ABSTRACT
Introduction Political Islam in Tunisia is part of a current which surfaced in the Muslim world as a reaction to the abolition of the Caliphate in 1923-1924 and in opposition to a modernist current which appeared in the nineteenth century. This current has long been defined, and certain movements continue to define themselves in laying claim to it, as an Islamic alternative to the modern democratic political system founded on the principles of equality, liberty, and sovereignty of citizens. It was referred to under different names, such as “Islamism” or “Muslim fundamentalism”, before the appearance of so-called political Islam which some continue to contest, saying that Islam has always been and can only be political. This point of disagreement, it must be recalled, is not unrelated to the “Islamic exceptionalism” thesis, which resists separation between the political and the religious (Bernard Lewis, Samuel Huntington, and other followers of the “culture wars” in countries of the North and among Muslims alike).
