“We are leaving political Islam and entering democratic Islam. We are Muslim democrats who no longer claim to represent political Islam,” announced Rached Ghannouchi to Le Monde ahead of the party’s 10th congress, held on 20-22 May, at Hamamet. The statement has been making the news in interested circles in the MENA region and beyond. The congress was much more style than substance, in the sense that Ennahdha’s decision to rebrand itself as a national democratic party with an Islamic reference had been floated through gradually controlled leaks in the press for over the past eight months. Ghannouchi justified the new party’s identity by the fact that “Tunisia is now a democracy,” and that “the 2014 constitution has imposed limits on extreme secularism and extreme religion”. The 10th Congress documents explain that the movement has always sought Islamic thought revival, wassatiya (moderation) and ijtihad in its interpretation of the interaction of Islam and politics for the service of the common good of the community. Ennahdha’s decision to adopt functional specialisation, to use the party’s documents terms, in matters of Islamic preaching on one hand, and political action on the other hand is, Ennahdha’ leadership argue, necessary for the nascent democracy in Tunisia. Ennahdha argues that such a specialisation would better focus priorities, free assets, and deliver results in both realms. Politicians would focus on the political activity of the party while matters of preaching and societal solidarity action would be handled by civil society. It must be said that this thinking within Islamic inspired movements actors is not new. In Morocco, the Justice and Development Party became the political arm of the Reform Movement with a clear organisational separation almost two decades ago, and during the PJD’s sixth congress. Dr. Saad Edine Othmani theorised for this in terms of distinction rather than separation in Religion and Politics: Distinction not Separation. In Algeria, the Muslim Brotherhood party Movement for the Society of Peace (MSP) also separated its preaching activities handled by the Reform and Preaching Association from their political action in the mid-1990, when the party changed its name from Movement of the Islamic Society to MSP. The same could be said about the Islamist movement in Sudan. In other words, there is nothing new in the content of Ghannouchi’s annocement; it is rather the context.
Sceptics in Tunisia, secularists in the region and the west however focused on the fact that Ennahdha has maintained reference to Islam as its guiding-force. On the other hand, Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist sympathisers disliked Ghannouchi’s “washing his hands” of political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood at a time when the movement is undergoing unprecedented repression in Egypt. Disagreements are not confined to outsiders only. Leading figures within Ennahdha and segments of its popular base are not fully in tune with Ghannouchi’s decisions, although he was elected president by 800 votes out of the 1200 delegates. Notable by their absence were leading figures such as Amer Larayeh, head of the politburo in 2013 and member of the party’s executive bureau; Samir Dilou, former minister of human rights in the Hamadi Jbali Troika government; as well as Nour Eddine Arebaoui, member of the executive bureau. Organisational disagreements are among the reasons for their absence. The boycotters have called for limiting the prerogatives of the party’s president by having the congress delegates elect the members of the executive council. Ghannouchi and his supporters preferred otherwise and opted for keeping the executive council membership a privy matter for the president in consultation with the Shura Council. It is, however, now the congress delegates who elect the heads of local and regional bureaus. The president now has the right to stand candidate in presidential, legislative, or premiership posts. Conditions of membership in Ennahdha has been loosened with degrees of levels of membership reduced to one level. There was also a commitment to guarantee a 10% quota for youth and women in party leadership positions. Ennahdha set three priorities for the party in the coming years: contributing to building an emerging society, a society of solidarity, and sustainable development. Politically, to complete the construction of democratic institutions, decentralisation, and modernisation of the bureaucracy. On national security, Ennahdha hopes to build national consensus on a counter-terrorism strategy.
Almost forty years since its emergence in the mid-1970 as the Islamic Group, then becoming the Islamic Tendency Movement in 1981, then Ennahdha in 1989, observers would say Ghannouchi’s movement has come a long way from the thought of Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qotb to embracing the Tunisian Islamic revival thoughts of Tahar Ben Achour in the mid-1980s, until Ghannouchi’s 2016 Muslim democrats. Thinkers such as Dr Ahmida Neifer and Salah Eddine Jourchi who were expelled from the Islamic Group in 1979, for doctrinal differences, would say history has absolved us. Enneifer and Jourchi forged their own course since their expulsion and theorised for what is called Progressive Islamist current or leftist Islamists, together with Hassan Hanafi from Egypt. The movement fizzled away by the 1990s. It became the El Jahed Forum, in Tunisia. In its May issue, the Arabic version of Leaders magazine, Ahmida Enneifer interviewed Ghannouchi at length, before the 10th congress of Ennahdha. The interview is a journey in the thought of the best of minds in Islamic thought in the region. Again, Enneifer and Jourchi would say history has absolved them.
Links for more information:
http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2016/05/21/la-tunisie
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/325431/politique/tunisie
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/indepth/2016/5/20/tunisias
http://nawaat.org/portail/2016/05/23/ennahdha-le-congres
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ennahda-leader-gannouchi
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/opinion/2016/5/29/%D8%A7%D9%
http://www.aljazeera.net/knowledgegate/opinions/2016/5/24/
http://www.aljazeera.net/knowledgegate/opinions/2016/5/29/
http://ar.leaders.com.tn/le_mensuel_feuilletez_le
