The Islamic Awakening in Tunisia

Tunisia is a country that is also known as the Republic of Tunisia. In the Arabic language, the name of the capital city, Tunis, means ‘the whole country.’ The ancient province of Rome in Africa under Arab rule was initially called Ifriqiyyah and later on named Tunisia. (Goruh-e Motarjumin-e Serat, 2010: 113). At around 746 (CE), the religion of Islam entered the North Africa and after fifteen years, it reached Tunisia. After Uqbah ibn Nafi’, the commander of the Muslim army had entered Tunisia, he constructed the city of Qayrawan (currently known as Kairouan) and established that place as the camp and base for propagating Islam in the North Africa. The Fatimid caliphate had ruled Tunisia for almost three years and perhaps the roots of Shi’ism in Tunisia can be traced back to that period. (Gozaresh, 2010: 170). This country is bordered to the west by Algeria and the east and south by Libya. Most Tunisians (around 98%) are Muslims and follow the Maliki Sunni school of jurisprudence and the Ash’ari theology. The followers of the Sufi sects are also active in this country and have their own special place. (Moradi, 2010: 121)

Tunisia got its independence from France in 1956. Nevertheless, the people that got into power after the independence supported the interests of France whereby the most notable of these people was Burqibah. Burqibah ruled for almost thirty-two years and from the fact that he had secular tendencies, he, therefore, intensified his actions against Islam and tried to isolate Islam. During the last days of his rule, there was a relative awakening in most of the people. We can state that most of them had turned away from secularism. However, Burqibah had announced that any person and any leader who wants to form an Islamic movement and follows it, will either be hanged or face a life sentence. After Burqibah, Zayn al-Abidin Ben Ali came into power and ruled for twenty-three years.

The incidents of Tunisia began a day after Muhammad Bouazizi set himself on fire on the 18^th of December, 2010 and led to the fall of Ben Ali on January 14. The self-immolation of Bouazizi in one of the Tunisian streets in protest against the government’s cultural and social, economic and political policies became the subject of the world’s most important media outlets and social networking sites, sparking a widespread uprising in the country, which led to Ben Ali’s escape and the overthrow of his 23-year dictatorship. Nonetheless, a more important matter than that was the spread of these protests and the action of the oppressed people in the other Arab countries like Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Jordan and so on joining this liberal struggle.

This went on until a few days later when an Algerian youth also set himself on fire in protest against the authoritarian policies in his country. In any case, most of the political pundits believe that the incidents in Tunisia are the starting point for a new era of democratic fighters and social movements in Africa and the Middle East and specifically the Arab nations. Today, it seems that the self-immolation by the Tunisian youth and the protest that arose after that in Tunisia and other Arabic countries has become an ocean of molten material beneath the seemingly rigid layers of the totalitarian regimes. (Kiya and Mahmoudi, 2011: 13)

Apart from their fundamental causes, almost all political incidents like wars and revolutions also have an apparent driving force. This visible driving force, the self-immolation of a desperate youth that was a street vendor named Muhammad Bouazizi happened in the city of Ben Arous. This self-immolation can be allegorized to the phoenix, whereby through its ashes, a nation rises up and demands its human life and freedom. After Muhammad Bouazizi, another person in Egypt, Mauritania and Algeria also set themselves on fire. Nevertheless, perhaps there was no longer any need for doing such a thing. The commencement of the movement in Tunisia and its victory was a factor that quickly spread to the other North African countries and the Middle East. (Arya, 2011: 9)

In regards to the formation of these developments in Tunisia, we can point out the following factors: despotism, dependence on a single product production system, distribution of social wealth based on individual and governmental loyalty, humiliation and oppression of the nation with an iron fist, extensive government corruption, poverty and unemployment, violation of human dignity by the government, ignoring the citizens, open and explicit opposition to Islam and the Muslims and so on. Nonetheless, the most vital matter according to the writer is that we should not reduce these developments to the level of economic and livelihood demands in line with the Western countries. Rather, what is important and what the people want is the issue of Islamism and the conversion of the people of this country and the other North African and Middle Eastern countries to political Islam.

