How one Tunisian party is separating Islam from
politics
Values &
ideals
The Ennahda movement has renounced political Islam and fully embraced
Tunisia’s secular order, seeking to work within it.
By
Taylor Luck, Correspondent
Walid al Bannani is part of a wonder of the Middle Eastern
political world.
A Tunisian member of parliament, his party affiliation reads
Ennahda – one of the iconic Islamist groups that gained in
popularity across the Arab world in the 1980s as a backlash to
secular dictatorships. But his words could easily have come from a
Bernie Sanders rally.
“We have unemployment and a lack of development across the
country,” he says fervently.
Then he adds: “We do not have time to be
caught up in labels or scare campaigns.”
For decades, labels and scare campaigns have been a fundamental
part of Middle Eastern politics. Even for Ennahda, which long
charted its own path, one label has been an essential part of its
identity: Islamist.
Not anymore.
Mr. Bannani and the Ennahda party are part of a unique Middle
Eastern political experiment: They have renounced their Islamist
origins in favor of becoming a party that fully embraces Tunisia’s
secular order and seeks to work within it.
In other words, they have made the transformation that many
Western observers think is necessary to bring stable and vibrant
democracies to the Middle East.
Ennahda has critics, both among supporters who feel betrayed and
political experts who say the party cannot undo the damage it did to
Tunisian democracy in the past.
But Ennahda’s journey from a band of Islamist revolutionaries to
a party dedicated to the strengthening of Tunisian democracy offers
a rare glimpse at political possibility in the Middle East, others
say. While the lessons from Tunisia are unique and not easily
replicated in other parts of the region, Ennahda aims to establish a
new tradition of “Muslim Democrats” – voters and politicians guided
by their faith but committed to the political system of a
pluralistic society.
“We are now a national party for all Tunisians,” says Bannani.
The decision to abandon “political Islam” came in May, when the
organization formally separated its religious and political
activities. For the Islamist groups that sprang up across the Middle
East in the 1980s – from the Muslim Brotherhood to Hezbollah – those
two functions were seen as inextricably intertwined. The politics
was the outgrowth of the religious expression.
For Ennahda, the path to its May decision is a story of radical
practicality.
Since Tunisia’s Arab Spring in 2011, the party has been faced
with decisions to empower itself or the political system it
purported to want to build. And consistently, it has chosen to
strengthen Tunisian democracy, seeing in its own short-term losses
the seeds of long-term gains for itself and the nation.
At a time when the United States has led Western nations in
attempts at “nation-building” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, it is
a reminder of the need for democratic impulses from within.
“We learned that power is not only gained through the ballot box,
but through trust – and we had to earn that trust first,” says Ali
Laarayadh, who served as the first post-Arab Spring interior
minister, and later prime minister.
“Even if we had the votes, we could not govern alone.”
It is a statement deeply colored by Tunisia’s history.
For more than a half century after independence in 1956,
governing alone is precisely what was done by the Constitutional
Democratic Rally party (known by its French acronym RCD). Under
Habib Bourguiba and then his successor, Zine el Abedine Ben Ali, the
secular RCD brooked no opposition.
That was how Ennahda began – as a group of like-minded young
professionals under the name of the Islamic Tendency. Islam, they
argued, should be a guiding force in governance and economic
equality.
When Mr. Ben Ali allowed for parliamentary elections in 1989,
candidates from Islamic Tendency, now renamed Ennahda, or
“renaissance,” nabbed over 10 percent of seats. Ben Ali responded by
putting 25,000 members in jail and driving hundreds into exile
abroad.
That, say members, is when Ennahda’s unique journey really began.
Exiled in the West
Rather than going to Saudi Arabia or conservative Gulf countries,
many Ennahda leaders went into exile in the West. Cofounder Rached
Ghannouchi went to Britain, where he would reside for more than two
decades, while others went to France.
While the Muslim Brotherhood merged its thinking with the
ultraconservative Wahhabi doctrine of Gulf states, Ennahda leaders’
experience was radically different.
They began to blend their Islamist vision with the core tenets of
nationalism, pluralism, and European-style parliamentary democracy.
They saw firsthand the central role of cooperation and coalition
building by center-right and leftist movements.
“In our platform, we did not import a foreign model, but learned
from the lessons of our neighbors in the region and particularly
those in Europe,” says Abdulhamid Jalassi, Ennahda's vice president
for strategic planning.
