Tunisia's Religious Police: 'Is This the Fate of Tunisia?'

December 12, 2011

A "committee for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice" has been launched in Tunisia by radical Salafist groups to promote Islamic virtues -- an unofficial committee but one that government officials have failed to take action against and one that the Tunisian civil society doesn't have the political power to counter, Hudson New York reports. The committee of "self-appointed custodians of Islamic virtues" is aggressively taking action -- forcing women to abide by strict dress codes, assaulting intellectuals and filmmakers, and forbidding moderate Muslims from teaching or being on the radio, just to name a few instances. "Is this the fate of Tunisia?" an editorial in the Tunisian media outlet Investir en Tunisie asks. "Is this post-revolutionary Tunisia?"