Tunisian intellectuals: responses to Islamism

A group of Tunisian intellectuals, whom the author dubs 'the professors', has generated a body of thought that responds to the Islamist challenge and to the continuing authoritarianism of the Ben Ali government, which remains committed to secularist policies inherited from the Bourguiba era and to the propagation of an official version of Islam. The professors deny the possibility of unambiguous definition of the Arab-Islamic heritage, the turath, and oppose the use of any ideology derived from that notion. Denouncing Islam as ideology, they evoke the need for a liberal, democratic arena in which notions of truth and policy can be freely debated. They suggest the need for some separation of religion and politics, but they would oppose ideological secularism as much as they oppose any religious ideology. The future of this discourse, which is in a sense both post-modern and post-Islamist, remains uncertain.