This paper will examine the contributions of old (April 6th youth movement and Kamal Abu Eita, the leader of the first independent labor union of tax collectors and the current minister of labor) and new actors (public commentators Amr Hamzawy and Nawara Negm)who are employing hybrid tactics and discourses to defend the political and social agendas of the January 25th Egyptian revolution for liberty, social just and human dignity since the military coup of July 3rd 2013. It will trace the evolution of their views, positions and discourses that they have embraced during the last 3 years and how they contributed to the representation of a “middle space” for the discussion of a "politics" that transcended the dominant Islamist versus civilian/liberal divide that the military led transitional led government has resurrected. It offered a double critique of the dominant actors and their positions. Despite the fact that these voices represent minority public views, they were more in line with with the positions of the young men and women who led the protests of 2011 and who 3 years later have largely absented themselves from the referendum on the new constitution that took place on January 14-15, 2014 that was identified with old politics. Egyptian newspapers' coverage of these important actors and their views of the politics of the revolution and counterrevolution will be the main source material for this discussion.

Celebrating the new Constitution, ratified in January 2014, a political commentator close to secular circles declared: ”it is a success for Tunisia. We have succeeded in ”tunisiafying” An-Nahda while Islamists have failed to islamize Tunisia”. This declaration put forward the sheer magnitude of conflicts opposing the secular movement to the governing An-Nahda party. Indeed, the former consider Political Islam as exogenous to the nation, when the latter ceaselessly reassert their attachment to national unity while displaying unwavering ambiguity with regards to the movement’s religious identity. De facto, the consensus leading to the Constitution’s ratification was perceived by the secular opposition as the sign of Islamists’ conversion or adherence to a tunisianess”, whose boundaries however remain ill-defined. Conflicts between Islamists and the secular opposition provide an interesting entry-point into the reinvention of a republican Islam, which should be analyzed in light of the Tunisian political trajectory and of decades-long societal “re-islamization”. Far from being the result of a shared vision or some conformity of thought, let alone of intellectual convergence, the consensus and the Constitution that derived from it was rather the result of ambiguities and ambivalences that are nonetheless operational. The alliance with secular parties, the acceptance of compromises and the confrontation with the political, social and religious developments in the new Tunisia, have progressively transformed An-Nahda into a governing party, which should be further analyzed, not only from the simple scope of Islam but rather considering the political trajectory, the historical legacies and economic, social and religious changes that Tunisia has experienced. Thanks to interviews conducted with political actors involved in Tunisia’s national dialogue as well as in process of Constitution-drafting, this work aims at unfolding the transactional dynamic during the transition, and whose stake does not solely lie in the renegotiation of the relationship between the religious and the political in the post-Ben Ali era, but also encompasses the completion of a « negotiated integration » and normalization of An-Nahda within Tunisia’s political system. Breakthroughs in the transition process should hence be put to the credit of the Islamist movement’s ambivalences and ambiguities, rather than to the emergence of culture of consensus within the Tunisian political community. An ambiguity which, paradoxically, is likely to steer secularization forward.

Since the first wave of protests erupted in the Arab world in the wake of Mohamed Bouazizi’s immolation, countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria have followed very different paths. So far, Tunisia seems to be the only place where a democratic transition, despite numerous crises and two political assassinations, is taking shape. While staying away from the triumphalist rhetoric of the nascent Tunisian « model », « path », or « exception », this paper seeks to reflect upon the specific trajectory Tunisia has taken since January 2011. In particular, it will focus on the notions of « national dialogue », « compromise », and « consensus » that have played a major role in the transition period, both as descriptive and prescriptive categories. A number explanations are often put forward to explain the centrality of such concepts, that alternately underline the specificity of the supposedly peaceful access to independence, the Tunisian « personality » (shakhsiyya), the historical tradition of pluralism (Tunisia as a “mosaic” of cultures)… While all these arguments may bear some degree of truth, they remain too broad and somewhat too essentialist to provide us with a satisfactory understanding of the post-revolution politics. This paper seeks to analyze the ingredients that led to the relative success of the “national dialogue” and that made ideals of of compromise and consensus so efficient, by looking at two specific phenomena. First, I will demonstrate how the procedural debate about rules and institutions has been, at each stage of the process, so tightly interwoven with the dividing and sensitive discussion about identity that it produced a depolarizing effect on the latter. Second I will look at the trajectory of a number of key players of the national dialogue, before and after the revolution, to show how this dialogue continues a conversation and a shared itinerary that has begun way before 2010. Drawing upon an approach that combines a series of interviews, a close analysis of the debates that took place at the National Constituent Assembly, and the study of the strategy of the leaders of the national dialogue, this paper shows how Tunisians are inventing a new form of politics both through references to the past (the fear of the return of despotism/istibdad) and commitment to the future (references to the environment, social justice, gender equality).

Gender activism in Egypt has often been entangled in debates and processes that are concerned with the politics of religious interpretation and knowledge. After the overthrow of Mohamed Morsy and his administration on July 3rd 2013, there has been disillusionment with religion-based politics and vilification of Muslim Brotherhood and political groups who frame their politics in religious terms. In this paper, I wish to explore the impact of this new context on the "new politics" represented by the project of Egyptian Islamic feminism. I have four aims. First, I will reflect on how this new context affects the political and epistemological projects of Egyptian women scholar activist groups such as Women and Memory Forum (WMF) who engage with Islamic epistemological tradition and contemporary mainstream religious discourses to problematize knowledge and laws that sanction gender inequality and injustice, and to produce alternative egalitarian knowledge. Second, I will examine the ways in which engagement with religion may take on new roles and features in the legal advocacy work of women’s rights organizations (e.g. Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance). Third, I will explore how, in the current political context of totalitarianism and silencing of dissent, the knowledge/activism projects of groups such as WMF and gender legal activism that draws on religious frames of reference may speak to Egyptian women from different walks of life. Fourth, I will examine how the politics of gender reform and religious reform have interplayed with public debates and opinions about both Muslim Brotherhood political rule and record during Morsy’s era; as well as that of the transitional government that came to power after July 3rd 2013. My analysis will draw on: 1) data from interviews with WMF scholars, women’s rights activists who undertake advocacy work for legal reforms, and lay women who follow these projects, and 2) content analysis of the works of WMF scholars and selected articles in Egyptian printed media in the period from September 2013 to August 2014. My overall goal is to identify the constraints (and maybe possibilities) created by the new political context for Egyptian Islamic feminism in the efforts of the latter to create a third space that distinguishes their projects from the gender agendas of secular feminism on the one hand and political Islam on the other hand.