Ennahda Movement - Political Positions

Political Positions

The party is generally described as socially centrist with mild support for economic liberalism. However, liberals accuse its leaders of "doublespeak" in this regard. The party wishes to revise the strong secular, Arab nationalist, and socialist principles that predominate among the other parties, and instead allow Islam into public life and be more accommodating to other viewpoints such as closer relations with the West and greater economic freedom. The party currently rejects radical Islamism as a form of governance appropriate for Tunisia; in a debate with a secular opponent Al-Ghannushi stated, “Why are we put in the same place as a model that is far from our thought, like the Taliban or the Saudi model, while there are other successful Islamic models that are close to us, like the Turkish, the Malaysian, and the Indonesian models; models that combine Islam and modernity?”

Ahmed Ibrahim of the Tunisian Pole Democratique Moderniste political bloc complained to a foreign journalist that Ennahda appears "soft" on television, "but in the mosques, it is completely different. Some of them are calling for jihad". The general manager of Al Arabiya wrote an editorial expressing the opinion that Ennahda is fundamentally a conservative Islamist party with a moderate leadership. Ennahda has been described as a mixed bag with moderate top layers and a base defined by "a distinctly fundamentalist tilt".

Although the party has expressed support for women's rights and equality of civil rights between men and women, the party chose to place only two women at first position out of 33 regional lists for the Tunisian Constituent Assembly. Al-Ghannushi noted that women have not held any de facto leadership positions under Ben Ali's governments and that it is a "reality" that only a few women are suited to leadership posts.

The party is more moderate in urbanized areas such as Tunis, where secular and socially liberal beliefs predominate.