Tunisia: Understanding Conflict 2012 - Johns Hopkins School of ...

Ennahdha and the Salafis
Roberta Lusardi
Violence at Manouba university, attacks on a synagogue in the southern city of Gabes
and anti-Jewish slogans during the arrival of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh at the
Tunis airport are just a few of the salafi initiatives in early 2012 that seem to cast a
shadow over the new democratic Tunisia.
Many secularist, leftist activists and feminist associations have denounced these
actions and fear a possible Islamization of the Tunisian society. They accuse Ennahdha,
the main Tunisian party after the last elections, to have a hidden agenda aiming at
creating an Islamic state. Ennahdha’s attitude, they say, with its laissez-faire policy,
might conceal Rachid Ghannouchi’s desire to foster a transformation of the society in an
Islamic sense.
Ennahdha’s stance with respect to the salafis, the groups who adopt a strict
interpretation of the Quran and are against democracy and modernity, has waivered
between laissez-faire and open disapproval, without any timely intervention, and this is
what the Islamist party’s critics oppose. Why has Ennahdha not defined clearly its
position with respect to the Islamists on its right? The purpose of this chapter is to delve
into the relationship between Ennahdha and the salafis, in an attempt to sketch the
challenges and the constraints Ghannouchi’s party is grappling with in a crucial moment
of its history.
The possible explanations for Ennahdha’s hesitation in dealing firmly with the
extremists are not clear-cut, and any analysis on the matter needs to take into account the
deep transformations that Ghannouchi’s party is undergoing, on top of its inexperience in
the political arena. Also, the relationship between these two actors needs to be
contextualized in the framework of the nascent Tunisian democracy.
The first part of the chapter will list the main episodes where salafis disrupted the
public order and will report the official replies by Ennahdha. In the second part, this
study will try to analyze the possible explanations for Ennahdha’s unclear stances when
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