Why was the 2011 Tunisian revolution perceived in France as a rerun of 1789? Why did Tunisian revolutionaries identify with an “Arab Spring” couched in terms of the European revolutions of 1848? Historian Guillaume Mazeau parses these mirrored constructs and how we view and skew revolutionary temporalities.
For some time, Tunisia prided itself on championing secularism and women’s rights. This smokescreen concealing the regime’s excesses encouraged complacency in the French political class. A reconsideration is in order, now that the Jasmine Revolution has paved the way for a legal and institutional overhaul.
The revolts rocking the Maghreb were set off by a surge of suicides that greatly perplexed Islamic authorities. Were they a symptom of secularization, or even of a radical transgression of a Koranic prohibition?
