Protecting the Sacred: Tunisia's Islamist Movement Ennahdha and the Challenge of Free Speech

Since the 2011 uprising, Tunisia's Islamist movement Ennahdha has proposed a political project based on reclaiming the nation's Arab-Islamic identity. At the heart of this is the issue of ‘protection of the sacred’, which seeks to define limits to freedom of expression to protect religious...

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Main Author: McCarthy, R
Format: Journal article
Published: Taylor and Francis (Routledge) 2015
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author McCarthy, R
author_facet McCarthy, R
author_sort McCarthy, R
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description Since the 2011 uprising, Tunisia's Islamist movement Ennahdha has proposed a political project based on reclaiming the nation's Arab-Islamic identity. At the heart of this is the issue of ‘protection of the sacred’, which seeks to define limits to freedom of expression to protect religious symbols from criticism. This is part of Ennahdha's post-Islamist evolution. The movement has drawn away from its earlier ambitions to Islamise the state and now seeks to reconstruct the role of Islam by asserting a cultural Islamic identity, which recasts religious norms as conservative values and which has yet to determine the precise limits of new individual freedoms. The result was to propose a new set of rules for the community under which Tunisians would freely express their religious belief in a way denied them under the former regime, but would also live under a state that defended and guaranteed their religious values.
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spelling oxford-uuid:bf21aa72-ab57-47b0-9e9b-9197180594af2022-03-27T05:45:03ZProtecting the Sacred: Tunisia's Islamist Movement Ennahdha and the Challenge of Free SpeechJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:bf21aa72-ab57-47b0-9e9b-9197180594afSymplectic Elements at OxfordTaylor and Francis (Routledge)2015McCarthy, RSince the 2011 uprising, Tunisia's Islamist movement Ennahdha has proposed a political project based on reclaiming the nation's Arab-Islamic identity. At the heart of this is the issue of ‘protection of the sacred’, which seeks to define limits to freedom of expression to protect religious symbols from criticism. This is part of Ennahdha's post-Islamist evolution. The movement has drawn away from its earlier ambitions to Islamise the state and now seeks to reconstruct the role of Islam by asserting a cultural Islamic identity, which recasts religious norms as conservative values and which has yet to determine the precise limits of new individual freedoms. The result was to propose a new set of rules for the community under which Tunisians would freely express their religious belief in a way denied them under the former regime, but would also live under a state that defended and guaranteed their religious values.
spellingShingle McCarthy, R
Protecting the Sacred: Tunisia's Islamist Movement Ennahdha and the Challenge of Free Speech
title Protecting the Sacred: Tunisia's Islamist Movement Ennahdha and the Challenge of Free Speech
title_full Protecting the Sacred: Tunisia's Islamist Movement Ennahdha and the Challenge of Free Speech
title_fullStr Protecting the Sacred: Tunisia's Islamist Movement Ennahdha and the Challenge of Free Speech
title_full_unstemmed Protecting the Sacred: Tunisia's Islamist Movement Ennahdha and the Challenge of Free Speech
title_short Protecting the Sacred: Tunisia's Islamist Movement Ennahdha and the Challenge of Free Speech
title_sort protecting the sacred tunisia s islamist movement ennahdha and the challenge of free speech
work_keys_str_mv AT mccarthyr protectingthesacredtunisiasislamistmovementennahdhaandthechallengeoffreespeech