The Arab uprisings have led to the resurgence of religious parties and movements after several decades of repression. In Tunisia, immediately after the fall of the Ben Ali regime in January 2011, the religious field witnessed the rise of new grassroots entrepreneurs, often “self-made imams” leaning toward Salafism, not appointed by the state.Footnote 1 By 2012, the ideological spectrum of the Islamic landscape had crystallized into four main trends: Islamists akin to the Muslim Brothers (represented by Ennahda [Renaissance]), Salafi political parties (the most prominent being Jabhat al-Islah [Reform Front]), religious associations of various ideological affiliations, and revolutionary Salafi-Jihadis (mainly Ansar al-Shari‘a [Shari‘a Partisans]). This scenario lasted until 2013, when the assassination of two leftist political leaders by a Jihadi commando triggered a severe political crisis which ultimately led the Islamist party in power, Ennahda, to formally cut its relationships with Salafi actors and to relinquish power in favor of a technocratic government. Consequently, the Salafi sociopolitical landscape was reshuffled: the Salafi-Jihadi group Ansar al-Shari‘a was banned, and Salafi associations suspected to have links with terrorist groups were shut down.
After these events, the success of the political transition hinged on the ability of the two main contenders on the political scene, the Islamist Ennahda and the modernist Nidaa Tounès, to reach an agreement over the adoption of a new constitution and the creation of a “government of national unity,” respectively in January and October 2014.Footnote 2 These deals meant the acceptance of Ennahda in the institutional field as a legitimate political force but also the redefinition of Tunisian religious space. Mosques and several religious associations were brought under the state's control and regulated under a more stringent legal framework.Footnote 3 In 2015, as a reaction to the double attacks at the Bardo Museum in Tunis and the resort in Soussa, the government officially announced a new campaign of securitization under the label of the “war against terrorism,” aimed at curtailing all the “extremisms” present in the country.Footnote 4
Government security policies came hand in hand with official discourses of the institutional and political actors that promoted a moderate and local Islam and excluded those religious expressions perceived as radical.Footnote 5 These discourses also have fostered a nationalist religious canon that emphasizes the role of the Zaytuna, the historical Tunisian university-mosque that distinguished itself over decades for its teaching approach based on the predominant madhhab in the country, the Maliki school.Footnote 6 The security campaign backed by the above-mentioned discourses has actually echoed the prerevolutionary regime's policies aimed at promoting a “controlled” domestic Islam in contrast to the “radical” Islam usually associated with religious actors who are deemed strangers to the Tunisian context. Since independence in 1956, the Bourguiba (1956–87) and Ben Ali (1987–2011) regimes had in fact rooted their modernist, nationalist ideology in the claim of a “Tunisian specificity” linked to the Zaytuni tradition.Footnote 7 The post-2013 governments reactivated this frame: Zaytuni teachings, as also reported by local media and political actors, embodied a traditional Tunisian Islam considered incompatible with religious “extremisms” imported from the Gulf, namely Salafism.Footnote 8 The securitization campaign and the institutional discourses have been backed by a large stratum of society, such as secular associations, but also by religious organizations that have increasingly regarded Salafism as a form of religiosity linked to extremism and violence and alien to Tunisian religious traditions. The label “Salafi” was indeed routinely associated with intolerance and terrorism by local media and in several official speeches of secular political parties, which pushed many Salafis to dissimulate or drop the label altogether from 2015 onward.Footnote 9
