Tunisian constitution will make no place for faith

Tunisia's Islamist-led government will focus on democracy, human rights and a free-market economy in planned changes to the constitution, effectively leaving religion out of the text it will draw up, party leaders said. The government, due to be announced next week, will not introduce sharia or other Islamic concepts to alter the secular nature of the constitution in force when Tunisia's Arab Spring revolution ousted autocrat Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January.
"We are against trying to impose a particular way of life," Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi, 70, a lifelong Islamist activist jailed and exiled under previous regimes, told Reuters. Tunisian and foreign critics of Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party that won 41.7 percent of Tunisia's first free election on October 23, have voiced fears it would try to impose religious principles on this relatively secular Muslim country.
Interviews with politicians and analysts revealed a consensus that the new assembly, the first to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings, will focus on reassuring Tunisian voters, and the foreign tourists and investors vital to its economy. All parties agreed to keep the first article of the current constitution which says Tunisia's language is Arabic and its religion is Islam. "This is just a description of reality," Ghannouchi said. "It doesn't have any legal implications.
"There will be no other references to religion in the constitution. We want to provide freedom for the whole country," said the Islamist leader, who will not take any official role in the new government. The new constitution is due in about a year. Ghannouchi's reformist Islamist writings in the 1980s and 1990s helped influence Turkey's current mix of Islam and democracy, and he said his 22 years of exile in London helped him see the importance of civil society in influencing politics.
Like Turkey, Tunisia had decades of secularist dictatorship before evolving into a democracy where moderate Islamists - dubbed "Muslim Democrats" in a take-off of Europe's Christian Democrats - have emerged as a strong political force. "Law by itself doesn't change reality," Ghannouchi said at Ennahda's headquarters, a six-story building abuzz with the excitement of open politics after decades of dictatorship. "There shouldn't be any law to try to make people more religious," said Ghannouchi, whose party has pledged to continue to allow alcohol and Western dress here and pursue economic policies favouring tourism, foreign investment and employment.