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Mourou is well respected among members of parliament, including those affiliated with leftist parties that oppose Ennahda, and is not identified with any sort of fanaticism

Rafik Abdessalem, who oversees Ennahda’s foreign policy and is Ghannouchi’s son-in-law, publicly opposed fielding a presidential candidate, remarking on Facebook, “Despite my respect and appreciation for Sheikh Abdel Fattah Mourou, choosing a candidate from within Ennahda is a wrong choice that does not respond to the requirements of the moment. Unity behind a wrong choice is false unity.” Abdessalem believes that selecting a candidate from outside Ennahda could secure a party and political consensus, which would not be the case with a candidate from Ennahda due to ideological sensitivities

Independent High Electoral Commission on Aug. 9 closed the door for registering to run in the presidential elections, and on Aug. 14 announced the approval of 26 candidates and the rejection of 71 applicants.

presidential elections were initially slated for November but were bumped up to Sept. 15 following Essebsi’s death on July 25 at the age of 92

Victimhood has been Nahda’s signature

pieces of political theater: Nahda is trying to inscribe itself in the annals of a revolution from which, as an organized political force, it was largely absent.

January 30, he and his movement increasingly defined the themes for the post-Ben Ali transition.

the Committee to Defend the Revolution, an alliance of 25 organizations including the powerful General Union of Tunisian Workers, the National Lawyers’ Movement, the Tunisian League of Human Rights and the Communist Workers Party of Tunisia, a group that is particularly strong among university students.

The women among the activists are particularly keen to safeguard the country’s personal status code, which bans polygamy, grants women equal pay and permits the legal right to abortion.

To national and foreign media alike, Ghannouchi has said that the code derives from shari‘a; that wearing hijab is a matter of personal choice; and that stoning and amputation cannot be seen as contemporary punishments.

In policy, alliances and even ideology, it would seem that Nahda’s future is to be the Tunisian equivalent of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party: an Islamist movement that operates within the confines, if not of a constitutionally secular state, then of a heavily Europeanized and secularized one.

No one knows the salafis’ strength. Most think the groups are small. But, powered by Saudi money and the fervor of Tunisian cadre who learned their creed in the Afghan and Pakistani jihad, they could grow, especially if the economy remains in rough shape.

One of the very few political parties the Higher Committee barred from running in the July 24 elections was Hizb al-Tahrir, a salafi youth movement that had called for an Islamic caliphate and the abolition of political parties.

Not content with confusing past and present, in the name of national unity, the old statesman chose to make Ennahda's leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, the guest of honor at the congress. Yet, Nidaa Tounes was founded precisely in opposition to the Islamist party, and Nidaa Tounes voters have not forgotten the insults heaped upon their rivals during the 2014 election campaign

after co-opting the leaders of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali's Democratic Constitutional Rally (DCR) into his party, Caïd Essebi revived all the methods of the previous regime

after co-opting the leaders of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali's Democratic Constitutional Rally (DCR) into his party, Caïd Essebi revived all the methods of the previous regime

Not content with confusing past and present, in the name of national unity, the old statesman chose to make Ennahda's leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, the guest of honor at the congress. Yet, Nidaa Tounes was founded precisely in opposition to the Islamist party, and Nidaa Tounes voters have not forgotten the insults heaped upon their rivals during the 2014 election campaign.

The politicians who have taken turns governing the country all seem to have forgotten that it was economic demands that sparked the initial uprising

Beji Caïd Essebsi came up with a law meant to promote economic reconciliation. Ostensibly, the idea was to favor investments by restoring confidence. In fact, it was meant to suspend the prosecution of business executives for fraudulent activities under the Ben Ali regime

Politically, the country is witnessing a massive return to conservatism. The two biggest parties--Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda--have commandeered the multi-party system, which was accepted after the revolution. This takeover recreates the pre-revolutionary political landscape, except that Ennahda is no longer underground. And this conservatism goes hand in hand with measures at odds with article 2 of the Constitution, which guarantees individual freedom. New laws against homosexuality and the use of cannabis allow police to humiliate youngsters before jailing them.