The reconfiguration of the Salafi movement that followed this new security-centered scenario is the focus of this article. How have Salafis coped in the last seven years with an increasingly constrained environment? Although, after the ban of Ansar al-Shari‘a, Jihadi Salafism has become largely radicalized and political Salafism has almost disappeared, we argue that a scholastic Salafi trend managed to survive the harsh constraints set by national authorities by conforming to the Maliki school, the prevalent doctrine in the country.Footnote 10 In other words, we demonstrate how Malikization constituted a survival strategy on the part of Salafis to preserve their religious and teaching activities in the face of the securitization and domestication of the religious field. We label the outcome of this adaptive strategy “Salafi-Malikism.” This evolution constitutes a puzzling situation with regard to the academic literature, which argues that Salafism rejects the imitation of the four traditional juridical schools in line with the writings of the first Salafi scholars, Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), Ibn al-Qayyim (1292–1350), and al-Shawkani (1759–1839).Footnote 11 In legal matters, Salafis indeed “usually deny that the four Sunni schools of Islamic law have any authority apart from the canonical primary sources on which each body of jurisprudence is supposed to be based.”Footnote 12 Ultimately, we show that like the Islamist party Ennahda that turned into a conservative party in a time of acute legitimization crisis, Salafis are not immutable actors; on the contrary, they may prioritize survival over doctrinal rigidity in repressive contexts.Footnote 13 This echoes a body of literature that, although tackling the political rather than the legal and cultural dimensions of Salafi adaptation, highlights trends of nationalization.Footnote 14
In the first part of the article, we provide a historical overview of the Salafis’ first generation (1970s–80s) and second generation (1980s–90s) and their relationship with Malikism, and we clarify the reasons for the latter's rejection of taqlῑd. We then describe and situate the transformations of the Salafi actors after the 2010–11 revolution in the broader political context. We highlight how the political crisis in 2013, the following securitization campaign, and Ennahdha's pragmatic turn in 2014 have all contributed to a strategic adaption of residual Salafis vis-à-vis the prevailing Maliki school, which is identified with “authentic” Tunisian Islam. We dedicate a final part to the discursive adaptation by Salafis to this new context, before discussing to what extent it also encompasses a theological transformation.Footnote 15
The research is based on a corpus of twenty-six semi-structured and open-ended interviews conducted by the authors between 2013 and 2020 with Salafi shaykhs, rank-and-file followers, and representatives of the most relevant organizations specialized in religious studies still active in the country: the University Imam Malik for Shari‘a Sciences (hereafter Imam Malik University), the Association Imam Malik for Shari‘a Sciences (hereafter Imam Malik Association), the Tunisian section of the International Association of Muslim Scholars (IAMS), and the Rabita Qur'aniyya (Qur'anic League). The authors also have interviewed members of Islamist associations, Ennahdha leaders, state officials, and officials of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Interview data are cross-checked as well as triangulated with participant observations, document analysis of public speeches, and immersive fieldwork.
Malikism and Salafism in Tunisia Before 2011
Malikism is one of Sunni Islam's four schools of religious law (maḏāhib) found broadly in North Africa, especially in Tunisia.Footnote 16 In Tunisia Malikism is often cited as a key foundation of the country's religious tolerance, contrasting starkly with radical takfiri ideology that, for example, brands nonpracticing Muslims as infidels.Footnote 17 Malikism was introduced in the Maghrib alongside Hanafism by the jurist ‘Assad ibn al-Furat (758–828), a student of Malik ibn Anas (711–95) in Madina. Maliki jurists particularly asserted themselves in Kairouan, in Tunisia, which was the old capital of the independent Aghlabid emirate of Ifriqiyya (800–909).Footnote 18 The Great Mosque of Kairouan founded in 670 was then the most important center of Maliki teaching.Footnote 19 The most famous among these Kairouan-based jurists was Abu Muhammad ‘Abd Allah ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (922–96), whose book al-Risala (The Message) is considered to be the third reference of Malikism.Footnote 20 Today, Malik, Sahnun, Ibn Sahnun, and al-Qayrawani remain the central references of Maliki jurists and ‘ulama’.
