Tunisia: More Continuity than Change within the UGTT
Tunisia’s labour union UGTT elected Noureddine Taboubi secretary general of its executive bureau during its 23rd congress, held on 22-25 January. Observers expect more continuity than change in the union’s policy given that most of the members of the outgoing...
Tunisia Dares to Confront its Sordid Past
Two weeks ago Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, a constitutionally enacted body, began a series of public hearings of victims of violations of human rights since Tunisia’s independence, sixty years ago. The hearings that have been broadcast live on local...
Surur, Leading Scholar of Haraki Salafism Dies
One of the major developments in the Islamist movements landscape this year was the death of Sheikh Muhammad Surur, this November. Surur started in the Muslim Brotherhood school of thought then gradually moved into the Haraki Salafi activist current within...
Tunisia’s Delicate Balancing Act with Saudi Arabia
Two months only after his appointment as minister of religious affairs Abdeljalil Ben Salem was dismissed following a polemic at a hearing at the Tunisian parliament. Answering a question from a leftist Popular Front MP about Wahhabism and its links...
Five Years On, Libya Struggles to find Peace
On 14 October, Khalifa Ghweil announced that the General National Congress (GNC)’s Salvation Government was back in business after Serraj’s Government of National Accord (GNA) failed to deliver, according to him. The GNC’s government declared its comeback from the GNC’s...
Leadership Struggles Further Weaken Tunisia’s Modernist Parties
The saga of splits, defections, resignations and below-the-belt hits is showing no sign of abating within Tunisia’s so-called modernist political parties. Indeed, the crisis within Nida Tounes has hit a new low with the freezing of the activities of the...
Tunisia: The Republic’s Mufti and Politics
Tunisia’s Grand Mufti Othmane Battikh, appointed by President Beji Caid Essebsi last summer, caused a political row, in late September, when he considered some labour sit-ins and protests as haram or religiously illicit because they harm the country’s fragile economy....
Morocco: Scrambling to Attract Salafis
A month ahead of the legislative elections on 7 October Salafis emerged as important actors in the Moroccan political landscape. If the rapprochement between the Salafi figure Abdelouahab Rafiqui (Abou Hafs) and the Istiqlal Party has increased gradually since the...