Will Islamist Parties Vie for Power in Tunisia?

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

Authoritarian states may appear powerful and stable when viewed from afar, but since they have little legitimacy, they are built on sand. We have just witnessed another example of this in the North African state of Tunisia, where president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has been toppled after 23 years in power.

Many observers were taken by surprise by this spontaneous uprising, perhaps because Ben Ali was more circumspect than neighbouring autocrats such as Libya’s mercurial Muammar Qaddafi (a supporter of Ben Ali’s, by the way). 

Ben Ali’s regime was viewed as “friendly” towards the West, and he was in the good graces of the former colonial power, France. He also sought to curb Islamist extremism.

But Ben Ali ran a kleptocracy. He and his wife, Leila Trabelsi, along with their families, amassed untold wealth, while Tunisia’s youth, including university students, found themselves without jobs or hope. 

It all began to unravel on Dec. 17, when a university graduate set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid over the lack of jobs, sparking protests. Within a month, Ben Ali’s hold on power collapsed, with many of his cronies now arrested or killed. 

Jews have lived in Tunisia for more than 2,000 years. Though the country was once home to a sizable Jewish community – in 1948 the Jewish population was an estimated 105,000 -- only about 1,000 now remain, in a population that numbers 10.5 million.

Most Jews left after independence in 1956, and by 1967 only 20,000 remained. During the Six Day War, there was a wave of anti-Jewish sentiment. Jews were attacked in riots and almost all the rest emigrated, mainly to France and Israel.

Tunisia served as the HQ of the Arab League between 1979 and 1989. It also was home to Yasser Arafat’s PLO between 1982 and 1993. The PLO’s headquarters were bombed by the Israeli air force in October 1985, in retaliation for the murder of Israelis in Cyprus.

Today most of the remaining Jews live on the island of Djerba, which is home to the El Ghriba Synagogue. It has been attacked twice, in 1985 (following the Israeli raid on the PLO offices) and 2002. There were anti-Israeli demonstrations in the country during March and April 2002, and on April 11, a truck fitted with explosives drove past security and detonated at the front of the synagogue, killing 21 people. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility.

Despite the current turmoil in Tunisia, there has so far been no sign of large scale emigration by the country’s remaining Jews. 

Though a Muslim Arab state, Tunisia’s political culture has been largely secular. However, since the 1980s, there has been a rise in Islamic fundamentalism. The Islamic Tendency Movement (MTI), founded by Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi, a philosophy professor, began to flourish despite attempts at suppression by the government. Ghannouchi was jailed between 1981 and 1984, and went into exile in Britain in 1989. The party was banned under the Ben Ali regime.

In the past, Ghannouchi has condemned Zionism and westernization, and dedicated a book he published in 1993 to Iran’s late Ayatollah Khomeini. However, in more recent years, he has pledged his adherence to democracy and the electoral process. “Islam recognizes as a fact of life the diversity of peoples and cultures,” he told an audience in London.

The current “jasmine revolution” was not the work of clerics; Tunisian Islamists had a minimal role in overthrowing Ben Ali. But Ghannouchi, now the leader of the Tunisian Islamic Hizb al-Nahda Party (successor to the MTI), has stated that he plans to return to Tunisia shortly.

Ali Larayedh, another leader of the party, was imprisoned and tortured for 14 years by Ben Ali’s regime. He too claims that the party has enlarged its views to “encompass Western values.” But it still opposes what he terms American interference in Arab countries.

Tunisia’s new rulers have pledged to release all political prisoners and to recognize the outlawed Communist and Islamic parties. 

“The Islamist movement was the most oppressed of all the opposition movements under Ben Ali. Its followers are also much greater in number than those of the secular opposition,” remarked Salah ad-Din al-Jourchi, a Tunisian journalist and expert on Islamic movements. The elite for its part has neither the knowledge nor the experience it needs to deal with Islamists. “Its effect could be large,” he concluded.

The political outcome in the country remains far from certain.