eo-authoritarianism, societal conservatism, and a general moralizing mood all seem much to the liking of Ennahda, which is now a full-fledged partner of the party that outstripped it in the 2014 elections

While the president's party has become the main instrument for “recycling” politicians ousted in 2011, the phenomenon has become so banal that the press, and particularly television, is happy to do their share. And a number of high-ranking figures from the old regime are regularly invited to debate on television. In the name of freedom of speech, they give sober accounts of their participation in the governing bodies, speak of Ben Ali's timid personality, and claim that he loved his people so much that he can scarcely be called a dictator

civil society is showing signs of fatigue

he condemned the Sousse massacre and a terrorist attack in March, 2015, at Tunisia’s national museum, the Bardo, where three gunmen killed two dozen people. The victims were innocents, he said. Kamal still entertained a fantasy of joining a reformed police force. His knowledge of Islam was crude, and his allegiance to isis seemed confused and provisional—an expression of rage, not of ideology. But in Douar Hicher anger was often enough to send young people off to fight

“Maybe it’s the Tunisian nature—we like risk,” a former jihadi told me. A million Tunisians live and work in Europe. “A lot of drug dealers are Tunisian; many smugglers of goods between Turkey and Greece are Tunisian; a lot of human traffickers in Belgrade are Tunisian. Online hackers—be careful of the Tunisians, there’s a whole network of them.”

“The radical narrative tells you that whatever you’ve learned about Islam is wrong, you have to discard it—we have the new stuff. The old, traditional, moderate Islam doesn’t offer you the adventure of the isis narrative. It doesn’t offer you the temptation to enjoy, maybe, your inner savagery. isis offers a false heaven for sick minds.”

Democracy didn’t turn Tunisian youths into jihadis, but it gave them the freedom to act on their unhappiness. By raising and then frustrating expectations, the revolution created conditions for radicalization to thrive. New liberties clashed with the old habits of a police state—young Tunisians were suddenly permitted to join civic and political groups, but the cops harassed them for expressing dissent. Educated Tunisians are twice as likely to be unemployed as uneducated ones, because the economy creates so few professional jobs. A third of recent college graduates can’t find work. Frustration led young people to take to the streets in 2011; a similar desperate impulse is now driving other young people toward jihad.

the factors that drive young men and women to adopt Salafi jihadism are diverse and hard to parse: militants reach an overwhelmingly reductive idea by complex and twisted paths. A son of Riyadh grows up hearing Salafi preaching in a state-sanctioned mosque and goes to Syria with the financial aid of a Saudi businessman. A young Sunni in Falluja joins his neighbors in fighting American occupation and “Persian”—Shiite—domination. A Muslim teen-ager in a Paris banlieue finds an antidote to her sense of exclusion and spiritual emptiness in a jihadi online community. Part of the success of isis consists in its ability to attract a wide array of people and make them all look, sound, and think alike.

Souli wasn’t sure what should be done with returned jihadis, but, like nearly everyone I met, he spoke of the need for a program of rehabilitation for those who come back. No such program exists

In its eagerness to modernize, the Ben Ali regime encouraged widespread access to satellite television and the Internet. The sermons of Islamist firebrands from the Gulf, such as the Egyptian-born cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, entered the homes of Tunisians who felt smothered by official secularism. Oussama Romdhani, who was a senior official under Ben Ali—he was referred to as the “propaganda minister”—told me, “Radicals were able to use these tools of communication to recruit and disseminate the narrative, and they did it quite efficiently.”

“I never thought I would repeat the same demands as five years ago. The old regime has robbed our dreams.”

Why can’t the police do their job and stop the terrorists but let the smugglers go with a bribe?

