Thread by @MonicaLMarks

No publication fact checks more rigorously than ⁦@NewYorker⁩ imho & no journalist covers MENA better than ⁦David Kirkpatrick⁩ (@ddk_nyc⁩).

This ✍️—on why Ghannouchi’s arrest matters not just for #Tunisia but for the world—is a must-read. 🧵 newyorker.com/news/daily-com…

“The imprisonment of a leader as singular as Ghannouchi,” Kirkpatrick writes, is not just a blow to #Tunisia’s democracy. It’s “a setback to the wider world.

For Islamists who espouse violence, his imprisonment is a vindication—new evidence of the futility of the ballot box.”

Tragically, I couldn’t agree more.

Anyone watching closely knows #Tunisia’s return to repressive dictatorship will be a boon—to authoritarian rulers & jihadist recruiters—who argue Islam, liberalism & democracy can’t mix.

Saied’s persecution of RG vindicates jihadist narratives

https://twitter.com/monicalmarks/status/1648506550426943491

This is another outstanding paragraph in Kirkpatrick’s article.

Kais Saied has proven far more “Islamist,” both in speech & deed, than Rached Ghannouchi and his so-called Islamist Ennahda Party dreamed of being post-2011.

The word “secular” belongs nowhere near Saied’s name.

Article 5 of Saied’s self-authored authoritarian 2022 constitution pushes #Tunisia in a much more “Islamist direction” than democratic 2014 constitution it replaced.

3 resources to understand this better:

amnesty.org/en/latest/news…

jadaliyya.com/Details/44358

brookings.edu/blog/order-fro…

I appreciate, too, that Kirkpatrick’s piece avoids hagiography & acknowledges Ghannouchi’s mistakes.

He calls RG’s decision to seek the speaker of parliament’s chair in 2019 “questionable.” I’d call it deeply unwise.

And this quote from fellow scholar Emad Shahin is excellent.

Kirkpatrick also recalls key details most writers miss, or never knew in the first place.

Like 1) RG’s efforts to talk sense into Egypt’s Morsi in 2012-13 & 2) that it was RG (w/ Essebsi)—not #Tunisia’s Nobel laureates—who broke the Bardo logjam in 2013.

newyorker.com/news/daily-com…

To learn more about:

1) How Ennahda & RG related to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood & Morsi

2) How Ennahda & RG helped create—& resolve—the 2013 Bardo Crisis (which nearly toppled #Tunisia’s transition)

Here are 2 more articles:

washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca…

tcf.org/content/report…

Lastly, to learn more about Ghannouchi & Ennahda, here’s a podcast I did w/ great journalist @erinclarebrown.

Read scholars who’ve researched it most deeply, too: Emad Shahin, Larbi Sadiki, Andrew March, Anne Wolf, Rory McCarthy, Sebnem Gumuscu & myself.

spotify.link/LjIgzdBCfzb