Promoting peaceful coexistence between political actors with divergent worldviewsTunis, 3 March 2017Author: Slahedine Jourchi
Translated from Arabic by: Khadidja Neggazi
Edited by: Charlotte Mounier
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Introduction
In collaboration with the Al-Jahedh Forum, the Cordoba Foundation of Geneva, in partnership with the Religion, Politics and Conflict (RPC) desk of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, organised a workshop in Tunis on 3 March 2017 on “Religion and politics in the current Tunisian context”. The project stems from the recommendations of the three meetings on the interaction of religion and politics in the public sphere held in February–March 2016 in Istanbul and in September 2016 in Doha. The aim of the workshop was to deconstruct the relationship between religion and political violence in Tunisia in order to identify the roots of the differences that lead to tension, with a view to laying the foundations for a consensus on the rules of the political game to consolidate the democratic transition. Twenty-two participants took part: some independents, others belonging to political currents with different ideological references, including representatives of politically and intellectually opposed currents – such as the radical left facing cadres of various Islamist tendencies – as well as liberal political figures and others of pan-Arab Nasserist persuasion.
Opening the workshop, the representative of the Cordoba Foundation recalled the Foundation’s aims and its commitment to supporting Tunisia’s democratic transition by facilitating communication between secular and Islamist forces, and presented the CFG’s various initiatives in partnership with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). For his part, the president of the Al-Jahedh Forum welcomed the participants and stressed the importance of the partnership with the CFG. He said the Forum was keen to move beyond the polarisation that dominates Tunisia’s political and cultural atmosphere, and that the current period called for encouraging all parties to undertake the serious and necessary reviews to create a climate conducive to a solid and strong democracy. The representative of the Swiss Embassy in Tunisia welcomed the initiative and expressed the Swiss government’s support for Tunisia’s nascent democracy.
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