What future challenges does the most important actor of political Islam in Tunisia, Ennahda, face from inside and outside? Based on this question, this paper examines in two analytical sections how the monopolisation of power by Tunisian President Kais Saied affects Ennahda's forward-looking strategies and behaviour. It can already be observed that the state of emergency policy initiated with Said's seizure of power on 25 June 2021 has created the framework for existential uncertainties for the former political heavyweight in post-Arab Spring Tunisia. Against this background, the paper first takes a look back at the path that Kais Saied has taken vis-à-vis Ennahda since 2021. Firstly, Saied's approach to the control and and the containement of political Islam at the expense of political power sharing in Tunisia is the focus of a document-based discourse analysis. It is shown that Saied's political break with Tunisia's previous political system goes hand in hand with the disempowerment of the party (elites) established since the so-called Arab Spring, whose most prominent representative has been Ennahda (Camau, 2023; Dihstelhoff, 2023; Gobe, 2022a/b). Secondly, with the help of content-analytical evaluations of interviews with representatives of the Nahda Party, the paper also focuses on the organisation’s own ideas for a way out of the current re-authoritarianisation in Tunisia. Ennahda’s central minimum requirement in this context seems to be a formal return to legitimate participation in rule-of-law structures (cf. Brésillion, 2021; Mersch, 2021; Yerkes, 2022). But what specific solutions does Ennahda offer for the contemporary problems of Tunisia's ongoing multiple state crisis? How likely is it that Ennahda will still pursue a state-centred approach to reform in the future, despite regime repression? Will the organisation be able to renew itself and resume the role it has played since 2011? Does it still have something to offer Tunisians in one form or another?

Antagonisms between Islamist and leftist activists have long raged across North Africa, including in Morocco, since the 1960s. Yet during the so-called ‘Arab Uprisings,’ Islamists, Salafis, and leftists led demonstrations contesting corruption, injustice, and authoritarian rule in North Africa (Al-Anani 2012), including during the 2011 ‘20 February’ protest movement in Morocco. The sustained cross-ideological interactions that resulted led, this paper argues, to a new, unprecedented, lasting and remarkably close alliance between Salafi and Islamist actors, and between Islamist and leftist parties. This paper therefore asks: What explains the decision of Islamist, Salafi, and leftist cross-ideological rival social movements, who previously shunned one another as ideological ‘antagonists’, to cooperate post-2011? Second, what might these alliances reveal about the nature of cross-ideological solidarities in Morocco? Scholarship on cross-ideological opposition coalitions, and on Islamist-leftist coalitions in the 'MENA region specifically, has typically focused on the pre-2011 period through case studies of Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen (Schwedler and Clark, 2006; Abdelrahman, 2004). Building on this work, however, this paper draws on the case of Morocco to examine the legacies of cross-ideological interactions post-2011 in North Africa. It argues that, contra this extant scholarship, Islamist-leftist and Islamist-Salafi coalitions in Morocco have increased since the 2011 protests. Further, it contends that they are driven not simply by political openings and repression (contra, inter alia, Schwedler and Clark (2006) and Abdelrahman (2004)). Instead, they are the result of a dialectic of shifting political opportunities and constraints, but also intra-group contestation and ideational shifts, and inter-group ideological exchange. Further, existing scholarship rarely studies cross-ideological cooperation as a lens for advancing understanding of solidarity across ideological boundaries. This paper, however, contests established work that casts solidarity as based on uniformity and similarity of values and beliefs (Laitinen and Pessi 2014; May 2012). Instead, Islamist-leftist and Islamist-Salafi alliances in Morocco underscore a different facet of contemporary solidarity in the region, namely bonds that involve "sticking together while standing one's own ground" (Li, 2021). Thus, rather than setting aside or moving beyond core ideological differences, these Islamist, leftist, and Salafi allies now intentionally work with their ideological differences "productively" (Salem, 2018) to forge a broader-based challenge, premised on the power of their ideological heterogeneity, to confront the Moroccan (and, more broadly, North African) regimes’ policies of fomenting intra-societal divisions.

This paper broadly examines the practices and discourses with Algeria’s Islamist Movement for a Society of Peace (MSP) after the Algerian Civil War (1992-2002), in order to elucidate how political Islam contends with authoritarian domination beyond formal electoral contestation or observable acts of coordinated rebellion. Using ethnographic methods including observation of party meetings, informal conversations with members spanning multiple years, and semi-structured interviews, supplemented by text analysis of primary sources, media sources, and the movement’s social media discourse, the investigation exposes more everyday forms of resistance, as well as the meaning-making processes that guide them. More specifically, this paper shows that instead of confronting the state and its institutions outright, the MSP members have turned to more subtle contentious acts, including appropriating the language and symbolism on which the state’s legitimacy historically relied. In particular, Algeria’s national scouting organization, the Algerian Muslim Scouts (SMA), is a site of these ongoing contests, as it continues to occupy a special place in the Algerian imagination for its religious-ideological, military, and educational-formational role in Algeria’s War of Independence—indeed as “soldiers of the Algerian future.” (Mahfoud Kaddache, 2003: 73) It is widely hailed as an heir of the revolution and an icon of Algerian authenticity. In addition to rendering it an iconic nationalist object, the SMA’s religious-military activities rendered it a space through which Algerianness was state-brokered and -monopolized. Mobilizing and establishing affinity with the historic SMA—in most cases and localities, quite effectively—at the expense of the state allowed the MSP to trespass on, resist, and appropriate components of the state's symbolic power and legitimacy, without actively confronting the state’s coercive power. Through this investigation, this paper seeks to rethink “what counts as relevant” (James Scott, 1985: xv) in the study of revolution and resistance, and responds to the extant focus in Islamist studies and social movements literature on upheaval, rebellion, and antisystem repertoires of contention—all of which have become culturally unavailable to Islamist movements (a) after the civil war, wherein the state aggressively reconsolidated power through repression and anti-Islamist propaganda, and (b) amidst the shifting political-cultural landscape in the wake of the Algerian Hirak movement.

After its revolution in 2010/2011, Tunisia went through a shift concerning the relationship between politics and religion. During Ben Ali era (1987-2011), Salafist groups as well as Islamist Ennahda party had been excluded from the political sphere. The new political context was characterized by a high degree of openness: Ennahda came into power via democratic elections and became a key protagonist of Tunisia’s democratization. While the largest Islamist party was included into Tunisia’s political system, Salafi jihadist preachers who were released from prison openly called for a violent struggle against the existing order. The first five years after the uprisings were thus marked by violent radicalization. While taking opposing trajectories in post-revolutionary Tunisia into account, one could argue that both Ennahda and Salafi jihadist actors served the same demand on the Tunisian (discourse) market: They tried to make offers for recasting the relationship between Islam and politics and to address those Tunisians that wished for a stronger role of religion in public life. This paper analyzes the offers made by Ennahda and Salafi jihadists. We scrutinize their narratives individually, compare them to each other and interrogate the relationship they construct toward the respective other. Drawing on the rich literature on social movement theory, mobilization and radicalization, the paper compares key elements of communicative strategies of Ennahda and Salafi jihadist actors between 2011 and 2022. We use frame and discourse analysis to analyze “natural” data as produced and disseminated online by both actors (statements, documents, audio, video and textual material). We contextualize our findings in Tunisia’s dynamic political context in the post-revolutionary years.