ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the rise of the Islamic movement in Tunisia means reviewing an endless series of failures in search of a form of modernity that is at the same time innovative and true to the origins of the country. Bourguibaism is not just the biography of the political leader and former Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba, it is also a way of governing and a way of redefining the individual and society. Bourguiba was however, not an ordinary president. In view of the central place that the family occupies in traditional societies, Bourguiba addressed himself firstly to the position of women. He regarded the defence of the rights of women as a priority in the realisation of a profound and quasi-global social and cultural revolution. Accordingly, the emancipation of Tunisian women was transformed into a knife that cut both ways in his political modernisation project.
