Ennahda jettisons political Islam

Before Tunisia’s Ennahda party began its 10th annual conference in the city of Rades on 20 May, its president, Rachid Ghannouchi, announced that the party would no longer follow a doctrine of political Islam and instead separate the party’s religious values from its political work.  Ghannouchi told media that the conference marked the beginning of a new era for Ennahda, which was now “a party of Muslim democrats who no longer claim to represent the ideals of political Islam.”  According to Ghannouchi, the reasons for the shift were both domestically and internationally driven. Domestically, he argued that Tunisia’s identity as a modern constitutional democracy did not leave room for political Islam. While the party reportedly saw no conflict between Islamic values and those of a modern democratic society, Ghannouchi said that the party would now call for religious activity to be completely separate from political activity. Internationally, Ghannouchi said the concept of political Islam had now become tarnished by the extreme ideologies of groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) and that there was therefore a need to demonstrate the difference between Muslim democracy and jihadist Islam. 

While the shift will have provoked criticism from the party’s more conservative constituents, it has been praised by many as a pragmatic and necessary step to keep Islamic values if not Islamist policies present in the political space in Tunisia. Ennahda’s flexibility has allowed it to not only negotiate a seat at the table of Tunisian politics post-2011 but also to contest and win elections. Ennahda was the first Islamist party to come to power after the Arab Spring protests of 2011, for example; although, it lost its majority in the 2014 elections to the secular party, Nidaa Tounes.  

Furthermore, the move may allow Ennahda to capitalise on recent factionalism in Nidaa Tounes to attract more of its secular supporters. Consolidating support across the Islamic/secular line would be a significant achievement in a country known for its adherence to democratic consensus, which has also hampered the emergence of decisive leadership within Tunisia’s all-inclusive coalition government. A stronger majority, with support from conservative secularists could give Ennahda the legitimacy to lead and give the government some momentum, particularly after a January 2016 split in Nidaa Tounes, which resulted in it losing its majority to Ennahda.

This shift is unlikely to impact the overall stability of Tunisia’s socio-political landscape, as the primary local grievances remain economic rather than political. While the tradition of negotiation and consensus between Islamists and secularists among Tunisia’s political elite is also already well established, it has not yet managed to deliver the economic shifts the country needs. There are high levels of political apathy in Tunisia, particularly among younger Tunisians, for whom unemployment rates are among the highest in the region. Moreover, sympathy with extremist ideologies is also high despite the country’s democratic approach to religious freedom. However, these groups would have been unlikely to identify with the moderate Islamism of Ennahda and a change towards an even more secular standpoint will make little difference.