12:14 AM
Saifullah Zulkifli
Rachid Ghannoushi was born in 1941 outside of a small
village in al-Hama, in the provice of Qabis in
southern Tunisia. His father was a farmer with four
wives to assist him. With all ten siblings, they
studied Quran as emphasized by his father. His mother
is a person who gave a very much affect to the life
Ghannoushi, where her mother was born in town endowed
with ‘powerful personality’ believes that education
will develop the children into somebody in the future.
In 1956, Ghannoushi went to Zaytuna to study the Quran
and Islamic Law and Theology, as well as modern
subject and science, but the presentation and approach
of Islam in Zaytuna was primarily past-oriented and
very traditional. Ghannoushi later, criticized Zaytuna
as ‘Dead End’, because of the study made the student
feel that they enter into ‘Museum’, where the
emphasize was based on past legal practice rather than
Islam relevance to present. He later further his study
in Cairo University to study Agriculture in 1964,
However his stay in Eagyt was abruptly cut short when
President of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, fearing the
influence of Nasser’s Arab socialism. He then
transferred to University of Damascus in Syria where
he completed his study in Philosophy.
Ghannoushi moved from Syria to Paris to obtain his
master’s degree at the Sorbonne in 1968. During this
time he started to join the Islamic Movement, the
Jamaah Tabligh which provides him the first experience
of organized Islamic Activism. During this period,
Esposito argued that pre-1978 or particularly before
the Iranian Revolution, the Islamic Movement was
remained as apolitical, where it is more focus on
religiocultural movement that more interested in
changing the individual and society.
Post-1978 was a turning point for world phenomenon to
the Islamic world including the Islamic Movement in
Tunisia Rachid Ghannoushi himself. The late 1970’s saw
the progressive political response among the Islamic
Movement in facing the internal social situation in
Tunisia. The Islamic Association was previously the
Islamic activist organization where Ghannoushi was one
of the syura members, transformed into a Islamic
Political Party in 1981 known as Islamic Tendency
Movement (MTI).
The current President, Bouguiba refused to approve the
license legalising the party. Bourguiba
authoritarianism and restrictive policies of his
government very much suffer the people with
unemployment, social problem in the authoritarian
ruling. In the same year, Bourguiba government cracked
down on MTI, arresting and imprisoning Ghannoushi and
many other leaders of MTI.
In 1987, Ghannoushi defiantly faced the state Security
Court in Tunis, knowing well the President Bourguiba
sought to strike a mortal blow against the Islamic
Movement in Tunisia by having sentence of death. Two
years later, in April 1989, Tunisia participated in
the first democratic election after the fall of Habib
Bourguiba government in November 1987. The MTI did
well in the election with 13 percent of popular vote
nationally and between 30-40 percent in many major
urban areas.
Ghannoushi who had been imprisoned and sentenced to
life prison in September 1987 and after the coup
granted amnesty in 1988, earning as the strongest
opposition group in Tunisia. By 1990’s Ghannoushi was
in exile and his movement driven underground.
Ghannoushi Ideological Worldview
In the life and thought of Ghannoushi, Islam emerges
as both reaffirmation of faith in the absolute unity
of God and a source of liberation. The Islamic
movement is a reform movement that focus on individual
and society, where it seek reform, revised and
revitalised the individual and society. At in the same
time it seek the liberation from cultural alienation
or westernization that is alienated from the Islamic
value and identity, in the issue of economic,
exploitation, moral corruption, it must based on the
Islamic principle of equality, equity, and social
justice.
For Ghannoushi, the problem with muslim world is that
the muslim world are very much rooted with the
European master colonial experience and its legacy. As
result the identity, unity, and development of muslim
nation have been undermined. The western secular
orientation of muslim state has ignore the traditional
Islamic culture of the masses, alienated the nation,
and attempted to cut of their indigenous identity and
value. Ghannoushi further argued that the Tunisia and
most of the muslim societies are collapsed with
failure because of the western model of development.
