An-Nahda in the hot seat

A small group gathered Tuesday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy to hear Mohamed Bechri, economics professor and former head of Amnesty International in Tunisia, talk about An-Nahda in Tunisia.  The moderate Islamists are finding it difficult to maneuver between more conservative Salafi fundamentalists and Tunisia’s still strong secularists.

An-Nahda, present in Tunisia for decades, is often compared to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  There is good reasons to rethink this analogy:  the context is different.  Daily life has been markedly secular in Tunisia since independence.  Tunisia has a landmark women’s code and a strong educational system.  Though An-Nahda won a plurality in parliament in the 2011 elections, non-Islamists won 63% of the popular vote.  There is a thriving civil society.  The Tunisian General Labor Union functioned as the headquarters for the Arab Spring uprising and organized strikes, one of which ended the old regime on February 14, 2011.  The non-politicized Tunisian army did not attack civilians during the protests and facilitated a relatively smooth transition between the old regime and the new coalition government.

While the main partner in the post-revolution coalition, An-Nahda has been making concessions.  It is no longer pushing for Sharia law, it gave the Ministry of Education to a secular party, it dropped the blasphemy law, and it has agreed to back down on the complementarity issue.

Navigating future tensions between secularists and Salafists will prove difficult.  A portion of An-Nahda’s base identifies with the conservative Salafists who protested the jailing of two men suspected of participating in the September 14 attack on inadequately protected U.S. embassy.  Many of the services the old regime was able to provide are no longer available.  The streets are noticeably dirtier and the government has put in place electricity cuts.

An-Nahda could try to escape pressure from the secularist parties by allying with the Salafists, but that would have serious costs.  It would cause the already dwindling number of secularists to resign from the government, inflame nongovernmental organizations and trade unions, and put the government at odds with the international community, whose help An-Nahda needs to turn around Tunisia’s economy. 

The current two-track strategy is to condemn Salafi violence and cooperate with nonviolent Salafis.   A need is building for An-Nahda to appease the secularists.  There is talk of the party conceding to two major demands:  reshuffling the government and expanding the leadership troika to include more secularist voices.

Tunisia’s stability is still not assured.