Chapter 1
Chapter 1 details the history of Islam in Tunisia from its ancient roots to the increasing secularism after Habib Bourguiba was elected president in 1957. It provides an alternative to the narrative of Tunisia as an ever-secular nation. Wolf points out that Tunisia has a history of frequent reform, but that that reform is not antithetical to Islamic principles — the first notable reform movement was Sufism. Tunisia has an ancient history of being an Islamic landmark; the Kairouan mosque was considered the “first Islamic capital” in the Maghreb and the Zaytouna mosque and university further tied Tunisia’s renown and pride to its Islamic institutions. Later, the Bey dynasty’s attempts to encourage bilateral communication with other powers inadvertently led to Western involvement and the later transformation of Tunisia into a French protectorate. Wolf then details the rise of the Destour and Neo-Destour movements as responses to colonialism and its associated “Westernization.”
Chapter 2
Wolf then describes the gradual politicization of Islam from the 60s through the 80s and identifies three primary guiding factors affecting the youth and devout Muslims: the spread of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s writings and ideology, the inspiration from the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and increasing Muslim activism in universities. In the atmosphere of “modernization” and “progressiveness” under President Bourguiba, Islam had been relegated to the private sphere. However, groups including Rachid Ghannouchi,’s Hmida Ennaifer’s, and Abdelfattah Mourou’s al Jama’a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) sought to return it to public life. This period also saw the emergence of a youth-led faction of the Islamic Group, the Islamic Tendency Movement (MTI); this group would later rebrand to become today’s Ennahda.
Chapter 3
Beginning with Bourguiba’s discovery in 1980 of the MTI’s full organizational scope, his, and later Ben Ali’s, strategies for responding to Islamism shifted dramatically; he began to incorporate more religion into his policy (proving incorrect the identity of Tunisia as consistently secular) while simultaneously cracking down harshly on “unauthorized” Islamist activity. Tensions increased between the regime and the MTI, and even within the MTI itself, leading to violent escalation. After Ben Ali’s nonviolent coup, hopes were initially high that Islamists would be able to participate politically, however Ennahda’s strength in the 1989 elections proved threatening to Ben Ali and resulted in increasingly brutal attempts to silence the Islamists.
Chapter 4
The chapter outlines the patterns of oppression and torture enforced by the Ben Ali regime, against Islamists and particularly members of Ennahdha. Wolf then tracks Ennahda leadership’s response to the oppression through the organization of a foreign network, centered in London where Rached Ghannouchi was exiled. At this point Ennahda were poorly connected and did not have significant support either from the international committee, or from their brethren still inside Tunisia who believed themselves to have been abandoned by the now largely international Ennahdha leadership. It also tracks various endeavors of fighting the Ben Ali controlled narrative, like Zaytouna TV or the newspaper Al-Insan. Despite this, the 2000s represented a period of decreasing influence for the party. A number of younger members began to question the moderate nature of Ennahda and defected to more extreme groups like the Salafis.
Chapter 5
The Ben Ali regime became less oppressive against Ennahda as it became less of an active threat. However, starting 2008, there was a resurgence of the Islamic faith as more and more Tunisians grew to see their practice as a form of passive resistance against the RCD regime. Additionally, this rise in religiousness was accompanied by a marked lack in consumerism. Once this started to appear as a sustained trend, Ben Ali tried to reach out to this religious sentiment by attempting to draw the line between Islamist and Muslim so as to maintain control. While Ennahda tried to take advantage of this sentiment, it still had to deal with internal divisions on what the Ennahda mission was. It further documents the attempted rebuilding of Ennahda’s underground national network and the simultaneous growth of salafi and other extremist Islamic groups. This growth of extremist groups would eventually force a negotiation between the moderate Ennahda and the Ben Ali regime.
Chapter 6
During the uprisings of 2011, Ennahda had a largely limited role, but was able to harness the spirit of the revolution and gain significant political advantage leading to its significant victory in the 2011 elections. However, despite its popularity, in the immediate years after its election, Ennahda had to battle a number of challenges, first in the form of the Islamist-Secularist conflict, and then with maintaining its political goals with the demands of an increasingly extreme grassroots organization. In the years after the January 14th movement, Tunisians were searching for their Islamic identity and to many, that manifested in largely extremist ways, leading to the widespread of influence of the Salafis and groups like Ansar al-Shari’a. The chapter tracks attempts made by Ennahda to separate itself from these groups but being unable to, lost a significant amount of influence to groups like Nidaa Tounes, who would eventually win the next election, after the acts of extremist groups forced the resignation of the Troika. Ennahda finally turned to defining itself as Muslim Democrats as opposed to political islamists as a finals attempt to label themselves as the moderate Islamic party.
Political Islam in Tunisia: The History of Ennahda is a poignant and nuanced look at one of the key players in what is one of today’s most scrutinized governments. It dispels the Western narrative of a uniformly applied Islamic democracy and explains Ennahda’s actions as a political leader in the context of its past victimhood and repression. Its history as part of the Tunisian identity serves to separate it from other Islamist movements in the region such as the Muslim Brotherhood and explains its continuing success. Wolf describes the challenges of being a truly moderate Islamic party in the face of the secularist vs. Islamist conflict as well as internal conflict with its more extreme elements. According to Wolf, religion incorporated into democracy is no more dangerous than instrumentalized secularism.
(Text by Akhila Roy Chowdhury and Rowen Price)