He accounted the muslim must solved their problem by
themselves by making their own model, based on faith
and experience. Ghannoushi mention pertaining to this
metter during the interview conducted by Prof
Esposito, where he coined that:
“We need to define our identity. Tunisian are not
tourist who lives in a hotel.
They have a history and background that form their
identity. The rules on
which they lives should came from that background. One
of the biggest
problems that Tunisian had during the rule of
Bourghiba was that tries to link
them with the west and make them forget their
Arab-Islamic identity. He
believed that Islam was an obstacle to change and
moderation. He tried to
interpret Islam in a way that would make Islam serve
his purpose, his
government and his program of westernization. In
effect, he tried to destroy
Tunisian-Arab- Islamic Identity.”
The restoration of Islamic power and identity can only
happen with integration and incorporates with modern
change, but this modern change must be within the
Islamic framework. Islam has its own model and
worldview that provide the sense of history, identity
and value that means to resolves the problems.
Therefore, muslim do not need to be obsesses or
blindly follow the west solution. In this sense,
Ghannoushi differ with Syed Qutb that very much
emphasized a total rejection of the west. It is more
towards the call of harmonization in the sense that a
re-evaluation and redefinition the relationship
between the Muslim community to the west and to Islam.
Self-sufficiency of Islam is the most simultaneous
emphasize of Ghannoushi while acknowledging the
accomplishment of the west, which tend to speak about
the reconstruction of the Muslim society that require
a social transformation based on the implementation of
Islamic principles and values to the needs of Muslim
society. Ghannoushi call for reinterpretation
(ijtihad) to develop an Islamically informed framework
for modern muslim life. Regarding to this also,
Ghannoushi argued that the reinterpretation must
accommodate with the current conditions of Muslim
Society.
Ghannoushi Views of Islam and State
Ghannoushi argued that this question did not emerge in
an Islamic environment, for Islam had ruled
uninterrupted since the establishment of its first
state in Medina until the start of last century. This
question was rather brought to the Islamic lands atop
western tanks which were not satisfied with colonizing
lands, plundering resources and opening markets, but
further attempted - and still does - to penetrate
Islam and change its nature just as it did with other
religions and cultures and marginalized them and
imposed its own thought and models on them, but Islam
alone continued to resist secularization,
westernization and marginalization as they contrasted
its monotheistic comprehensive nature and furthermore
represented means to impose western domination on the
world and exclusive management of its resources. It
opposed that domination and not democracy and
religious tolerance as also claimed by Francis
Fukuyama.
Muslims faced the first attempt to secularize Islam
following the death of the Prophet pbuh in the wars of
apostasy when most Arab tribes rebelled against the
state refusing to pay Zakat while most accepted faith
and prayer thus causing confusion and hesitation
amongst Muslims regarding the legitimacy of fighting
against other believers. The Khalifah's recognition of
the danger of such a division for the nature of Islam
fuelled his determination to face that rebellion and
succeeded to convince his companions. Thus the first
armed secular movement in the history of Islam was
quelled.
Despite differences amongst Muslims, such tendencies
never emerged after that incident, until modern
western invasion, prompting the emergence of a few
isolated voices from the traditional religious
institutions, which later retreated and rejected their
former claims calling for separating religion from
state and life and regarding Islam as a matter for
individuals not to be involved in the organization of
society which is to be subjected to the logic of
interests whether or not it conforms with Islam.
Ghannoushi opposed such calls which retreated and
found no popular acceptance and restricted their
influence to closed circles of the elite which found
support from the West arming themselves with the state
apparatus to impose secularization as a way of life
for Muslims and spread it through state institutions.
And since one of the Islamic movement's main raisons
deters was opposing secularization and restricting it,
which it had succeeded in doing to a high extent in
most Muslim countries, despotism became a vital
necessity for the survival of secularization. In
contrast to the situation in the West where democracy
and secularity are linked as a result of the origins
of secularity in the Western context, secularity in
the Muslim world has remained in need of state support
and authoritarianism.
