Tunisia’s Ennahda movement is split into two currents that represent different political and ideological approaches. We can sum up the difference between them in the position each occupied during Ben Ali’s rule: we had the political prisoners on the one hand, and the exiled tourists around the world on the other. While Ben Ali remains in his safe haven in Saudi Arabia, his ghost still looms large in the Tunisian streets as we mark the fourth anniversary of the Arab revolutions. It also hovers over Egyptian president, Abd el-Fattah al-Sisi, as Egyptian revolutionaries are currently divided into two main groups: the prisoners inside, who are either detained in jails or face restrictions in the country; and the other group is comprised of immigrants, runaways and those who opted for exile abroad. It is safe to say that things will never be the same after the January revolution due to the social changes unfolding thanks to the eruption of the revolution and the interactions that succeeded it. For the near future, however, optimistic expectations will depend on the anticipated relationship between the returnees from abroad and those released from the dungeons. This will only happen after the revolution’s desired recovery.
English
The Revolution’s Anniversary
Articles from Arab World
Culture in a Time of Shrinking Political Space
In this folder, we attempt to trace how culture interacts with the shrinking political sphere, avoiding generalizations or seeking necessarily "inspiring" models. Some texts illuminate how culture can create alternative...
Families returning home to bombarded areas face new health risks from war debris
People returning to places like Fallujah or Gaza work hard to rebuild their homes, clearing debris and doing rapid construction, forced to expose themselves to harmful materials that enter their...
Rashid Al-Khalidi: Israel is a Unique Settler-Colonial Project
Israel was not an extension of a mother country. This is a big difference from other kinds of colonialism and even other settlers' cases throughout history.
From the same author
The Murder Factories of Egypt
Egypt has filled its prisons with some 40,000 people since the 2013 coup, the vast majority of them young activists of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood subjected to torture and mistreatment....
The curious case of the Egyptian Minister of Interior
You cannot slaughter an entire people all at once, but you can divide the mission into successive stages. And if you do not fancy the story of the white...
Political Detention in Egypt
The widespread arrests and humiliation of prisoners we are currently witnessing in Egypt are not at all a new phenomenon for Islamists. In fact, it can be argued that...