Ennahda’s links with Brotherhood stronger than what appears

Sherif Abul Fadl

The Ennahda Movement is an embodiment of the progress political Islam is making in North Africa.

As a state, Tunisia has a strategic geographic location. It is located in close proximity to Islamist movements in North and West Africa. It is also so close to Europe.

Ennahda emerged in the early 1970s. It came officially to light in 1981.

Relations between the movement and the Tunisian regime have been full of ebbs and flows. There were occasions on which both parties also clashed.

Ex-Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine ben Ali used a security approach in dealing with the movement. Ben Ali’s ouster gave the movement the chance to rise to the top on Tunisia’s political stage. In this, Ennahda used rampant unrest in the country, following the downfall of the ben Ali regime in 2011.

Ennahda is an ideological and organizational offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Hmida Ennaifer, one of the leaders of Ennahda, swore allegiance to Muslim Brotherhood supreme guide Hassan al-Hodeibi in 1973. That was at the time of the hajj (the annual ritual Muslims perform in Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia).

Ennahda tried more than once to distance itself from the Muslim Brotherhood. Nonetheless, the movement’s thoughts and literature prove its affiliation to the Islamist movement beyond all doubts. The same literature shows that Ennahda is also a branch of the International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ennahda did not cut off its ties to the Brotherhood at any moment. The movement only maneuvers in order to get into a position of control.

The Tunisian movement has the power to color itself in a way that suits the conditions on the ground every now and then. The Brotherhood of Egypt had a deep effect on the movement in Tunisia.

This paper includes the following points:

First, the political activities of the movement

Second, relations between Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood

Third, position of Ennahda toward the overthrow of the Brotherhood in Egypt and the effect of this overthrow on the movement in Tunisia

Fourth, whether claims by Ennahda that it cut off its ties with the Brotherhood are sincere

First, the political activities of the movement

The beginnings of Ennahda go back to the year 1969 when Rached Ghannouchi, Abdelfattah Mourou, and other Islamist leaders met for the first time and founded what was known then as the “Islamic Group”. The movement was pro-government at first. This was why it was welcomed by the then-ruling Socialist Constitutional Party which believed the new Islamist movement would be a rival to the leftists who made up the bulk of the opposition at the time. In the same year, Abdel Qadir Salama, one of the leaders of the new movement, launched what was known as “Knowledge” magazine. The magazine started promoting the thoughts of the movement as of 1972 in an indirect manner. By 1874, the magazine had turned into the main intellectual hub of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia.

Tunisia’s Islamists strengthened their contacts. In 1972, the first founding congress of the Islamic Group was organized in the northern Tunisian province of Manouba. Around 60 figures attended the congress. Those attending approved the basic law of the Islamic Group as well as its organizational structure. The group also changed its name into the “Islamic Direction Movement”. It maintained that name all through the rule of the late Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba.

The movement clashed with the Tunisian regime several times in the 1980s. The year 1985 witnessed improvements in relations between the two sides. This was when the Tunisian government approved the founding of the General Association of Tunisian Students which was affiliated to the movement. Some of the leaders of the movement also seized the opportunity of these improving relations in getting government approval to their travel to other countries to get financial and political support. Mourou travelled to France and met then-French president Francois Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Both leaders refused a demand by the Tunisian Islamist to offer him political asylum.

The movement used the political openness created by ben Ali’s coming to power and changed its name to the current “Ennahda”. That was in February of 1988. It changed its name with the aim of getting a license for the construction of its political party for the first time. Nevertheless, it failed to found a party, because Tunisia banned the construction of political parties with religious backgrounds. This was why Ennahda did not field candidates in the legislative elections which were held in April 1988.

The movement signed the National Charter Document to curry favors with ben Ali. Ben Ali, however, accused the movement in 1991 of attempting to stage a coup against him. This opened the door for a crackdown on the movement, one that continued until 2011.

Second, relations between Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood

The Islamic Direction Movement became an active member of the International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood was founded by the fifth Brotherhood supreme guide Mustafa Mashhour. The movement was represented in the organization by Ghannouchi who liaised between the movement and the organization.

The conditions in which Ennahad was founded were very similar to those in which other Muslim Brotherhood organizations in other countries were founded. Like other Brotherhood offshoots, Ennahda likes to claim that it was founded in reaction to rampant political oppression and economic deterioration.

At its beginnings, the movement was very similar to the Sufis and, at times, the Salafists. This was, however, substituted with the Muslim Brotherhood ideology which does not mind the use of violence to effect change. The movement adopted the thoughts of Sayyed Qotb, Hassan al-Banna and Pakistani scholar Syed Abul A’la Maududi.

Third, position of Ennahda toward the overthrow of the Brotherhood in Egypt and the effect of this overthrow on the movement in Tunisia

Ennahda and its leader, Rached Ghannouchi, strongly denounced the ousting of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Mursi in Egypt, following the 2013 uprising. They described his ousting as a “military coup”. Ghannouchi even rejected the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist” movement. The movement, he said, rejects all forms of violence. Abdelfattah Mourou, Ennahda’s deputy head, participated in a meeting organized by the International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood in the northeastern Pakistani city of Lahore. During the meeting, organization members discussed the reasons behind the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt.

The overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt was shocking to almost all Islamist movements, Ennahda included. One of the reasons this happened was that there were similarities between political conditions in Egypt and Tunisia, especially since the eruption of the Arab Spring uprisings.

The post-Brotherhood downfall shock was one reason why Ennahda did not field a candidate in the Tunisian presidential election in 2014. The movement did not back any presidential candidate either.

The backward move Ennahda took on the Tunisian political stage was a direct ramification of the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The movement even claimed that it had nothing to do with the Brotherhood in order to evade growing public anger against the Brotherhood. Ghannouchi even criticized the International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Fourth, whether claims by Ennahda that it cut off its ties with the Brotherhood are sincere

Ennahda held its General Congress on May 20, 2016 to declare its separation from the Brotherhood. The movement founded its Ennahda Party and declared the separation of the movement from the party.

The branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan welcomed the new move on Ennahda’s part. In Egypt, the same move was totally overlooked. The International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood did not care about the same move either.

By taking the new measures, Ennahda wanted to avoid clashes with the Tunisian society and state.

It also wanted to go hand in hand with regional changes, especially in Egypt, Syria and Libya where political Islam turned into a losing force.