In a series of writings published in Beirut, Lebanon – and
reissued in Tunisia after the 2011 revolution – Mr. Ghannouchi
carefully outlined the basis for a modern, democratic Islamic
movement. He cited Quranic verses and hadiths, or sayings
attributed to the prophet, to support traditionally
Western-associated concepts, such as human rights in Islam, civil
society in Islam, and the concept of equality in Islamic law and
United Nations conventions.
Within Tunisia, Ennahda’s leaders worked covertly within trade
unions and university campuses. The experience not only kept Ennahda
close to the pulse of Tunisia, but it also led to interaction with
the country’s other political movements, such as leftists, seculars,
and nationalists.
These ties shaped Ennahda upon its return to the public sphere
after Ben Ali’s ouster in 2011. In that year’s elections, Ennahda
won 37 percent of the vote. The next closest party won less than 9
percent.
But instead of dominating Tunisia’s post-revolution politics,
Ennahda reached out to its rivals to cooperate – and to compromise.
Comprising with rivals
After public backlash, Ennahda dropped an article declaring
sharia, or Islamic law, as the primary source of Tunisia’s law. It
also dropped a second article that would have placed Islam as the
main source of law.
These were core promises of Ennahda’s campaign manifesto, but it
instead settled on an article declaring Islam as the state religion,
while separate articles were included to guarantee Tunisians the
freedom to worship and freedom of conscience – rights previously
denied by both the Bourguiba and Ben Ali regimes.
“To us, ‘Islam’ was not just a slogan – we were not setting out
to establish an Islamic state,” says Mr. Jalassi. “After living for
decades under an extremist secular dictatorship, our biggest concern
was securing for all Tunisians to worship as they choose.”
But Ennahda’s defining moment came in August 2013. A string of
assassinations of leftist and secular members of parliament, a
stagnating economy, and increased concerns of deteriorating security
drove tens of thousands of Tunisians to the streets demanding the
Ennahda government’s ouster.
So then-Prime Minister Laarayadh did something no Islamist leader
has done before or since. He stepped down.
“For years, we were willing to die and be imprisoned for freedom
and democracy, stepping down from power in comparison is the least
sacrifice,” says Laarayedh. “It was not difficult to take.”
In the elections the following year, Ennahda came second with 28
percent of the vote. Its response: to join its secular rivals, Nidaa
Tunis, in a coalition government.
In many ways, though, its decision in May to leave political
Islam behind was Ennahda's most dramatic transformation of all.
Ennahda explains its separation of preaching from politics as a
natural evolution. With the freedom of religion restored and
Tunisians’ Islamic identity no longer under threat, the movement
says it can now shift its focus to economic and political causes.
But it is more than that.
Following the model of Christian Democrats in Europe, Ennahda has
transformed from an Islamist party to a center-right political party
that aims to appeal to all Tunisians. Party insiders say the move
should protect it from rivals accusing it of attempting to
Islamicize society, attempting to build a caliphate, or regulating
citizens’ private lives – accusations which have hurt its standing
in the past.
Could Ennahda be a model for other Islamist groups?
Perhaps. But not until other Middle Eastern countries match
Tunisia’s open society, Ennahda leaders suggest.
“In Tunisia, we were fortunate not to have an army that
interferes in politics, deep security state to over-rule the
people’s democratic choice, or foreign interference,” says
Laarayedh, the former prime minister. “Where can you find these
qualities elsewhere in the Arab world?”
Experts point to another important factor in Ennahda’s
transformation: a vocal, but nonviolent, opposition. Hypervigilant
leftists and seculars encouraged Ennahda to make more compromises
and move to the center without clashing, leading to cooperation. In
other Arab states of one-party autocracies and monarchies, there
simply is not the political atmosphere to allow such interaction.
“There was a movement strong enough to oblige Ennahda to step
back and dial down its rhetoric, but not destroy it,” says Youssef
Cherif, a Tunis-based political analyst.
But Ennadha itself faces challenges, too.
“Many people voted for Ennahda because they were Islamists, not
because they were Muslim democrats,” Mr. Cherif says. “When they
find that this Islamist movement is no longer so Islamic, they may
look to an alternative movement.”
Some supporters say they have lost faith in Ennahda.
“They have promised us jobs, opportunities, and Islamic
principles, but in the end all they cared about was power – like
other political parties,” says Mohammed Youssef, a longtime Ennahda
supporter and unemployed engineering graduate from Kasserine.
“What is the difference between them and the others?”
Mouna Bayeh, a university student from Tunis, says she is willing
to give Ennahda a second chance.
“Ennahda preserved Tunisia's Islamic identity,” she says. “Now it
is its duty to preserve its democratic identity.”