The Politicisation Of Islam

A Case Study Of Tunisia

Mohamed Elhachmi Hamdi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780813338880
• eBook ISBN: 9780429975622
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Politicisation of Islam: A Case Study of Tunisia traces the emergence, rise, and recent eclipse of the modern Tunisian Islamic movement, al-Nahda, and provides a comprehensive analysis of its political, social, and intellectual discourse. A valuable contribution to the study of political Islam, this is the first complete analysis, in English, of the history of this modern Tunisian Islamic movement. } The Politicisation of Islam: A Case Study of Tunisia traces the emergence, rise, and recent eclipse of the modern Tunisian Islamic movement, al-Nahda, and provides a comprehensive analysis of its political, social, and intellectual discourse. The first two chapters concentrate on the factors behind the emergence of al-Nahda and its politicization. The three major confrontations between the movement and the Tunisian regime, which culminated in 1991 in the banning of all al-Nahda activities inside Tunisia, is explored in Chapter Three. The author discusses the basic concepts of political Islam in the movements literature in Chapter Four, in particular the Islamists rejection of secularism, and al-Nahda s proposal for a modern Islamic state in Chapter Five. In the concluding chapter, the author addresses the Islamists cultural agenda and their insistence on an Islamic identity for Tunisia.A valuable contribution to the study of political Islam, this is the first complete analysis, in English, of the history of this modern Tunisian Islamic movement. }

1
The Emergence of the Tunisian Islamic Movement

The history of the contemporary Islamic movement in independent Tunisia is basically that of the movement now known as al-Nahḍa. Founded initially as al-Jamā'a al-Islāmiyya (The Islamic Group), the movement changed its name in 1981 to Ḥarakat al-Ittijāh al-Islāmī (The Islamic Trend Movement), and in 1988 changed its name once more to Ḥarakat al-Nahḍa (The Renaissance Movement). Although some of its founders resigned in 1978 and formed a new group under the title al-Islāmiyyūn al-Taqaddumiyyūn (The Progressive Islamists), and a second group resigned in 1991 and tried to form a new political party, the core of the Tunisian Islamic movement remained loyal to al-Nahḍa, making it one of the main opposition parties in the country.¹ This chapter will analyse the economic, political, religious and cultural factors that were behind the emergence of the movement.

The first cell of al-Jamā'a al-Islāmiyya was set up in 1970. At that time, Tunisia was embarking on a new era of economic liberalisation after the failure of the socialist experiment led by Ahmad Ben Salah, a former minister who, under the supervision of Bourguiba, had been responsible for the country's economic sector.

Economic and Political Factors

Ben Salah was an influential leftist figure in the Tunisian General Workers' Union (UGTT), which had played an important role in the national struggle for independence, achieved formally on 20 March 1956. In this same year the UGTT organised its sixth congress and proposed a complete economic programme, suggesting a centrally planned and centrally oriented economy, managed by a council presiding over the ministries of reconstruction, agriculture, public works, post, telegram and telephone, finance, the central bank and the national economy.

According to Ben Salah, only the state could possibly preside over such a revolutionary economic plan, which aimed at dismantling the economic system created by colonial France and ending exploitation in all of its forms. This vision was presented as an alternative to what Ben Salah then described in one of his speeches to congress as "the liberal anarchy' that still reigned over Tunisia's social and economic plan.²

A centrally planned economy was the mood of the fifties and sixties in the majority of the newly independent countries of the Arab world, which found their main international ally in the Soviet Union in their fight against the colonial policies of Western European countries, particularly France and Great Britain. Although at the beginning of his term as prime minister in 1956 and as the first president of independent Tunisia in 1957, Bourguiba was not enthusiastic about the UGTT programme, he did not totally rule out the possibility of embracing Ben Salah's vision.

Indeed it took Bourguiba another four years to ensure that his position was not in danger from the ambitious Ben Salah, whom he had brought into the government in as early as 1957 to be minister of labour and health. In 1961 Bourguiba told the Tunisian people that the country needed "a new conception of national solidarity; a form of socialism."³ He went on to explain the ideological basis for this important change of direction: "The Prophet's Companions in the first century of Islam were socialists before the term was invented. They regarded themselves as members of the same family. So let's return to the origins of Islam, as the employed is a brother to his employer." He added, however, "Although I've opted for socialism, I'm still opposed to the idea of class struggle."⁴

Ben Salah was thus promoted to the post of secretary of state for planning and to be a member of the ruling party's political bureau in 1961. Three years later the party changed its name from The Neo Destour to the Socialist Destour party, all to emphasise its new socialist strategy.

