Ennadha letter på sløret

De utro­pes til mode­rate isla­mis­ter, både i Tuni­sia, Libya og Egypt, men så fal­ler utta­lel­ser som røper en helt annen agenda, om islam­se­ring av sam­fun­net. En av lederne for Ennadha-partiet i Tuni­sia ordla seg nylig slik. Et annet fel­les­trekk er fiendt­lig­het mot Israel, og ønske om å fjerne Israel fra kartet.

Secu­la­rism Threate­ned by Rise of Isla­mist Move­ment in Tunisia

Mon­day, 21 Nov 2011 11:45 AM

By Steve Emerson

Secu­lar Tuni­si­ans are expres­sing con­cerns after a lea­der of the country’s Isla­mist Enna­hda move­ment said Tunisia’s emer­ging govern­ment marks “the Sixth Righ­te­ous Caliphate.”

The fifth calip­hate, an Isla­mic impe­rial gover­ning sys­tem, was abo­lis­hed by Tur­kish secu­lar Kemal Ata­turk in 1924. In a speech pos­ted on YouT­ube Sun­day, Hamadi Jbeli also pled­ged that “We shall set forth with God’s help to con­quer Jeru­sa­lem, if Allah wills … From here is con­quest with the help of Allah Almighty.”

Enna­hda won 98 of 217 par­lia­men­tary seats in the nation’s first free elections and Jbeli may be its can­di­date for prime minis­ter. The group’s electo­ral success won inter­na­tio­nal praise as a “mode­rate” move­ment pro­mo­ting a democra­tic form of poli­ti­cal Islam. Head­li­nes in main­stream media out­lets like the New York Times, Los Ange­les Times, and CNN cal­led Enna­hda moderate.

Jbeli’s state­ments have many Tuni­si­ans ques­tioning the label’s vali­dity. He spoke at a rally held by the group in cele­bra­tion of its electo­ral success and lead­ing role in for­ming a gover­ning coalition. It is also not the first time the group has pro­moted mode­ra­tion to out­si­ders while preaching dif­fe­rent values to party members.

Lead­ing secu­la­rist party Etta­ka­tol sus­pen­ded its par­ti­ci­pa­tion in com­mittees to form a gover­ning coalition. “We do not accept this state­ment,” said Khe­mais Ksila, an exe­cutive com­mittee mem­ber of Etta­ka­tol. “We thought we were going to build a second repub­lic with our part­ner, not a sixth calip­hate.” Issam Chelbi of the secu­lar PDP party cal­led the speech “very dangerous.”

“This is what we feared,” Chelbi said.

Tuni­sian women’s groups also have been skep­ti­cal of Ennahda’s mode­ra­tion, say­ing there has been an increase in ver­bal and phy­si­cal abuse since Pre­si­dent Zine Abi­dine Ben Ali resig­ned in the wake of a popu­lar uprising.

Party lea­ders tried to con­tain the damage, tel­ling Reu­ters that Jbeli was tal­king about “good gover­nance and a break with cor­rup­tion … not the estab­lish­ment of an Isla­mic regime.”

Alt­hough Ennahda’s breach of Tuni­sian secu­la­rism domi­nated reports on the con­tro­ver­sial poli­ti­cal rally, speak­ers also pro­moted the mili­tary con­quest of Israel. The event also mar­ked the first time Enna­hda invited a Hamas repre­sen­ta­tive, Houda Naim of the Pale­sti­nian Legis­la­tive Coun­cil in Gaza, to address a poli­ti­cal rally in Tunisia.

Naim expressed hope that the libe­ra­tion of Tuni­sia would lead to the “libe­ra­tion of Pale­stine,” which Hamas belie­ves can only be achie­ved through vio­lence or “resi­stance.” Ennahda’s secre­tary gene­ral echoed Naim’s call, sta­ting, “The libe­ra­tion of Tuni­sia will, Allah wil­ling, bring about the libe­ra­tion of Jerusalem.”

Sup­port for Hamas and the com­p­lete “libe­ra­tion of Pale­stine” have been con­sis­tent mes­sa­ges from Ennahda’s poli­ti­cal lea­ders and its char­ter. Hamas has recip­ro­cated with its sup­port for Tunisia’s revolt against dicta­torship and emb­racing poli­ti­cal Islam.

The Arab Spring “will achieve posi­tive results on the path to the Pale­sti­nian cause and threa­ten the extinc­tion of Israel,” Party lea­der and ideo­lo­gue Ras­hid Gha­n­no­unshi said in a May inter­view with the Al Arab Qatari web­site. “The libe­ra­tion of Pale­stine from Israeli occu­pa­tion repre­sents the big­gest chal­lenge facing the Umma [Mus­lim nation] and the Umma can­not have exist­ence in light of the Israeli occupation.”

Furt­her, in the same inter­view, Gha­n­no­uchi said: “I give you the good news that the Arab region will get rid of the bacil­lus [bac­te­ria] of Israel. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the lea­der of Hamas, said that Israel will dis­appear by the year 2027. I say that this date may be too far away, and Israel may dis­appear before this.”

Gha­n­no­uchi has also given his sup­port to spec­i­fic types of ter­ror car­ried out by Hamas, inclu­ding rocket attacks against Israeli civi­li­ans and “mar­tyr­dom operations.”

In June 2001, Gha­n­no­uchi appea­red in an al-Jazeera panel discus­sion in which he blessed the mot­hers of Pale­sti­nian suicide bombers:

“I would like to send my bles­sings to the mot­hers of those youth, those men who succe­e­ded in crea­ting a new balance of power … I bless the mot­hers who plan­ted in the blessed land of Pale­stine the ama­zing seeds of these youths, who taught the inter­na­tio­nal sys­tem and the Israel (sic) arro­gance, sup­ported by the US, an impor­tant les­son. The Pale­sti­nian woman, mot­her of the Sha­hids (mar­tyrs), is a mar­tyr her­self, and she has created a new model of woman.”

Gha­n­no­un­chi has even gone beyond rhe­to­ric, cal­ling for Mus­lims to fund and pro­vide logi­s­ti­cal sup­port for Hamas. He sig­ned the con­tro­ver­sial “Istan­bul Decla­ra­tion,” issued by Mus­lim cle­rics in sup­port of Hamas after Israel’s January 2009 war in Gaza. The decla­ra­tion stated that there was an “obli­ga­tion of the Isla­mic nation to open the crossings — all crossings — in and out of Pale­stine per­ma­nently” to pro­vide sup­plies and weapons to Hamas to “per­form the jihad in the way of Allah Almighty.”

Ghannounchi’s state­ments are con­sis­tent with Ennahda’s plat­form, which decla­res that the party “strugg­les to achieve the following goals … To struggle for the libe­ra­tion of Pale­stine and con­si­der it as a cen­tral mis­sion and a duty requi­red by the need to chal­lenge the Zio­nist colo­nial attack. The plat­form also refers to Israel as an “alien entity plan­ted in the heart of the home­land, which con­sti­tu­tes an obsta­cle to unity and reflects the image of the con­flict between our civi­liza­tion and its enemies.”

In Sep­tem­ber, the orga­niza­tion stated that it “sup­ports the struggle of peop­les seeking libe­ra­tion and jus­tice and encoura­ges world peace and aims to pro­mote coope­ra­tion and col­la­bo­ra­tion and unity espec­ially among Arab and Isla­mic countries and con­si­ders the Pale­sti­nian struggle for libe­ra­tion to be a cen­tral cause and stands against normalization.”

Secu­la­rism Threate­ned by Rise of Isla­mist Move­ment in Tunisia