Tunisia removes Islam from the new Constitution and seals the separation of religion from the State

Tunisia will become the second Muslim-majority country in the world to remove Islam from the state, after Turkey, when Kais Saied's new constitution is approved on July 25.

The de facto president of Tunisia, Kais Saied, confirmed on Tuesday that the text of the new Constitution that will be submitted to a referendum on July 25 will not enshrine Islam as the "religion of the State".

"The next Tunisian constitution will not mention a state with Islam as a religion, it will only mention that the Tunisian people belong to an umma (community) that has Islam as a religion," the dictator told reporters at a conference. "The umma and the state for the first time are going to be two different things", he specified.

Saied received the draft text on Monday, a key step in his campaign to reform the Tunisian state after he closed the legislative branch and took control of the sum of public power last July in a coup to stop what he said, it was an opposition coup.

Sadeq Belaid, the legal expert who spearheaded the drafting of the text, said earlier this month that he would remove all references to Islam from the new document in a challenge to Islamist parties, which are the main opposition to Saied.

His comments, mainly referring to the opposition Ennahdha party, an Islamist party that dominated Tunisian politics between 2011 and 2019, until it was defeated by Saied, are in reference to the removal of the first article of the Tunisian constitution that was written in 2014, and that its 1959 predecessor also had, which defines the North African country as “a free, independent and sovereign state. Islam is their religion and Arabic is their language.

The 2014 document was the product of a consensus between Ennahdha and her secular rivals three years after the revolt that ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. However, the last sentence never satisfied the seculars, who see this article as a door to the application of sharia law in the country.

The new text, which excludes opposition forces and is boycotted by the powerful UGTT trade union confederation, must be approved by Saied at the end of June before being presented to voters next month.

His moves have been welcomed by a large part of Tunisians tired of the corrupt and chaotic post-revolutionary system, but others have warned that he is returning the country to autocracy.

Saied has long called for a presidential system that avoids the frequent gridlock seen in the mixed parliamentary-presidential system, and this change to the constitution aims at that as well.

He has already established dates for legislative elections, for December 17, and assured that next year there would be presidential elections. Saied appears determined to forcibly turn the country into a secular nation, following in the footsteps of Turkey, which in 1924 removed mention of Islam as the state religion from its constitution.

Source: La Derecha Diario