphemous because it contains a scene depicting God, which is anathema to stricter interpretations of the faith. After the controversy flared up, the head of the station, Nebil Karoui, issued an apology for broadcasting the film. Nonetheless, many preachers devoted their Friday sermons to denouncing Nessma, after which a mob of about 300 people attacked the Nessma studios in an attempt to set fire to them.
This violence was followed a week later by an assault on Karoui's home. As Middle East Online reported, an armed mob of "about a hundred men, some of whom threw Molotov cocktails," laid siege to his house. About 20 were able to get inside. Karoui's family was home at the time, and they barely managed to escape. In a disturbing footnote to these incidents, the government's response was to call for "respect for sacred things," and in May 2012 it was Karoui who ended up being fined by a Tunisian court for "disturbing public order and attacking moral values" for showing the film in the first place.
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