Tunisia's Post-Revolution Religious and Constitutional Settlement

Tunisia's 2011 Jasmine Revolution, which toppled longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and helped spark the wider Arab Spring, opened a genuinely contested debate over Islam's constitutional role that the eventual 2014 constitution resolved through a careful compromise: Article 1 names Islam the country's religion while Article 2 declares Tunisia a civil state based on citizenship, and Article 6 obliges the state to protect religion while also protecting freedom of belief, conscience and worship, a formulation negotiated specifically to satisfy both the Islamist Ennahda party and its more secular opponents during the constitutional drafting process.

Tunisia's Personal Status Code, enacted in 1956 under independence leader Habib Bourguiba, was unusually progressive for the Arab world at the time, banning polygamy and requiring mutual consent for divorce, reforms that predated similar changes elsewhere in the region by decades and remain a distinctive feature of Tunisian legal and religious life. President Kais Saied's 2021 suspension of parliament and subsequent 2022 constitutional overhaul concentrated executive power significantly, raising concern among rights groups about the durability of the 2014 settlement's religious and civil liberty protections going forward.