Around 2000, the Tunisian Combat Group, an Al Qaeda affiliate, emerged in Afghanistan, dedicating itself to the overthrow of the Tunisian government. One of its founders, Tarek Maaroufi, provided false passports to two Tunisians who, allegedly on instructions from Osama bin Laden, travelled to northern Afghanistan posing as television journalists and assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan mujahideen commander, on September 9, 2001. The Combat Group’s other leader, known as Abu Iyadh al-Tunisi, was an Al Qaeda commander; when the Americans overthrew the Taliban, in late 2001, he escaped from Tora Bora with bin Laden, only to be arrested in Turkey, in 2003, and extradited to Tunisia. (Sentenced to forty-three years in prison, he seized the chance to radicalize his fellow-prisoners.)

Walid was vague about his reasons for returning to Tunisia. He mentioned a traumatic incident in which he had seen scores of comrades mowed down by regime soldiers outside Aleppo. He also pointed to the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, in April, 2013, which soon engaged in bitter infighting with the Nusra Front. Walid spoke of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the Islamic State, with the personal hatred that Trotskyists once expressed for Stalin. He accused isis of destroying the Syrian resistance and helping the Assad regime. He believed that isis was created by Western powers to undermine Al Qaeda and other true jihadi groups.

these aged men from the two Tunisias—Essebsi a haughty remnant of the Francophile élite, Ghannouchi the son of a devout farmer from the provinces—began a series of largely secret conversations, and set Tunisia on a new path. In January, 2014, Ennahdha voluntarily handed over the government to a regime of technocrats. Ghannouchi had put his party’s long-term interests ahead of immediate power. A peaceful compromise like this had never happened in the region. Both old men had to talk their followers back from the brink of confrontation, and some Ennahdha activists regarded Ghannouchi’s strategy as a betrayal.

To many Tunisians, Nidaa Tounes feels like the return of the old regime: some of the same politicians, the same business cronies, the same police practices. The Interior Ministry is a hideous seven-story concrete structure that squats in the middle of downtown Tunis, its roof bristling with antennas and satellite dishes, coils of barbed wire barring access from the street. The ministry employs eighty thousand people. There is much talk of reforming Tunisia’s security sector, with the help of Western money and training. (The U.S., seeing a glimmer of hope in a dark region, recently doubled its aid to Tunisia.) But the old habits of a police state persist—during my time in Tunis, I was watched at my hotel, and my interpreter was interrogated on the street.

The inhabitants of Kasserine, however neglected by the state, were passionate advocates for their own rights. They had played a central role in the overthrow of the dictatorship, staging some of the earliest protests after Bouazizi’s self-immolation. In every coffee shop, I was told, half the conversations were about politics. Although Kasserine is a recruiting area for jihadis, Tunisia’s wealthy areas are so remote that the town felt less alienated than Douar Hicher and Ben Gardane.

“You feel no interest from the post-revolutionary governments in us here. People feel that the coastal areas, with twenty per cent of the people, are still getting eighty per cent of the wealth. That brings a lot of psychological pressure, to feel that you’re left alone, that there’s no horizon, no hope.”

The old methods of surveillance are returning. In the center of Kasserine, I met an imam named Mahfoud Ben Deraa behind the counter of the hardware store he owns. He had just come back from afternoon prayers, but he was dressed like a man who sold paint. “I might get kicked out of the mosque, because last Friday’s sermon was something the government might not like,” the imam told me. He had preached that, since the government had closed mosques after terror attacks, “why, after an alcoholic killed two people, didn’t they close all the bars?” To some, this sounded like a call for Sharia, and after informers reported him to the police the governor’s office sent him a warning: “In the course of monitoring the religious activities and the religious institutions of the region, I hereby inform you that several violations have been reported.” The imam was ordered to open the mosque only during hours of prayer and to change the locks on the main doors to prevent unsupervised use. The warning seemed like overreach on the part of the state—the twitching of an old impulse from the Ben Ali years.

revolution opened up a space that Salafis rushed to fill. There were a lot more of them than anyone had realized—eventually, tens of thousands. In February, 2011, Tunisia’s interim government declared an amnesty and freed thousands of prisoners, including many jihadis. Among them was Abu Iyadh al-Tunisi, the co-founder of the Tunisian Combat Group. Within two months, he had started Ansar al-Sharia.

