Abstract
Did the Tunisian Ennahdha party have a sociological and ideological predisposition inclining its transformation from a religious movement into a viable political party? How did an organization which was originally a group of preachers proclaiming Islamic societal salvation transform into a political party able to exercise power within a multiparty democratic system? These questions may seem merely technical as the Ennahdha party already exists and its members support conforming with Tunisia’s official charter regulating political parties. This association shifted over the past decades, organizing bureaucratically in a way that now clearly divides its operations between preaching for the salvation Islamic values and direct political action. But this process was not inevitable and the party has faced significant sociological and ideological challenges during its transformation process. Arguably, these challenges have negatively impacted the party’s political efficacy. Furthermore, the future of the Ennahdha party’s political-religious project will play out in accordance with how the party continues to manage this passage. Its commitment to participate as a party in a democratic system (or lack thereof) will surely influence the way in which large sections of Tunisian civil and political society react to it. At the heart of these challenges is the anthropological-political conception of Islam as a social fact in the Maussian sense of the term: as a method of exercising social control, which allows it to generate the world of salvation here and in the hereafter.
The central objective of the Islamicmovement throughout the eras, and in the present moment as well, essentially focuses on the reconstruction ofcivilsociety, starting with the construction of the faithful religious individual and of the united community…. All of this [is] in accordance with the need to liberate religion, the individual, and the community of all power that considers itself above the umma, for example the State, or anything other than God.
—Rached Ghannouchi, Chairman of the Ennahdha Party, 1999
On January 14th, 2011 I strongly wished that the time of the events would stop completely for five years. Because we had a lot of things to do …
—Abdelhamid Jlassi, Shura Council Member, the Ennahdha Party, 2017
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Notes
- 1.
The interviews concerned six leaders of the party. Three of them were Ministers.
- 2.
Burgat, F., La génération Al-Qaeda, les courants islamistes entre “dénominateur commun identitaire” et internationalisation de la résistance “islamique”, Mouvement, N 6, 2004, pp. 77–87; Etienne, B., L’islamisme radical, Paris, Hachette: 1987, pp. 207–208.
- 3.
Literally Jamāt refers to group. But group+ Islam could refer to umma.
- 4.
Ghannoushi, R., From the Revolution to the Constitution, Arabic Politics, N 18, 2016, pp. 105–116 (in Arabic).
- 5.
This trend founded the magazine 15–21 (15 Hegir century–21 Christian century).
- 6.
Zghal, A., and Mousa, A. The Nahdha Movement between Brotherhood and the Tunisianity, Tunis, Cérès, 2014, pp. 26–35 (In Arabic).
- 7.
Ghannoushi, op., cit.
- 8.
Ghannoushi, Ibid.
- 9.
First declaration of the constitution, Islamic Tendency Movement (Mouvement de la Tendance Islamique) June 6, 1981.
- 10.
Ibid.
- 11.
See Mouldi Lahmar (Edited by), The Tunisian Revolution: The Local Trigger Under the Microscope of Social Sciences, Doha, ACRPS 2014, (In Arabic).
- 12.
Karsten Grabow, Démocratie chrétienne: principes et conception politique, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Imrimé à Tunis, SD.
- 13.
See:
-
Montuclard Maurice. Aux origines de la démocratie chrétienne. Influence du contexte socio-culturel sur les “croyances” religieuses de divers groupes catholiques entre 1893 et 1898, In, Archives de sociologie des religions, n°6, 1958. pp. 47–89.
-
Karsten Grabow, op., cit., pp. 9–18.
-
Durand Jean-Dominique. Aux origines du succès de la démocratie chrétienne en Italie au lendemain de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, in, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, n°39–40, pp. 16–19.
-
Hogwoodm, P., Roberts, J., K., European Politics Today, Manchester University Press, 1997.
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Mayeur, J.-M., Des partis catholiques à la démocratie chrétienne, XIXe-XXe siècles, Paris, Armand Colin, 1980.
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Van Hecke, S. et Gerard, E. (dir.), Christian Democratic Parties in Europe since the End of the Cold War, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2004.
-
- 14.
Barbe, A., La laïcité en France et aux USA, Questions Internationale, N76, 2015, pp. 87–94; Tocqueville, De, A., De la démocratie en Amérique, Paris, Ed. L’Harmattan, 2010.
- 15.
Official document of the 10th Congress of the Ennahdha Movement, May 2016, p. 43.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 44.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Ibid., p. 45.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 51.
- 20.
Ghannoushi, R., Democracy, towards an indigenization of contemporary concepts, Tunis, Dar Al-Sahwa, 2015, pp. 11–22.
- 21.
Ghannoushi, R., From the Revolution…, op. cit.
- 22.
For example, in 2013, many of demonstrations took place in Tunis to oppose some articles in the draft constitution using the term complementarity between man and women instead of equality.
- 23.
During my talks with the party leaders, they all told me that they read the famous Habermas’ book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society.
- 24.
The translation into Arabic of the concept of civil society is relatively difficult. The term used here by Ghannouchi in Arabic is Ahli. Ahli refers to closeness in every sense: kinship, neighborhood and religious affiliation. In contrast the term madani actually refers to civil.
- 25.
Ghannouchi, Rached, Approaches in Secularism and Civil Society. London: The Maghreb Center for Research and Translation, 1999, p. 61 (in Arabic).
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Lahmar, M. (2020). Islamists and Politics in Tunisia Today: Is the Foundation of a Democratic Islamic Party Possible?. In: Mohamed, E., Fahmy, D. (eds) Arab Spring. Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24758-4_3
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