UGTT: from the factory floor to the mosque

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You don’t often meet imams who are also active trade unionists but Tunisia’s national trade union centre l’Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT) organises everywhere.

The UGTT is seeking to negotiate civil service status, permanent contracts and decent pay for staff at the mosques. But politics has made this unionisation project difficult.

Fadhel Achour is from the Syndicat de la Mosquée Zitouna Al Maamour and his colleague Bechir Arfaoui is the co-ordinator of the Cadres des Mosquées of the UGTT. Arfaoui was recently sacked by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and is fighting for re-instatement.

In 1959, Tunisia’s independence leader, Habib Bourguiba, effectively nationalised the country’s mosques. Mosque property was taken over by the state and the staff – imams, muezzins and administrators – became state officials.

But they were not given civil service contracts. Instead, they were given a monthly allowance of 40 dinars which, in 1992, was increased to 120 dinars. This is now worth about 60 euros.

Achour explains that after the January 2011 revolution, mosques staff contacted the UGTT to negotiate contracts, pay and conditions. Over the last two years, the union has signed up about 6,000 staff – or about one-third of the total workers in Tunisia’s roughly 5,000 mosques.

After the January 2011 revolution, Tunisians had their first free elections since independence in 1956. The majority Ennahda party now governs in a coalition with two other small parties.

 

Of politics and religion

Ennahda is part of ‘political Islam’ whose aim has been described as fundamentally altering “the religious, intellectual and political complexion of Muslims worldwide towards a more pristine and ‘Islamically authentic’ form.”

Ennahda calls its opponents ‘atheists’ while its opponents say Ennahda has too much influence in the mosques.

According to Achour and Arfaoui, during the last 19 months, politically-neutral imams have suffered over 1,055 attacks by Ennahda members attempting to drive them out and replace them with Ennahda supporters.

They say about half of Tunisia’s mosques are under the control of Ennahda with another 178 controlled by a wing of the Salafist movement which also supports political Islam.

In an interview, the chargé d’affaires at the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Sadok Arfaoui (no relation) agreed that there had been some attacks, but these were carried out by “fundamentalists“ and not Ennahda supporters.

He said these complaints had been passed on to the police and were being dealt with. He also described the number of 1,055 attacks as “inflated”.

Only 80 mosques are in the hands of Salafists, according to Arfaoui, and when asked about Ennahda’s influence in the mosques, he said that the Ministry does not keep tabs of the political affiliation of staff.

“When we appoint an imam we are not interested in which party he belongs to. But what we are interested in is that he should not manipulate the mosque,” he told Equal Times.

If elections are held later this year, the issue of the political neutrality of imams may be important. According 2012 data, roughly 60 per cent of the population are practicing Muslims, although nominally nearly all of the country’s 10.7 million-strong population is Muslim.

Tunisia is currently in a volatile state due to high unemployment and the assassinations of two prominent left-wing politicians, Chokri Belaïd and Mohamed Brahmi.

The country has seen mass opposition demonstrations demanding that Ennahda steps down, the National Constituent Assembly is dissolved and elections are held.

The National Assembly was indeed suspended by its president Mustapha Ben Jaafar on August 6. He asked the powerful UGTT to negotiate with deadlocked parties. Houcine Abbassi, the UGTT Secretary General, met with the Ennahda party leader, Rached Ghannouchi, on August 12 – but the deadlock remains.

Meanwhile, the UGTT carries on organising in the mosques.