Tunisia is preposterously touted as the one success story of the nightmarish revolutions, counter-revolutions, civil wars, jihadist invasions and Islamist terrorist atrocities in the name of an Arab Spring we are still told represents a thirst for Western-style freedom and plurality. The decision to award this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the country’s National Dialogue Quartet, for apparently helping the country’s transition to democracy, dangerously perpetuates this myth.
The Nobel Committee says that the National Dialogue Quartet was…
…instrumental in enabling Tunisia, in the space of a few years, to establish a constitutional system of government guaranteeing fundamental rights for the entire population, irrespective of gender, political conviction or religious belief.
This is simply untrue. The article on religious rights in the new Tunisian constitution was in fact amended at the last minute to pacify the Islamist bloc.
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