When Rached Ghannouchi Spoke About Hassan Al-Turabi
In the late 1980s, after a series of attacks by Ennahda’s military clandestine branch, and a coup attempt, Rached Ghannouchi, the founder and charismatic leader of the Tunisian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, had to flee Tunisia. At the invitation of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), he settled in Algeria, where he became the political adviser of the Islamist party, and was in charge of relationships with Saudi Arabia and Qatar. But when the civil war broke out and FIS leaders were arrested, the context did not allow him to stay any longer in Algeria. He embarked once again on the road to exile.
“With the advent of democracy in the early 1990s and the coup against it during the same period, hundreds of Ennahda executives residing in Algeria, including myself, were forced to find another country. We went to Sudan. Hassan al-Turabi, head of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, was one of our friends. We were very much influenced by his movement when he was an opponent to the regime. However, the situation changed when he took power [in 1989, in the entourage of the new head of state, General Omar El Bashir]. But in the 1970s, the Sudanese Islamist movement was one of the most inspirational for Islamist movements in Tunisia, in addition to the Iranian revolution, and the Islamist movement of Nadjm Eddine Arbakan in Turkey, which also had an important impact on us.“
In an interview with Al Shira in October 1994, in London, the leader of Ennahda has no word strong enough to convey his admiration for Hassan al-Turabi:
“Dr. Tourabi is a” Mujaddid “(a reformer). He has inspired a whole generation of Islamists, and I am one of them. This is due to the commitment of his intelligence to the established tradition (Fikr Usuli), to his realistic and practical approach to Islam. This does not mean that his opinion on specific problems or cases is accepted by all Islamists. I can speak only for myself, and, as far as I am concerned, I think that Tourabi is the master of our generation“.
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