A National Council for Planning was also created. Under the supervision of Ben Salah, it devised an economic programme for the country's development, with a view to its completion within a ten-year period between 1962 and 1971. It also identified four essential and desired objectives, being the decolonisation of the economy, the promotion of the human being by ameliorating his financial situation, a reform of the country's traditional Structure, and auto development, meaning the bringing about of a decrease in foreign debts and the inclusion of the entire country in central decisions.⁵

This programme was the brainchild of an influential group within the ruling Destour party. As Eva Bellin writes in "Tunisian Industrialists and the State," the programmes publication "marked the ascendance of the dirigiste wing of the political élite, an élite committed to setting Tunisia on a 'socialist' path to development."⁶

Apart from the above-mentioned goals, Tunisian socialism was also shaped around co-operatives that had been set up in the agrarian sector. Unfortunately this was a policy that did little more than to deprive farmers of the right to own their land, and in fact made them workers on land that had originally been their own but had been confiscated by the state. The official view concerning this policy was arrogant: it was argued that the farmers could not be given land because they were "illiterate, used to archaic methods of exploitation," besides which they were seen as "reactionaries and obstacles to progress."⁷

A new law was announced which made illegal every kind of land exploitation except that by the co-operative units of agricultural production. Thus, ironically, the peasants were the first to experience the injustices of the new socialist dream; people saw their properties confiscated by the state and found themselves working for the new co-operatives for 2 litres of cooking oil, a kilogram of sugar and a few kilograms of semolina each week.

In the first instance, the government did not have the courage to implement this new law in the more prosperous areas of the country, especially in the central and northern coastal regions, from which came the majority of the ruling political élite, including Bourguiba and Ben Salah. However, when it was finally decided at the beginning of 1969 to extend the system to all parts of the country, the hardship in the other regions in which the system had already been implemented was impossible to hide.

As has been the case with almost all socialist economies the world over, the abolition of private ownership to the benefit of the state brought with it corruption and inefficiency. Most of the money reserved for the programme in Tunisia was to be "lost" before reaching its final destination. What made things worse was that almost 40 percent of investments came from foreign loans, mainly from the United States. As for efficiency, below is a description of the alternative administration which was supposed to replace that of the illiterate peasants:

For every co-operative a director and a technical director were appointed. They were rarely of peasant origins. They came from cities, and were unable to distinguish between a potato and a tomato. They did not have any idea about agronomy or climatology. On the other hand, those illiterate peasants knew their environment very well.⁸

The disastrous results of this corrupt and inefficient system were soon to lead to a public outcry. Not only had people been dispossessed of their properties and exploited by their government, but also national revenues had slumped and foreign debts had became a heavy burden on the entire country. Bellin has summarised the reasons for Ben Salah's ensuing fall as including "a clash of political personalities, the discontent of the rural bourgeoisie who were threatened by Ben Salah's plan to subject their land to co-operative control, the fiscal crisis faced by the state, and the bad luck of consecutive years of drought and poor harvests."⁹

Thus the people began to express their anger and resentment, and Bourguiba soon realised that the socialist experiment was threatening not only the country's stability and prosperity but also his own position as the undisputed leader of the nation. He therefore acted swiftly to save himself from blame. In September 1969, Ben Salah was stripped of all his ministerial posts except for education, which he lost the following November. In March 1970 he was arrested and accused of high treason, and in the May of that same year he was condemned to ten years" imprisonment and hard labour. Six months later Hedi Nouira, a liberal, was installed as the new prime minister.

In 1973 Ben Salah escaped from prison and fled to Switzerland, from where he began to issue statements condemning President Bourguiba for acting against the people in the interests of a privileged class. He also established himself as leader of the radical Popular Unity Movement (MUP), which had been declared illegal in Tunisia itself.¹⁰

During Ben Salah's radical decade in power there had been one very important incident on both the Arab and international scenes: the Six-Day War in 1967 between the Arab states and Israel, in which the Arabs had been ignominiously defeated. If the Ben Salah experience had proven to be fatal for the fortunes of socialism in Tunisia, the defeat in the war against Israel had had a similar effect on the ideology of Arab nationalism, spearheaded by President Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt, and which had hitherto had wide appeal all over the Arab world, including Tunisia. The result of the war was clear and simple: pan-Arabism had failed the crucial test against Israel and it no longer qualified to lead Arab efforts towards freedom, unity and progress.

These two ideological failures were to prove to be very important, at least for the few founding members of al-Jamā'a al-Islāmiyya, as we may see from the words of one of them, Dr Ehmida Enneifar, talking to the French scholar François Burgat:

In Tunisia, there was first of all the departure of Ben Salah's team. The end of the experience was very brutal; the minister was imprisoned. But what was more important for a number of youths was that they had seen that the same government could be on the left and then suddenly change direction clearly to the right, with resolutely liberal economic options. Many of them were completely disoriented. The whole matter backfired on the Tunisian state because the ruling party had insisted firmly on a precise project in which to build a modern state; later on we came to realise that what took place was not only a change of government, but was also largely a proof of the absence of that project. Those who joined the Islamists' ranks were those who found nothing to be attached to, right or left; they were uprooted.¹¹

The essence of this testimony is that the change from the co-operative socialism of Ben Salah to the economic liberalism of Hedi Nouira led to an ideological and identity crisis for many of those young Tunisians who could, at the time, afford to think and argue about politics. These were essentially students, university or secondary-school teachers, who were better off financially than the majority of the impoverished peasant po...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• System of Translation and Transliteration
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 The Emergence of the Tunisian Islamic Movement
• 2 The Politicisation Process
• 3 Islamists v. Bourguiba 1981–1987
• 4 Islamists v. Ben Ali 1987–1993
• 5 The Basis for a "Political" Islam
• 6 The Islamists' Islamic State
• 7 Issues of Identity and Westernisation
• Conclusion
• Appendixes
• Bibliography
• Index