Signs of an Urban River’s Revival in Virginia

Ten years ago, bathers in the James River, which wends through this old Southern city, wore ear and nose plugs to stave off infections from sewage runoff. Now, the river is stalked by blue herons and shad — symbols as potent as the belching riverbank ironworks and factories of the unfiltered, blue-collar past.

After huge cleanup efforts, unprecedented numbers of tubers, kayakers and fishermen converge here, steps below downtown skyscrapers. On a sunny weekday morning, preparing for his gallery exhibit opening, Aaron Pavelis, 29, was trying to capture the river — his river, an artist’s vision, present tense — with paint and palette: a shimmering contrast of old railroad bridges and trees deep in shadow.

Inspired by the Dutch masters, Mr. Pavelis spread hand-mixed paint “with no modern additives” and delighted in the splashing of the shad. But he was a realist about the river, too. He said he would eat the shad, which have come in from the Atlantic for their spring spawning mission. But what of the catfish that inhabit it year-round?

“I still have my doubts,” he said, watching as a freight train thundered overhead.

Residents remain cautious, too. To protest water pollution in February, a University of Richmond student floated the “James River UFO,” a disc made of feathers, downriver. And in April, the public utilities’ Twitter account warned: “Green water in the James tomorrow is a V.C.U. art student project. Don’t panic. Don’t call. Don’t worry.”

Bathers needed reassurance as well when shad were seen floating on the surface of the river, looking like so many textured brushstrokes of paint. As it turned out, biologists from Virginia Commonwealth University and state agencies were sending electric currents into the water, momentarily stunning but not harming the fish so they could measure the shad’s resurgence.

After almost 20 years of restocking and a fishing moratorium, the fish are a food source for the herons, now some 200 strong, with a rookery on an island in the river. Observant visitors — a record one million are expected this year — can spot the rookery by parking under the elevated train tracks and walking along a narrow gangway built atop a city water pipeline.

Ralph White, the manager of the James River Park System for more than three decades, has watched the river’s transformation from a dammed and divided symbol of Richmond’s Confederate past to a point of modern union. Because of mercury, the biggest catfish — some run to 50 pounds — are still not yet fit to eat, he concedes.

But “a five-pounder,” he adds reassuringly, “is quite excellent.”

View the original article here

Many Fear Revival of Islamist Party in Tunisia

TUNIS — Accused as subversives or terrorists, they bore the repressive brunt of the Tunisian dictator’s reign — two decades of torture, prison or exile.

But since the dictator, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled in January, the Islamists of the once-banned Ennahda Party have emerged from obscurity, returned from abroad and established themselves as perhaps the most powerful political force in post-revolution Tunisia.

Despite repeated assurances of their tolerance and moderation, their rise has touched off frenzied rumors of attacks on unveiled women and artists, of bars and brothels sacked by party goons, of plots to turn the country into a caliphate. With crucial elections scheduled for July 24, Ennahda’s popularity and organizational strength are of growing concern to many activists and politicians, who worry that the secular revolution in this moderate state — the revolt that galvanized the Arab Spring — might see the birth of a conservative Islamic government.

And just as the protests in Tunis heralded the revolt in Cairo, analysts are looking to Tunisia as a bellwether for the more broadly influential developments to come in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood enjoys similar advantages and has stirred similar misgivings.

“How do you want us to go up against Ennahda?” asked an exasperated strategist for the Republican Alliance, a secular party. “They’re prepared to do anything.”

With years of organizational experience, a vast membership and decades of credibility as a sworn enemy of Mr. Ben Ali, Ennahda has proved to be better-equipped than any other party — most have existed only for a matter of weeks — to step into the political void. The Republican Alliance strategist called for the elections to be delayed.

“July 24 is a favor to Ennahda,” he said, requesting anonymity for fear of attacks by the party’s supporters. “It’s suicide.”

With Ennahda in power, he said, “It would be Iran.”

The party says such fears are unfounded. “We aspire to a free, open, moderate society, where each citizen will have the same rights,” said Abdallah Zouari, a member of Ennahda’s executive committee and a party spokesman, adding that the party called for equal rights for men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims.

“We are not in agreement with the secularists who want to force others to be secular,” he said, “the same way we are against the Salafists who want to force others to be Muslim.”

He spoke with a visitor at a modest new party branch on the third floor of a shabby Tunis office building, the rooms still echoing and empty but for some tables and chairs, the white walls dirty and scuffed.

Mr. Zouari — who bears the dark callus on his forehead caused by frequent bowed prayer, common among the devout — was himself imprisoned for more than a decade as a party member.

“The religious sentiment of the Tunisian people is so deep that certain people cannot understand,” he said.

Polling suggests that Ennahda — the renaissance, in Arabic — enjoys broader support than any of the country’s other 60-odd authorized political parties. The party’s weekly newspaper, The Dawn, resumed publication in April after a 20-year hiatus and now sells about 70,000 copies per week, party officials say.

The July vote will create an assembly assigned the task of rewriting the Constitution. In anticipation of the elections, the party has opened dozens of local offices, and imams are said to be promoting Ennahda in mosques across the country.

But mistrust of the party remains widespread.

“They’re doing doublespeak, and everyone knows it,” said Ibrahim Letaief, a radio host at Mosaique FM, a popular station where he offers withering criticism of the Islamists. Ennahda, he said, has only tempered its rhetoric in a bid to win votes, but in power would impose strict Islamic law.

It is a common refrain here, despite having first been popularized by the reviled Mr. Ben Ali. Opponents have made similar claims, anti-Ennahda Facebook groups have drawn tens of thousands of supporters, and protesters have denounced the party throughout Tunisia. Some of the fear seems to stem from uncertainty about who, exactly, will lead the party; the group’s longtime leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, has said he will not seek office.

A democratic Tunisia depends on the banning of Ennahda, Mr. Letaief said, though he acknowledged, “I’m not going to seem democratic, here.” Still, he said, “Islam is very much anchored in society.”

The first article of the now-suspended Tunisian Constitution decreed Islam the national faith, and 98 percent of the country’s 10.6 million inhabitants are Muslim. Public schools dispense religious instruction. Yet religious leaders have never played a role in government.

Habib Bourguiba, the father of Tunisian independence and the country’s first president, was a staunch secularist who banned polygamy, legalized abortion and once sipped orange juice on television during the Ramadan fast in an affront to the faithful.

David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Cairo.