Symbolic Reopening After Terror Attacks

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TUNIS — Tunisia’s Bardo museum held a ceremonial reopening on Tuesday a week after gunmen claiming alliance with ISIS killed 20 foreign tourists in an attack aimed at wrecking the country’s vital tourism industry.

Several thousand Tunisians and foreign visitors to an international forum also marched in the capital Tunis to show solidarity with the Bardo victims who included Japanese, Spanish, Italians and Colombians. Tunisia is keen to show it can recover from the attack which threatens to damage tourism and mar the country’s young democracy four years after a 2011 uprising ended the one-party rule of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.

Last Wednesday, at least two Tunisian men opened fire on tourists as they got off buses at the Bardo, in one of the worst such incidents in the North African nation for a decade. Security forces later shot dead the two men, who had been recruited at mosques in Tunisia and subsequently trained at a jihadist camp in Libya.

Tunisians carrying national flags and waving “Visit Tunisia” signs gathered behind barriers outside the Bardo, where dignitaries were invited under tight security to a symbolic reopening with an orchestra playing inside the museum hall. The Bardo, which has a famed collection of art and artifacts covering more than 3,000 years of history, is expected to welcome back the public over the weekend.

The attack, however, has underscored how Islamist militants are trying to turn their sights on North Africa as a new front beyond their main battlefield of Iraq and Syria, with ISIS loyalists already gaining a foothold in neighboring Libya.

Article 11 has been a point of contention in popular culture disputes on the doctrine of separation of church and state as it applies to the founding principles of the United States. Some religious spokesmen claim that—despite unanimous ratification by the U.S. Senate in English—the text which appears as Article 11 in the English translation does not appear in the Arabic text of the treaty.[11] Some historians, secular and religious, have argued that the phrase specifically refers to the government and not the culture, that it only speaks of the founding and not what America became or might become,[13] and that many Founding Fathers and newspapers described America as a Christian nation during the early Republic.[14]

Article 11

Article 11 reads:

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

According to Frank Lambert, Professor of History at Purdue University, the assurances in Article 11 were “intended to allay the fears of the Muslim state by insisting that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and enforced. John Adams and the Senate made clear that the pact was between two sovereign states, not between two religious powers.” Lambert writes,

“By their actions, the Founding Fathers made clear that their primary concern was religious freedom, not the advancement of a state religion. Individuals, not the government, would define religious faith and practice in the United States. Thus the Founders ensured that in no official sense would America be a Christian Republic. Ten years after the Constitutional Convention ended its work, the country assured the world that the United States was a secular state, and that its negotiations would adhere to the rule of law, not the dictates of the Christian faith. The assurances were contained in the Treaty of Tripoli of 1797 and were intended to allay the fears of the Muslim state by insisting that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and enforced. John Adams and the Senate made clear that the pact was between two sovereign states, not between two religious powers.[15]

The treaty was printed in the Philadelphia Gazette and two New York papers, with only scant public dissent, most notably from William Cobbett.[16]

The treaty was a routine diplomatic agreement. It has attracted attention in recent decades because of a clause stating that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Before then, the territory was usually divided between Ifriqiya, Morocco, and a west-central Algerian state centered on Tlemcen or Tiaret. Powerful Berber dynasties such as the Almohads (12th century) and briefly thereafter the Hafsids, occasionally unified it for short periods. From a European perspective its “capital” or chief city was often considered to be Tripoli in modern-day Libya, although Marrakesh in Morocco was the largest and most important Berber city at the time. In addition, Algiers in Algeria and Tangiers in Morocco were also sometimes seen[by whom?] as the “capital”.

Purchase of Christian captives in the Barbary States.

The first United States military land action overseas, executed by the U.S. Marines and Navy, was the Battle of Derne, Tripoli, in 1805. It formed part of an effort to destroy all of the Barbary pirates, to free the American slaves in captivity, and to put an end to piracy acts between these warring tribes on the part of the Barbary states, which were themselves member states of the Ottoman Empire. The opening line of the “Marine’s Hymn” refers to this action: “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…”. This was the first time the U.S. Marine Corps took part in offensive actions outside of the United States.

King Charles X decided to organise a punitive expedition on the coasts of Algiers to punish the “impudence” of the dey, as well as to root out Barbary corsairs who used Algiers as a safe haven. The naval part of the operation was given to Admiral Duperré, who advised against it, finding it too dangerous. He was nevertheless given command of the fleet. The land part was under the orders of Louis Auguste Victor de Ghaisne, comte de Bourmont.

On 16 May, a fleet comprising 103 warships and 464 transports departed Toulon, carrying a 37,612-man strong army. The ground was well-known, thanks to observations made during the First Empire, and the Presque-isle of Sidi Ferruch was chosen as a landing spot, 25 kilometres (16 mi) west of Algiers. The vanguard of the fleet arrived off Algiers on 31 May, but it took until 14 June for the entire fleet to arrive.

After a contentious meeting in which Deval refused to provide satisfactory answers on 29 April 1827, the dey struck Deval with his fly whisk. Charles X used this slight against his diplomatic representative to first demand an apology from the dey, and then to initiate a blockade against the port of Algiers. When the dey responded to a demand to send an ambassador to France to resolve the incident with cannon fire directed toward one of the blockading ships, the French determined that more forceful action was required.[4]