The conclusion made by Ghannoushi is that Islam is a
religion and a state and is not merely a belief.
However, the Islamic state is not a theocratic
patriarchal state speaking in the name of God, but is
a civil state expressing the free will of its
citizens, taking partial responsibility for applying
what they have been commanded by God to establish
religion, cultivate this world, achieve their
interests through a clear contract to establish
justice and follow consultation. It is a state for
humans, following their will, their consultation in
establishing and deposing it, and it is a state for
all its citizens, regardless of creed and thought. And
the tools of modern democracy no doubt offer a new
practical form of the system of Shura in Islam.
What is to be noted in this regard is that the most
important areas of failure or deficiency in the
experience of Muslim rule in history is the failure of
Muslims to develop Shura so as to transform it from
merely a value and a directive to an institution for
rule regulated by mechanisms and restrictions that
guarantee that sovereignty is to the Ummah within the
framework of Shari'ah rather than to authoritarian
individuals as is often the case in the Muslim world,
whereas the West has made substantial achievements in
this domain.
In regards with democracy, Ghannoushi acknowledge
democracy as among the positives contribution or
accomplishment of the West where he views democracy as
relatively close or similar with the system develop by
Islam. Rule of Law, Human Right, and Freedom are the
basic component of democracy that develops the
civilization.
“By democracy is meant the liberal model of
government prevailing in the
West, a system under which the people freely to
choose their representative
and leaders, and in which there is an alternation of
power, as well as freedom
and human rights for the public, then the muslim will
find nothing in their
religion to oppose democracy, and it is not in their
interest to do so anyway”
As conclusion, Rachid Ghannoushi and Tunisian, En
Nahdah Movement reflect the extent to which the growth
and development of Islamic movement and Islamic
Thought that can be conditioned by political and
social context.
Reference
Azzam Tamimi, Rachid Ghannoushi: A Democrat Within
Islamism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
John L. Esposito, Makers of Contemporary Islam (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
John L. Esposito & Azzam Tamimi, Islam and Secularism
in the Middle East (London: Hurst and Company, 2002)
village in al-Hama, in the provice of Qabis in
southern Tunisia. His father was a farmer with four
wives to assist him. With all ten siblings, they
studied Quran as emphasized by his father. His mother
is a person who gave a very much affect to the life
Ghannoushi, where her mother was born in town endowed
with ‘powerful personality’ believes that education
will develop the children into somebody in the future.
In 1956, Ghannoushi went to Zaytuna to study the Quran
and Islamic Law and Theology, as well as modern
subject and science, but the presentation and approach
of Islam in Zaytuna was primarily past-oriented and
very traditional. Ghannoushi later, criticized Zaytuna
as ‘Dead End’, because of the study made the student
feel that they enter into ‘Museum’, where the
emphasize was based on past legal practice rather than
Islam relevance to present. He later further his study
in Cairo University to study Agriculture in 1964,
However his stay in Eagyt was abruptly cut short when
President of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, fearing the
influence of Nasser’s Arab socialism. He then
transferred to University of Damascus in Syria where
he completed his study in Philosophy.
Ghannoushi moved from Syria to Paris to obtain his
master’s degree at the Sorbonne in 1968. During this
time he started to join the Islamic Movement, the
Jamaah Tabligh which provides him the first experience
of organized Islamic Activism. During this period,
Esposito argued that pre-1978 or particularly before
the Iranian Revolution, the Islamic Movement was
remained as apolitical, where it is more focus on
religiocultural movement that more interested in
changing the individual and society.
Post-1978 was a turning point for world phenomenon to
the Islamic world including the Islamic Movement in
Tunisia Rachid Ghannoushi himself. The late 1970’s saw
the progressive political response among the Islamic
Movement in facing the internal social situation in
Tunisia. The Islamic Association was previously the
Islamic activist organization where Ghannoushi was one
of the syura members, transformed into a Islamic
Political Party in 1981 known as Islamic Tendency
Movement (MTI).
