La Tunisie Vote

Contrary to the image that Islamic movement usually wish to display, i.e., a cohesive coalition, the An-Nahdha Movement has entered the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) race without the support of the other influential Islamist parties whose popular weight seems to have increased after the Revolution.

There are currently no exact figures of the total number of An-Nahda members or supporters, but there are estimates that the hard core of the party, which was named at its creation in 1981 the "Movement of the Islamic Trend," has 100,000 members. The same estimates claim that the number of the Movement's imprisoned activists during the peak of its confrontation with the former government of deposed President Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali reached about 20,000.

Following the return of the Movement's chairman, Rached Ghannouchi, from his exile in London, and the release of its militants after the Revolution, An-Nahda has been able to attract large numbers of supporters. Several media reports have confirmed that the An-Nahda leadership held meetings with prominent figures from the Attahrir Party—a non-authorized Islamist party—and the Salafist trends, with its two branches, the Jihadist and the "doctrinaires," with a view to harmonizing the Tunisian Islamic movement's positions.

There is little information on the numbers of the Attahrir and Salafist activists in Tunisia. However, most analysts agree that there could be several thousand and that they control some 400 mosques in the country's large urban centers.

According to many observers, An-Nahda managed, since its return on the political scene, to attract a substantial number of supporters from other Islamic trends, making the most of its own activist capital and the price it paid for dissent under the former government.

Other Islamic trends, notably the Jihadist Salafists, who emerged in the 1990s, point out that An-Nahda does not outclass them in matters of activism, especially since the number of their own imprisoned activists during Ben Ali's rule stood at about 3,000, many of whom suffered the worst kind of torture at the hands of the former government.

For their part, the Attahrir activists, who have centered their ideological discourse on the return of the kalifat, claim that they too were victimized during the past decades.

The interim government, nonetheless, refused to grant the Attahrir Party a charter and banned the Salafist trend. As a consequence, An-Nahda attracted these Islamic votes. Indeed, An-Nahda's leadership has issued several calls for voters to support "the party nearest to Islam" in the coming NCA election, and have visited mosques under the control of the Attahrir party and the Salafists to convince their members to back An-Nahda tickets.

Such direct calls have also been posted on Facebook pages.

An-Nahda leadership has also sought assistance from eminent world religious figures and Islamic sheikhs from abroad. One notable instance was the invitation of Saudi Sheikh Musa Ibrahim Esharif, who delivered a sermon in one of Hammamet's mosques (60 kilometers from Tunis), calling on the attendees to vote for the party "closest to Islam"— a move appreciated by the An-Nahda Movement, but denounced by a large number of secularists who viewed this move as meddling with Tunisia's internal affairs.

In another instance, Mauritanian Salafist Sheikh Mohamed Hassan Ould Dadu Chenguiti toured several mosques in the country and was honoured by An-Nahda chairman Rached Ghannouchi.

Such efforts to rally Islamists has been denounced by another high-profile Islamist leader, Abdelfettah Mourou, who is heading an independent Islamic ticket in the Tunis constituency.

Mourou, who co-founded An-Nahda with Rached Ghannouchi, said that there are "serious contacts" between the different Islamist parties –An-Nahda, Attahrir and the Salafist groups—to close their ranks, unite their positions and prepare for the future exercise of power.

Mourou added, that contacts are initiated by An-Nahda because it has so much to gain from the merging of all Islamic trends in the coming electoral race.

Despite these efforts by An-Nahda to merge the Islamist trends, some of the Islamic movements seem to have rejected these offers. Attahrir, for example, has called for a boycott of the election, which, they say, will not help the people achieve their objectives.

Attahrir Politburo Chairman Abdelmajid Habibi said that his party will not endorse any candidate for the NCA, as Attahrir has a platform of its own that has nothing to do with other parties' programmes, and does believe in the efficiency of forming alliances with others. He told La Tunisie Vote that his party's governance rests on the Islamic faith and that God is the ultimate judge of his creatures. He added that the only elections that are worth running are those held in accordance with the Islamic Shari'a.

The Attahrir Party is a Tunisian branch of an international party of the same name created in 1953 in Jordan by Palestinian Sheikh Takieddin Nabhani. This party, now present in several Arab countries, calls for the restoration of the Muslim kalifat.

Habibi did confirm the existence of contacts with An-Nahda, but he said that his party's position on the elections is clear, because there is no way of electing people "who would allow what God has prohibited or outlaw what God has allowed."

The Attahrir Poliburo Chairman cited the case of the Electoral Code, which, in his words, allows for "legalized fraud, given the fact this document imposes quotas on the parties and does, in the final analysis, allow people to elect persons of their own choosing."

Other Salafist voices called for the boycott of the elections, describing the race as pure and simple heresy.

Calls for abstention have invaded pages of Facebook and YouTube, and high profile figures of Tunisian Salafists, like Sheikh Abu Ayub, have denounced the elections as a heresy. Abu Ayub said that An-Nahda has no relation with Islam, putting it in the same category as the secularist parties.

The Salafist trend came into being in Tunisia during the 1990s. Sheikh Al-Khatib al-Idrissi, who worked for several years in Saudi Arabia as a nurse, is presently a prominent figure of Tunisian Salafism.

Commenting on the refusal of Salafists and Attahrir to endorse An-Nahda in the coming elections, Sami Brahim, a researcher in Islamism, says that it is not easy to count on the votes of groups that do not believe in democracy or elections. According to him, their position will essentially be a negative one.

Brahim added, in a statement to La Tunisie Vote, that there is a wing within the An-Nahda Movement that is striving to appeal to all practicing Muslims, even the Salafists, knowing that the latter will be difficult to convince.

The analyst described a youth gathering held by An-Nahda last July, during which An-Nahda leader Abdelkrim Harouni brandished a Quran, followed by the long applause of the attendees, in an ostensible gesture to win the sympathy of the Salifists and their endorsement.

According to Brahim, this conciliatory overture by Harouni to the Salafists was not welcomed by the majority of the Movement, as they could stomach the accusation of heresy or the lumping of An-Nahda together with the secularists who "reject both Allah's oneness and Shari'a."

The campaign against An-Nahda increased recently on social networking sites, including on Facebook pages posted by Salafists, who call for a boycott of the NCA elections.

The Multaqa Ansar Ashariaa (Forum of Shari'a Militants) web pages, edited by close collaborators of Seifeddin Ben Hussin, aka Abu Iyadh Ettunsi—one of the key figures of Tunisian Jihadist Salafism—write that "the An-Nahda Movement, having chosen the path of participation in the democratic system, is in total contradiction with Oneness. Moreover, democracy and the Shari'a do not have any common ground."

A fatwa issued by Sheikh Abu Mundhir Changiti, member of the Forum of Shari'a Militants Legal Commission, read: "An-Nahda is a secularist party which has never sought to implement the Islamic Shari'a, and its leaders brazenly admit it."

Even if the Salifist trend and Attahrir Party have openly refused to lend their support to it, An-Nahda has managed to attract the sympathy of the low-income faithful. The Movement has promoted the image of a moderate Islamic party, modeled after the Turkish example. It says it draws inspiration from modern interpretations of Islam, but critics of the movement see this as double-speak on the part of the party, and say this has been its hallmark since its establishment in the 1970s.