ABSTRACT
The history of the contemporary Islamic movement in independent Tunisia is basically that of the movement now known as al-Nahda. 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. Whatever merits the economic and political explanation behind the emergence of al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya may have, Islamist leaders insist that their action was in fact a religious and cultural response to anti-religious policies. Ghannouchi was born in 1941 to a poor family of ten children in al-Hamma, 30 kilometres west of Gabes, one of the main cities in south-east Tunisia.
