What is the Likelihood of the Production of a Tunisian Islamism? A Study of the Challenges

This paper seeks to achieve two things: the first is synthetic, and aims to combine the facts of political, cultural, and religious reality and make connections and links between them to aid the understanding of Islamism in both its wide and local Tunisian context. The second is analytical, and aims to comprehend the issues posing a range of challenges to the Tunisian Islamist project. The paper employs two interlinked approaches: a comparative approach and a historical-critical approach. The first is used to examine the areas in common between the Tunisian Ennahda movement and the Turkish Justice and Development Party, and between Ataturk and Bourguiba. The second approach is used to observe the effect of the history of the "civil state" and its value system on the construction of the contemporary Tunisian personality and the available possibilities or obligations for Tunisian Islamists to make a breakthrough in the reason of this "civil state". On the basis of this conception, the paper may be included among studies with a deconstructionist bent that try to understand the manner in which Tunisian Islamism is a project that expounds Islam and has an identity-based vision of society. This choice means not becoming bogged down in details, despite their importance, but being content with how Tunisian Islamist discourse grounds itself when confronting its obstacles. Here, it must be indicated, that obtaining direct and conclusive answers to the questions posed is not a fundamental aim of this research. This is because this form of Islamism, for composite subjective and objective reasons, has not perfected its doctrines in a way to enable students to form final judgments. It appears attached to discourse, diktat, and ideology at the expense of the epistemological, authentic, and creative.

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This paper seeks to achieve two things: the first is synthetic, and aims to combine the facts of political, cultural, and religious reality and make connections and links between them to aid the understanding of Islamism in both its wide and local Tunisian context. The second is analytical, and aims to comprehend the issues posing a range of challenges to the Tunisian Islamist project. The paper employs two interlinked approaches: a comparative approach and a historical-critical approach. The first is used to examine the areas in common between the Tunisian Ennahda movement and the Turkish Justice and Development Party, and between Ataturk and Bourguiba. The second approach is used to observe the effect of the history of the "civil state" and its value system on the construction of the contemporary Tunisian personality and the available possibilities or obligations for Tunisian Islamists to make a breakthrough in the reason of this "civil state". On the basis of this conception, the paper may be included among studies with a deconstructionist bent that try to understand the manner in which Tunisian Islamism is a project that expounds Islam and has an identity-based vision of society. This choice means not becoming bogged down in details, despite their importance, but being content with how Tunisian Islamist discourse grounds itself when confronting its obstacles. Here, it must be indicated, that obtaining direct and conclusive answers to the questions posed is not a fundamental aim of this research. This is because this form of Islamism, for composite subjective and objective reasons, has not perfected its doctrines in a way to enable students to form final judgments. It appears attached to discourse, diktat, and ideology at the expense of the epistemological, authentic, and creative.

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