This article from the U.K.’s Telegraph informs us that in Tunisia there is resistance to outlawing blasphemy. This paragraph in particular I thought was important:
The plan to criminalise attacks on religious values sparked an outcry when it was first announced by the Islamists in July, with the media and civil society groups warning that it would result in new restrictions on freedom of expression.
This is politics that I am used to, not the bizarro world that we now live in, in which feminists side with misogynists and secular leftists side with the most fundamentalist of fundamentalist Muslims.
Also, the speaker of the National Constituent Assembly, Mustapha ben Jaafar, is described as the leader of “Ettakatol, a leftist party in the coalition.” It’s nice to hear that a leftist party in the Middle East actually has some clout.
I take it that the name is basically et-takatol, which my Arabic dictionary defines rather unhelpfully as “formation of blocs.” Their website suggests “coalescence.”
The plan to criminalise attacks on religious values sparked an outcry when it was first announced by the Islamists in July, with the media and civil society groups warning that it would result in new restrictions on freedom of expression.
This is politics that I am used to, not the bizarro world that we now live in, in which feminists side with misogynists and secular leftists side with the most fundamentalist of fundamentalist Muslims.
Also, the speaker of the National Constituent Assembly, Mustapha ben Jaafar, is described as the leader of “Ettakatol, a leftist party in the coalition.” It’s nice to hear that a leftist party in the Middle East actually has some clout.
I take it that the name is basically et-takatol, which my Arabic dictionary defines rather unhelpfully as “formation of blocs.” Their website suggests “coalescence.”
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