Encyclopedia of Islam

Ghalib, Mirza Asad Ali Khan

---

of massive student protests in France against the 

secular government there in 1968, something he 

witnessed firsthand as a philosophy student at the 

Sorbonne.

At the core of his ideas is the conviction that 

the adoption of nationalism and 

secUlarism

 by 

Arabs has weakened their countries and led to a 

general crisis of identity in the region. He believes 

that the only way for Arabs to enter modernity 

is by following the path set by their own reli-

gion, history, and civilization. This was an idea 

being espoused by the m

Uslim

  b

rotherhood

,

with whom he had had contact in Damascus, and 

one that he would subsequently develop in the 

Tunisian context. Al-Ghannoushi spent much of 

the 1970s working as a high school philosophy 

teacher, meeting with the government-sponsored 

Quranic Preservation Society and spreading the 

teachings of Islamist thinkers such as a

bU

 

al

-a

la

m

aWdUdi

 (d. 1979), h

asan

 

al

-b

anna

 (d. 1949), 

and s

ayyid

 q

Utb

 (d. 1966). To their ideas he added 

an emphasis on the practical solutions Islam offers 

for the spiritual, economic, and political problems 

of the day and the necessity for Muslims to pursue 

those solutions through activism and innovation. 

His message attracted a broad spectrum of people, 

including students, leftists, and workers.

With a program of political liberalization initi-

ated in April 1981 by Tunisia’s president Habib 

Bourguiba, al-Ghannoushi attempted to translate 

his following into a political party—the Islamic 

Tendency Movement—that could pursue politi-

cal change through peaceful participation in the 

country’s democratic process. However, his goal 

of Islamizing Tunisian society, as well as his broad 

appeal, were perceived as a threat by the authori-

ties and resulted in the repeated imprisonment of 

al-Ghannoushi and his followers. Al-Ghannoushi 

was given a life sentence in 1987 but released 

and granted amnesty the following year with the 

change of government in Tunis. Throughout the 

1990s, relations between the Tunisian state and 

its Islamist opposition continued to deteriorate, 

with many parties, including al-Nahda, banned 

from participation in elections. This was a fate 

shared by his contemporaries Ali Abbasi Madani 

(b. 1931) of a

lgeria

 and Abd al-Salam al-Yasin 

(b. 1928) of m

orocco

, whose own Islamic reform 

movements have also been excluded from offi-

cial representation. Al-Ghannoushi now lives in 

Britain as a political refugee and continues to be 

influential in Islamist thought and politics.

See also  a

rab

-i

sraeli

 

conFlicts

; 

democracy

; 

i

slamism

; 

politics

 

and

 i

slam

; 

reneWal

 

and

 

reForm

movements

.

Michelle Zimney