ABSTRACT
During a televised press conference in August 2013, Ali Laareidh, the Tunisian prime minister at the time and one of al Nahda’s leading members, declared Ansar al-Sharia (AST), a Tunisian jihadi Salafi group, a terrorist organisation. Secular parties both within and outside the government coalition were relieved that the decision had been made. For many within al Nahda the decision also came as a relief. The outlawing of AST indicated that the period of ‘freedom without conditions’ granted in the aftermath of the revolution had come to an end. For at least two years since the fall of Ben Ali, Tunisia experienced a new and exciting period of freedom of expression and democratic opening, when political opinions of all sorts could be both aired and heard. In this cacophony of political ideas, young jihadi Salafi leaders, who had been ‘hidden’ in both politics and society for a number of years, could for instance come on TV chat shows and political debates to praise Bin Laden, for instance (“Tunisian authority downplay
terrorist threat,” 2013). This newly found freedom also meant that Salafi public demonstrations could occur without any control throughout the country, suggesting that Islamism, in its most radical form, had come back on the public scene. Its forcefulness surprised and frightened the secular liberal sectors of society and the Left, which had hoped to capitalise on the fall of the regime and turn the country into a European-style liberal democracy. The mainstream Islamist party al Nahda and its leader Rachid Ghannouchi, who had committed to democratic politics for quite some time, were equally surprised by the appeal of jihadi Salafism and its radical revolutionary anti-democratic message. The party however argued that the phenomenon could and should be contained through incessant dialogue within the nascent liberal democratic structures. For mainstream Islamists, the Salafis on the scene represented an ideologically pure and politically immature generation that would eventually be brought into the new system. Ghannouchi thus declared in a public interview that ‘they reminded him of his youth and that Tunisians will make them change too just like they had changed al-Nahda’ (“Tunisie: le double discours de Rached Ghannouchi à propos des Salafistes,” 2012). This statement was interesting on two levels. First, it was accepted that a part of the Tunisian youth, frustrated in their intention to publicly live their interpretation of Islam, would participate through radical ideologies and actions in the new scenario of liberty. Al-Nahda, with its moderate discourse, was never going to be the actor able to channel their revolutionary enthusiasm. Thus, post Ben Ali Tunisia would and should give the possibility to participate in the new order to all, including radical Islamists. Second, Ghannouchi believed that Tunisian society would change young Salafis and moderate their views, replicating what it had done in the past for al Nahda (Allani 2009; Cavatorta and Merone 2013). For Ghannouchi this was an admission of the emergence of a new Islamist trend, which al Nahda would have to contend with, and a statement of trust in the capacity of society to integrate radical young Salafis in the political project of a new Tunisia without resorting to repression. It is interesting to note that this notion of progressive integration into democratic politics relies on the twin notions of moderation and democratic learning. On the one hand, the argument of moderation (Schwedler, 2006) rests on the assumption that radical and anti-system movements can be brought to accept democratic mechanisms because they eventually realise that playing the game provides significant benefits such as access to elected office, media presence and participation in alliances or coalitions. Once this takes place, the anti-systemic spirit progressively disappears. On the other hand, we also have the notion of democratic learning, ‘which argues that exposure to the rough-and-tumble of democratic politics… enhance(s) political tolerance’ (Peffley and Rohrschneider 2003). This in turn provides stability to democratising and democratic systems because actors learn mutual respect through continuous interaction even though they have no significant policy convergence. This implicit belief in moderation and democratic learning did not characterise only al Nahda’s discourse. Several secular figures, such as interim President Moncef Marzouki, were also convinced of this. In the new atmosphere of absolute freedom, the Salafi awakening quickly produced a struc-
tured semi-organisational project, called Ansar al-Sharia. As other Islamic movements before it, it was mainly rooted in working-class neighbourhoods, taking advantage of youth mobilisation at the time of regime change. The novelty of this project for this latest generation of activists resides though in its jihadi theological/ideological frame, which had been on the rise throughout the region post 9/11. The language and the social practices of this movement were at times violent and generated considerable opposition in Tunisian society. The declaration of AST as a terrorist group represents the latest stage of such reaction, but, for a while, the possibility existed in Tunisia that an avowedly jihadi group, provided a certain liberty of action and merged into a specific social context, could evolve into a ‘normalized’ radical Islamic group without threatening the
security of the country. The question is then why did AST not ‘conform’ to the pattern of moderation and democratic learning that could have been expected in light of similar transitional experiences elsewhere? This article explores the emergence and the evolution of AST in the context of freedom they
found themselves in and analyses how the post Ben Ali environment influenced their internal debates and practices through the concepts of democracy and liberalism.1 The focus is more specifically on freedom of expression and assembly in the sense that the enjoyment of these two crucial liberal freedoms – political and civil – on the part of AST triggered significant debates within the movement regarding its beliefs and direction. As mentioned, the discussion on liberal freedoms is connected to a certain extent with the notion of democracy understood as procedures and mechanisms to select representatives through free and fair electoral competitions. This analysis is important for two reasons. First, it allows for an innovative approach to jihadi Salafism away from security obsessions and towards a better understanding of how mechanisms of democratic knowledge and political learning might work in specific historical circumstances. Second, and more broadly, the examination of AST can shed some new light on how transiting regimes deal with anti-systemic actors and how, in turn, this influences the transition. As we will see part of the answer to the question above lies in the inability of the movement to find a coherent structure through which democratic learning could genuinely occur. Its members and leadership in fact had fundamentally different understandings of the political practices that a jihadi Salafi movement should or should not undertake.