The current President, Bouguiba refused to approve the
license legalising the party. Bourguiba
authoritarianism and restrictive policies of his
government very much suffer the people with
unemployment, social problem in the authoritarian
ruling. In the same year, Bourguiba government cracked
down on MTI, arresting and imprisoning Ghannoushi and
many other leaders of MTI.
In 1987, Ghannoushi defiantly faced the state Security
Court in Tunis, knowing well the President Bourguiba
sought to strike a mortal blow against the Islamic
Movement in Tunisia by having sentence of death. Two
years later, in April 1989, Tunisia participated in
the first democratic election after the fall of Habib
Bourguiba government in November 1987. The MTI did
well in the election with 13 percent of popular vote
nationally and between 30-40 percent in many major
urban areas.
Ghannoushi who had been imprisoned and sentenced to
life prison in September 1987 and after the coup
granted amnesty in 1988, earning as the strongest
opposition group in Tunisia. By 1990’s Ghannoushi was
in exile and his movement driven underground.
Ghannoushi Ideological Worldview
In the life and thought of Ghannoushi, Islam emerges
as both reaffirmation of faith in the absolute unity
of God and a source of liberation. The Islamic
movement is a reform movement that focus on individual
and society, where it seek reform, revised and
revitalised the individual and society. At in the same
time it seek the liberation from cultural alienation
or westernization that is alienated from the Islamic
value and identity, in the issue of economic,
exploitation, moral corruption, it must based on the
Islamic principle of equality, equity, and social
justice.
For Ghannoushi, the problem with muslim world is that
the muslim world are very much rooted with the
European master colonial experience and its legacy. As
result the identity, unity, and development of muslim
nation have been undermined. The western secular
orientation of muslim state has ignore the traditional
Islamic culture of the masses, alienated the nation,
and attempted to cut of their indigenous identity and
value. Ghannoushi further argued that the Tunisia and
most of the muslim societies are collapsed with
failure because of the western model of development.
He accounted the muslim must solved their problem by
themselves by making their own model, based on faith
and experience. Ghannoushi mention pertaining to this
metter during the interview conducted by Prof
Esposito, where he coined that:
“We need to define our identity. Tunisian are not
tourist who lives in a hotel.
They have a history and background that form their
identity. The rules on
which they lives should came from that background. One
of the biggest
problems that Tunisian had during the rule of
Bourghiba was that tries to link
them with the west and make them forget their
Arab-Islamic identity. He
believed that Islam was an obstacle to change and
moderation. He tried to
interpret Islam in a way that would make Islam serve
his purpose, his
government and his program of westernization. In
effect, he tried to destroy
Tunisian-Arab- Islamic Identity.”
The restoration of Islamic power and identity can only
happen with integration and incorporates with modern
change, but this modern change must be within the
Islamic framework. Islam has its own model and
worldview that provide the sense of history, identity
and value that means to resolves the problems.
Therefore, muslim do not need to be obsesses or
blindly follow the west solution. In this sense,
Ghannoushi differ with Syed Qutb that very much
emphasized a total rejection of the west. It is more
towards the call of harmonization in the sense that a
re-evaluation and redefinition the relationship
between the Muslim community to the west and to Islam.
Self-sufficiency of Islam is the most simultaneous
emphasize of Ghannoushi while acknowledging the
accomplishment of the west, which tend to speak about
the reconstruction of the Muslim society that require
a social transformation based on the implementation of
Islamic principles and values to the needs of Muslim
society. Ghannoushi call for reinterpretation
(ijtihad) to develop an Islamically informed framework
for modern muslim life. Regarding to this also,
Ghannoushi argued that the reinterpretation must
accommodate with the current conditions of Muslim
Society.
