Tunisia Turns Up Heat on the Salafis

Salafi Muslims promote a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran, insisting on original Arabic translations and rejecting moderate Muslims as infidels. Freedoms won in Tunisia after the 2011 Arab Spring revolution allowed Salafis to evangelize. Now the government is cracking down on the controlling ways of Ansar al-Sharia. “As elsewhere in the region, not least in Egypt, formal politics in Tunisia have been dominated by the polarisation between liberals and mainstream Islamist parties (Nahda in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt), overshadowing the equally if not more worrisome tensions provoked by the spread of Salafi ideology,” explains Roula Khalaf for the Financial Times. She points out that Salifi methods range from missionary work to extremism; analysts describe a dual political strategy of offering social welfare programs for Tunisian youth while encouraging militancy in nearby Mali and Syria. Moderates have urged the Tunisian government to enforce laws and crack down on harassment and attacks against those who don’t agree with the rigid beliefs. – YaleGlobal