According to the Tunisian Interior Ministry, a hundred thousand Tunisians—one per cent of the population—were arrested in the first half of 2015. Jihadi groups intend their atrocities to provoke an overreaction, and very few governments can resist falling into the trap.

New democracies in Latin America and Eastern Europe and Asia have had to struggle with fragile institutions, corruption, and social inequity. Tunisia has all this, plus terrorism and a failed state next door.

Ahmed told himself, “If I pray and ask for divine intervention, maybe things will get better.” Praying did not lead him to the moderate democratic Islam of Ennahdha. His thoughts turned more and more extreme, and he became a Salafi. He quit smoking marijuana and grew his beard long and adopted the ankle-length robe called a qamis. He un-friended all his female friends on Facebook, stopped listening to music, and thought about jihad. On Internet forums, he met jihadis who had been in Iraq and gave him suggestions for reading. Ahmed downloaded a book with instructions for making bombs. In the period of lax security under Ennahdha, he fell in with a radical mosque in Tunis. He was corresponding with so many friends who’d gone to Syria that Facebook deactivated his account. Some of them became leaders in the Islamic State, and they wrote of making thirty-five thousand dollars a year and having a gorgeous European wife or two. Ahmed couldn’t get a girlfriend or buy a pack of cigarettes.

“Dude, don’t go!” Walid said when they met on the street. “It’s just a trap for young people to die.” To Walid, Ahmed was exactly the type of young person isis exploited—naïve, lost, looking for the shortest path to Heaven. Al Qaeda had comparatively higher standards: some of its recruits had to fill out lengthy application forms in which they were asked to name their favorite Islamic scholars. Walid could answer such questions, but they would stump Ahmed and most other Tunisian jihadis.

“We need to reform our country and learn how to make it civilized,” he said. “In Tunisia, when you finish your pack of cigarettes, you’ll throw it on the ground. What we need is an intellectual revolution, a revolution of minds, and that will take not one, not two, but three generations.”

Parliament Speaker Rached Ghannouchi condemned the incident. However, Abbou has accused Ghannouchi of encouraging a “culture of violence” with his "inertia", and has vowed to continue her hunger strike “until the head of parliament assumes his responsibilities” and publishes a “statement condemning the violence and the aggressors".

“We cannot entrust the interests of Tunisians to this assembly, which is full of smugglers and tax evaders," she said, referring to the president of the Qalb Tounes Party, Nabil Karoui, who has been implicated in cases of money laundering and tax evasion, as well as the head of the al-Karama bloc, Seif Eddine Makhlouf, also accused of tax evasion.

between November 2019 and July 2020 there were a number of attacks against female politicians at the assembly, including misogynistic remarks and death threats

The Democratic bloc, which has 38 MPs and is supported by other blocs and a number of independents, has spent the last month holding a sit-in at the parliament to express fears over their safety there.

While Article 68 of Tunisia’s constitution states that “no civil or penal legal proceedings can be brought against a member of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, nor the latter be arrested or tried, because of opinions or proposals expressed or acts carried out in connection with his parliamentary functions”, physical and verbal attacks are not protected by the parliamentary immunity enjoyed by MPs and are liable to legal proceedings. 

constitutions are built on what's agreed upon

“I wanted to tell the Salafists that they must be - they must work under the law because the law will give them all the ability to form political parties, to work in societies, to work in mosques,” he said about the video. “What I wanted to do is to convince them to become part of the legal system, like other countries like us, like leftists or like radical groups in Germany or in Italy and Ireland, which left - which abandoned violence and now work under the law.”