Ghannoushi Views of Islam and State
Ghannoushi argued that this question did not emerge in
an Islamic environment, for Islam had ruled
uninterrupted since the establishment of its first
state in Medina until the start of last century. This
question was rather brought to the Islamic lands atop
western tanks which were not satisfied with colonizing
lands, plundering resources and opening markets, but
further attempted - and still does - to penetrate
Islam and change its nature just as it did with other
religions and cultures and marginalized them and
imposed its own thought and models on them, but Islam
alone continued to resist secularization,
westernization and marginalization as they contrasted
its monotheistic comprehensive nature and furthermore
represented means to impose western domination on the
world and exclusive management of its resources. It
opposed that domination and not democracy and
religious tolerance as also claimed by Francis
Fukuyama.
Muslims faced the first attempt to secularize Islam
following the death of the Prophet pbuh in the wars of
apostasy when most Arab tribes rebelled against the
state refusing to pay Zakat while most accepted faith
and prayer thus causing confusion and hesitation
amongst Muslims regarding the legitimacy of fighting
against other believers. The Khalifah's recognition of
the danger of such a division for the nature of Islam
fuelled his determination to face that rebellion and
succeeded to convince his companions. Thus the first
armed secular movement in the history of Islam was
quelled.
Despite differences amongst Muslims, such tendencies
never emerged after that incident, until modern
western invasion, prompting the emergence of a few
isolated voices from the traditional religious
institutions, which later retreated and rejected their
former claims calling for separating religion from
state and life and regarding Islam as a matter for
individuals not to be involved in the organization of
society which is to be subjected to the logic of
interests whether or not it conforms with Islam.
Ghannoushi opposed such calls which retreated and
found no popular acceptance and restricted their
influence to closed circles of the elite which found
support from the West arming themselves with the state
apparatus to impose secularization as a way of life
for Muslims and spread it through state institutions.
And since one of the Islamic movement's main raisons
deters was opposing secularization and restricting it,
which it had succeeded in doing to a high extent in
most Muslim countries, despotism became a vital
necessity for the survival of secularization. In
contrast to the situation in the West where democracy
and secularity are linked as a result of the origins
of secularity in the Western context, secularity in
the Muslim world has remained in need of state support
and authoritarianism.
The conclusion made by Ghannoushi is that Islam is a
religion and a state and is not merely a belief.
However, the Islamic state is not a theocratic
patriarchal state speaking in the name of God, but is
a civil state expressing the free will of its
citizens, taking partial responsibility for applying
what they have been commanded by God to establish
religion, cultivate this world, achieve their
interests through a clear contract to establish
justice and follow consultation. It is a state for
humans, following their will, their consultation in
establishing and deposing it, and it is a state for
all its citizens, regardless of creed and thought. And
the tools of modern democracy no doubt offer a new
practical form of the system of Shura in Islam.
What is to be noted in this regard is that the most
important areas of failure or deficiency in the
experience of Muslim rule in history is the failure of
Muslims to develop Shura so as to transform it from
merely a value and a directive to an institution for
rule regulated by mechanisms and restrictions that
guarantee that sovereignty is to the Ummah within the
framework of Shari'ah rather than to authoritarian
individuals as is often the case in the Muslim world,
whereas the West has made substantial achievements in
this domain.
In regards with democracy, Ghannoushi acknowledge
democracy as among the positives contribution or
accomplishment of the West where he views democracy as
relatively close or similar with the system develop by
Islam. Rule of Law, Human Right, and Freedom are the
basic component of democracy that develops the
civilization.
“By democracy is meant the liberal model of
government prevailing in the
West, a system under which the people freely to
choose their representative
and leaders, and in which there is an alternation of
power, as well as freedom
and human rights for the public, then the muslim will
find nothing in their
religion to oppose democracy, and it is not in their
interest to do so anyway”
As conclusion, Rachid Ghannoushi and Tunisian, En
Nahdah Movement reflect the extent to which the growth
and development of Islamic movement and Islamic
Thought that can be conditioned by political and
social context.
Reference
Azzam Tamimi, Rachid Ghannoushi: A Democrat Within
Islamism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
John L. Esposito, Makers of Contemporary Islam (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
John L. Esposito & Azzam Tamimi, Islam and Secularism
in the Middle East (London: Hurst and Company, 2002)
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