Listening to the Views Of the Islamic Dictators

The next confrontation between secular dictators and Islamic jihadists in the Arab world may happen in Tunisia. The country’s interior minister, Hedi Mhenni, has spoken of plans to issue an electronic identity card to Muslim worshippers, pairing them with the mosques nearest to their homes in what he termed “the rationalization of religion.”The crudely named initiative is an effort to restrict the political activities of Islamic fundamentalists, who for decades have used mosques as a staging ground to recruit, organize, and launch potential jihadists at home and abroad.When it comes to battling fundamentalists, nothing done by Tunisia’s president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali – or two other current and former prominent Arab secularist dictators, President Mubarak of Egypt and the imprisoned Saddam Hussein of Iraq – would ever surprise me. They are dictators all right, but tenacious secularists, too.Over the years I have had a chance to discuss, at length, the evil of Islamic fundamentalism with all three: Mr. Ben Ali on two occasions in the 1990s; Mr. Mubarak on several occasions, including a memorable five-hour meeting in 2002; and, even – back in 1980, days after he launched an invasion of Iran – Saddam and his deputy, Tariq Aziz.These men, disdainful as they may be of human rights, make a pretty good argument for why jihadists are a cancer far more lethal than their contempt for democracyMr. Ben Ali has achieved spectacular success, while Saddam is about to be executed, and Mr. Mubarak is floundering in the largest of all Arab countries. In Tunisia, fundamentalism is near death. In Iraq, it thrives, and in Egypt, it is touch and go.Helped by the country’s small size, Tunisia’s secular dictator has been successfully separating mosque from state for years. Emboldened, he is now telling citizens they can pray near home once a week on Friday. Otherwise, mosques will be closed. On the face of it, this sounds like an undertaking of Orwellian dimension, but Tunisia has been there and back.When Tunisia’s first enlightened dictator, Habib Bourguiba, took over in the 1950s after the country won its independence from France, he immediately banned polygamy, even though the Koran allows Muslim men to have up to four wives at a time.Bourguiba’s blunt challenge was widely decried then, but the edict held fast. Today it has become deeply ingrained in the social fabric of the Mediterranean nation.Mr. Ben Ali, who nudged Bourguiba, his mentor, out of power in November 1987, is a former military man and interior minister himself who has ferociously pursued the secularist agenda – banning veils on women at schools, universities, and at work; enforcing secular laws at every level of society; and taking the oxygen out of jihadism throughout the culture.The Interior Ministry, which houses the security forces, the police, and the intelligence services, explained this latest measure as a way of ending “chaos” in mosque attendance, but it is really another political measure aimed at suffocating the last traces of jihadism.Indeed, Tunisia today is incontestably the most modernized Arab nation by far, with heavy female participation in all areas of government and society.I had two long meetings with Mr. Ben Ali as a reporter back in the early ’90s as part of a series of articles for the New York Times on Islamic fundamentalism. He insisted on keeping the talks on background, and over leisurely lunches he spoke vehemently about his profound belief that Islamic concepts must be made to evolve toward the modernity of what was then the 20th century.In the back-and-forth, my questions focused on whether he believes that, when push comes to shove, evolution must be “imposed.” He was incredulous. “Of course,” he said. “Is there any other way?”The answers I received from Mr. Mubarak in 2002 and Saddam in that memorable 1980 meeting were basically the same: All three said there is no time for evolution. I was struck by the steely secular convictions of these three absolute dictators.Secular is good; dictators are not.What to do?

Listening to the Views Of the Islamic Dictators

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