Tunisian society is a Muslim society, but a moderate one. That's why there is no hope for any radical group to control the Tunisian society, because it's a society which went through a revolution against dictatorship and will not allow any group like that, even in the name of a religion

"Are we even a part of Tunisia?"

"We don't have faith in politics. Not before, not now. Just show us projects and development, no fancy ideas," he demands. "We'll vote for the party of bread."

The October elections, originally slated for June, but delayed to give parties more time to organize, will appoint an assembly to rewrite Tunisia's constitution.

Tunisians across the country worry that their leaderless and non-ideological revolution will be stolen by former Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) members in new clothes, or Islamists who've returned from exile. "The question isn't even how to stop the RCD from coming back," says Zied Mhirsi, Tunisian doctor and co-founder of the English-language news site "Tunisia Live." "It's how to limit their existence."

"We still don't know who's truly in charge," he says, donning a ‘No to censorship' bracelet. "We have a government that's led by an old man [85-year-old interim Prime Minister Beji Caid-Essebsi] and manipulated by hidden forces."

Rouissi claims that far from being a non-politicized symbol of frustration, the 26-year-old fruit vendor had participated in a "Day of the Land" protest in Sidi Bouzid last July in solidarity with consistent strikes across the region.

Over the past 10 or more years in the region, there were streams that finally came together to form one big river of a revolution," says Chris Alexander, author of "Tunisia: Stability and Reform in the Modern Maghreb."

Alexander says the main challenge during Tunisia's transition is to continue to pull together constituencies that transcend class and regional distinctions, that will unite unemployed young people in the interior with professionals on the privileged coast-line, namely in Tunis. But thus far such linkages have not been formed.

he banned movement played an almost non-existent role in the revolution, but since Ben Ali's flight and the consequent January 30 return of exiled leader Rached Ghannouchi, al-Nahda has grown with astounding speed.

A recent survey found support for the party at just below 30 percent, almost three times that of its closest rival

"El Nahda said they'd build a school here," said 45-year-old resident Nina Hadhari, buying watermelons from a vendor. "I don't really like them or politics, but that's good and there's no one else here."

"There is a big problem today for the liberal and secular revolutionaries to transition to political life," says Bougerra. "They know how to get people to protest in Tunis, but can't mobilize and connect with the real Tunisian streets."

The Ministry of Tourism rejects the term “halal tourism” or “Islamic tourism.” Seif al-Shaalali, media adviser to the tourism minister, said that it was the hotel owner's prerogative to decide whether to serve alcohol, but he added that the ministry does not use the label "halal hotels" as an official description. 

“Azur Plaza in Hammamet was the country’s first experience in the family tourism sector back in August 2014. This initiative was launched at the prodding of our conservative friends and families, including veiled sisters who are banned from entering swimming pools because of their burkinis. The trend started with one small hotel and now there are now many of this type across the Tunisian governorates.” Qaydara stressed that this type of tourism has saved several businesses from bankruptcy and created hundreds of jobs in the tourism sector.

The rise of the Islamic State, which continues to boast a startling number of Tunisians in its ranks, compounded the perception that Ennahda had been too lax about security and further undermined the public reputation of political Islam. These developments confronted party leaders with the realization that, no matter how “moderate” Ennahda appeared, entire swathes of the Tunisian electorate would reject its participation in politics point-blank.

A large segment of Tunisia’s population, especially outside the relatively cosmopolitan capital, still yearns to see a government infused with Islamic values. Ennahda’s followers in the poorer and more conservative interior continue to view it as a political force that represents them, regardless of its careful ideological recalibrations. When Ghannouchi announced the move away from traditional Islamism, he also proclaimed a separation of the party’s political and religious activities

By some accounts, Ennahda is already far more engaged in preparations for the municipal elections set for next spring than any other political party — raising the possibility that it could end up dominating grassroots politics while its competitors remain focused on maneuverings in the capital

Ennahda has kept up with the turbulence of Tunisia’s post-revolutionary era by showing a remarkable capacity for pragmatism

the repressive regimes shared one thing in common: All reacted with brute force to peaceful calls for empowerment and accountability.