From the onset of the uprising of the Tunisians, the West and specifically, the Americans made efforts to present the popular revolution of the Tunisians as a movement based on democracy and reforms and not on Islamism. This is while the Tunisians were influenced by the Islamic Revolution of Iran in the course of their revolution. Moreover, just like the Iranians in the course of the Islamic Revolution, the Tunisians were chanting the Islamic slogans in their extensive demonstrations. And it was due to this reason that the senior Iranian officials, including the current leader of the Islamic Revolution, in his speech, praised the uprising of the people in the Middle East and especially the Tunisians from the very beginning of the Islamic Awakening. The Tunisian Constituent Assembly’s election results showed that the Islamist Ennahda Party had won by a landslide victory over the other parties, including the leading secular Progressive Democratic Party. The victory of the Islamists in Tunisia sent special messages to the hearts of the people. Messages that addressed both the West, led by the United States and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The first and the most important message of the victory of the Islamists is that the uprising of the Tunisians was an Islamic uprising and neither a secularist nor a reformist. A message that proved true and authenticated Iran’s interpretation of the popular uprising of the Tunisians. On the other side, the victory of the Islamist Ennahda Party was an evident answer to the West and the United States who had strived to depict the Tunisian revolution as a secular revolution. In a speech, Rashed Ghannouchi, the leader of the Islamist Ennahda Party of Tunisia, clearly stated that the constitution that the Tunisian people agree on does not mention the secular government. On the contrary, it speaks about an Islamic government. By considering these statements, we can conclude that the representatives of the Islamist Ennahda Party in the Constituent Assembly, whose job is to elect a new head of state and draft a new constitution, will elect an Islamist to head the government and emphasize the Islamic religion as the reference religion in the new constitution. (The Bolton News, 2011)

The Islamic Awakening in Egypt

Egypt is situated in the south of the Mediterranean Sea and west of the Red Sea while it is bordered by Libya to the west and by Sudan to the north. On the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt shares a land border with the Zionist regime and the Gaza Strip with Palestine. Egypt is made up of more than eighty million people whereby 90% of them are Muslims. It is considered to be one of the most important countries in the Muslim world, Middle East and the African continent whereby due to its border with the Zionist regime, the Suez Canal and its coastline with the Red and Mediterranean Seas, it is counted as a strategic country in the region. (Regional research, 2010: 155). In the Sunni Muslim world, Egypt created the first Islamic Awakening Front through pioneers such as Sayyid Jamal, Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida and the Muslim Brotherhood. According to them, and specifically Sayyid Jamal and the Muslim Brotherhood, religion and politics are intertwined and it is impossible to separate them from each other. (Aghajani, 2010: 89)

How the Recent Islamic Revolutionary Movements Began in Egypt

Following the popular revolution by the Tunisians, the first country to change was the great country of Egypt which through a gathering of several thousand people at the Tahrir Square in Cairo, the capital city, the movement of millions of Muslims against the Mubarak regime began and led to the reforms in the other countries. The widespread protests by the people which includes all the active political currents, have changed the face of this country and overturned all the equations. The Muslim Brotherhood, the Left-wing parties, and the Egyptian nationalists, who include a significant number of the Egyptian people, declared their support for the extensive popular protests. Even though the protesters began by raising issues such as the increase of the prices, unemployment and corruption, however, these protests gradually turned into political ones and the number of these protests increased on a daily basis. (Afran site, 2011).

With the beginning of the protests by the youths at the capital city of Egypt and the support of these protests by the political parties, a strange commotion arose in Egypt and quickly spread to the other cities in this country. This went on until Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down from power after eighteen days of resistance. Omar Suleiman, who was the vice president, took over temporarily as stated by the constitution. Nonetheless, the people still protested and demanded him to resign since they viewed him as a person that would perpetuate the system of Hosni Mubarak. The people too were successful in attaining their demand. (Regional researches, 2010: 158)

The roots of the revolution in Egypt have a lot of similarities to the roots of the revolution in Tunisia. The manner and system of the two revolutions were also similar to each other. Perhaps the biggest element that led to a lot of criticism towards Mubarak’s government, was the widespread corruption which was very obvious in the elections. From the time he ascended to power in 1981 until 2005, Hosni Mubarak was officially and publicly the only candidate available for the presidential elections. Another case concerns the conflict between the formal and practical procedures.

In Egypt, although the civil, political and individual rights and social freedoms are recognized in the constitution, however, under the pretext of the war situation between this country and the Zionist regime, these rights were suspended. This is while for many years there have been no clashes between Egypt and the Zionist regime and the government of Mubarak had established close diplomatic ties with the Zionist regime. From 1967 until the fall of Hosni Mubarak, the state of emergency was in place in Egypt. The issue of tyranny, individual-based government, the permanent suspension of the civil and political rights of the citizens along the severe financial and government corruption, are among the other factors that led to the revolution in Egypt. In Egypt, 40% of the population are living with a daily income of less than two dollars.