Some of them, particularly those ruling heterogeneous states, brazenly weaponized religion, regionalism, sectarianism, and tribal and ethnic cleavages in their societies to divide and crush the uprisings

a stagnant economy remains the greatest threat to Tunisia’s stability and a major source of Tunisians’ discontent. Tunisia’s robust civil society made it possible, even during periods of political and security tensions, to conduct executive, legislative, and municipal elections democratically, although elected officials still display some of the discredited habits of the ancien régime. Ennahda, the main Islamist movement, proved adept at political transformation when its founder Rachid Ghannouchi declared the moderate Islamist party was abandoning political Islam. Ten years on, Tunisians are openly critical of their government’s failure to address their economic needs, forcing the youth either to immigrate to Europe or to join radical Islamists abroad. Ten years after Mohamed Bouazizi’s fiery end, disillusionment is the national mood.

The political, social, and cultural maladies afflicting Arab societies that were supposed to be swept away by the young activists have proven to be immovable

That does not mean that the spirit and the yearning for empowerment that animated the early phase of the uprisings have been irrevocably defeated. In recent years we have seen the populations in majority Arab states like Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon erupt in fury over their ossified, repressive, and venal regimes. In Sudan, the protests forced the military to oust Omar al-Bashir, their tormentor for 30 years. In Algeria, the mass protest forced the stagnant regime to end the 20-year reign of the ailing president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. In both countries we have seen a glimpse of the hope and enthusiasm that animated those who went to the streets in 2011. So far the positive changes in Sudan and Algeria are not fundamental, but at least the protests have shaken two stagnant and moribund regimes.

The protests that rocked Iraq and Lebanon in 2019 also brought to the fore a new, emergent reality. Despite or partly because of the uprisings, the Middle East is less Arab today than at any time in a century. Iran is the dominant force in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Israel owns the skies over Syria, while Iran, Turkey, and Russia carve up zones of control and influence on the ground. In Iraq, Turkey has established military bases, and Iran pulls the strings of many militias. In Libya, Russia and Turkey continue to play their cynical proxy wars. In this “wounded time” many Arabs are living in the shadows of their more powerful neighbors.

The uprisings faced not only entrenched ruling classes but also deep-rooted patriarchy and religious and cultural traditions that are not amenable to swift and significant social and cultural change.

huge crowds gathered in his support in Tunis and other cities, cheering, dancing and ululating while the military blocked off the parliament and state television station

He said his actions were based on Article 80 of the constitution and framed them as a popular response to the economic and political paralysis that have mired Tunisia for years.However, a special court required by the 2014 constitution to adjudicate such disputes between Tunisia's branches of state has never been established after years of wrangling over which judges to include, allowing rival interpretations of law

Dozens of Ennahda supporters faced off against Saied supporters near the parliament building, exchanging insults as the police held them apart

Two of the other main parties in parliament, Heart of Tunisia and Karama, joined Ennahda in accusing Saied of a coup. Former president Moncef Marzouki who helped oversee the transition to democracy after the revolution said it could represent the start of a slope "into an even worse situation".

also suspended the legal immunity of parliament members and that he was taking control of the general prosecutor's office

the parliamentary election delivered a fragmented chamber in which no party held more than a quarter of seats

Under the constitution, the president has direct responsibility only for foreign affairs and the military, but after a government debacle with walk-in vaccination centres last week, he told the army to take charge of the pandemic response.Tunisia's soaring infection and death rates have added to public anger at the government as the country's political parties bickered

Mechichi was attempting to negotiate a new loan with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that was seen as crucial to averting a looming fiscal crisis as Tunisia struggles to finance its budget deficit and coming debt repayments.Disputes over the economic reforms, seen as needed to secure the loan but which could hurt ordinary Tunisians by ending subsidies or cutting public sector jobs, had already brought the government close to collapse