Although Kairouan constituted the first focal point of Malikism in Tunisia, the Zaytuna mosque and university in Tunis (founded in 698 and 737, respectively) progressively became the main center of Maliki religious teaching, beginning in the second half of the 11th century.Footnote 21 The centralization of power in Tunis from 1159 onward by the Almohad caliph ‘Abd al-Mu'min (r. 1094–1163) further contributed to the establishment of Zaytuna's hegemony as the epicenter of Malikism in the Maghrib.Footnote 22
Tunisian Maliki ‘ulama’ continued to have an important role under the French protectorate (1888–1956), although religious associations had to face several restrictions.Footnote 23 After independence, the rise to power of Habib Bourguiba marked the full marginalization of the Maliki ‘ulama’ of the Zaytuna. In May 1956, a presidential decree transferred the direct supervision of religious institutions from the awqāf (religious endowments) to the state. In this way, Bourguiba initiated the religious and financial demise of the Zaytuna ‘ulama’ embodying the traditional Maliki religiosity, who he saw as an obstacle to his modernization policies.Footnote 24 In 1958, Bourguiba closed the Zaytuna education system, which he integrated into public secondary education through a faculty of theology (at the University of Tunis).Footnote 25 In 1961, the head imam of the Zaytuna mosque was discharged, and the imam of the Grand Mosque in Kairouan was transferred to another mosque. The state's absorption of the Zaytuna “provoked increasing animosity in society” and, according to some authors, contributed to the politicization of Islam.Footnote 26 The first expression of a political religious movement that sought the support of the few Zaytuni ‘ulama’ came from the al-Jamaʿa al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group) created in 1969 by Rached Ghannouchi, ‘Abd al-Fattah Mourou, and H'mida Ennaifer, three leaders who were inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.Footnote 27
This first mobilization, mainly led by Islamist actors (inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology), also included what we could call the “first generation of Salafis,” who were not in opposition to Maliki fiqh.Footnote 28 According to H'mida Ennaifer, one of the leaders of the al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya, “although Salafis affirm[ed] that they should think outside the juridical schools,” they considered fiqh “a matter for specialists,” and some of them accepted it insofar as they also were concerned with acquiring a holistic understanding of Islam.Footnote 29 In 1981 the al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya became a party, the Harakat al-Ittijah al-Islami (Islamic Tendency Movement, the precursor of the Ennahdha party). This transformation was marked by a number of militants refusing the political institutionalization of the movement, as they were against any form of compromise with the authoritarian regime. Thus, in 1986 this first generation of purists created the Tunisian Islamic Front, al-Jabha al-Islamiyya. As acknowledged by its members, this group has maintained a positive attitude toward Malikism to the present.Footnote 30 As Rafiq al-‘Ouni, an historic leader of al-Jabha al-Islamiyya and founder of the Salafi party Jabhat al-Islah in 2011, reports, “all ijtiḥād [interpretative effort] in the framework of Islam and Islamic culture is acceptable and beneficial. As far as Imam Malik is concerned, we respect this madhhab and we take from it all that is beneficial for the Islamic community [al-Umma al-Islāmiyya].”Footnote 31 Moreover, Muhammad ‘Ali Harrath, another al-Jabha al-Islamiyya leader, said that Salafis considered the madhhab of Imam Malik their principal reference.Footnote 32 Some scholars designated this current as Maliki Salafis.Footnote 33 According to Abdelmajid Charfi, president of the Bayt al-Hikma Foundation (the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts), this current of Tunisian Salafism is very specific, “insofar as it inscribes its discourse into Malikism.”Footnote 34 This current, which exists in Tunisia to this day, was however to be sidelined in the 1990s–2000s by a new generation of Salafis opposed to Malikism and law schools in general.
In the 1990s–2000s, a new generation of Salafis more in line with Levantine Salafism and Saudi Wahhabism emerged in Tunisia and established some distance from the Islamist movement, Ennahda.Footnote 35 The appeal of these Salafis stemmed largely from the monopoly exerted by the state on religion and the perceived religious void this created, which Salafi sympathizers were able to take advantage of.Footnote 36 As Kamel Marzouqi, a rising Salafi figure at the time, explains, the Zaytuna Theology University, the center and symbol of Maliki Tunisian Islam, “was completely monopolized by the ‘RCDists’ [members of the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique, the former party in power].”Footnote 37 There was in practice no religious instruction outside of it, with the exception of the state-controlled Rabita Qur'anyyia and the Associations for the Safeguard of the Qur'an, respectively created in the 1960s and 1970s under Bourguiba's regime. Consequently, the domestication of Islam by the authoritarian state, the so-called Islam of State, favored, as a reaction, the birth of a new Salafi generation drawing its references from scholars located in Egypt, Syria, and the Arabian Peninsula. As Muhammad Khouja, former president of Hizb Jabhat al-Islah (the Reform Front Party) and an historic Salafi figure who observed the emergence of this new Salafi generation puts it, “the youth did not find good references in Tunisia, so they looked toward the Orient [the Middle East].”Footnote 38 According to Kamel Marzouqi “many young people were thirsty for religious instruction and started to look for any source available.”Footnote 39 Salafi satellite channels broadcasting from Saudi Arabia and Egypt were the only available source of religious education and played a major role in the socialization of Salafi norms among youth.Footnote 40 In parallel, new religious seekers organized themselves in small communities of people gathering in private houses, reflecting on religious topics and seeking to further their religious knowledge.Footnote 41 Private teaching associations also emerged to respond to the new demand, often led by self-taught religious teachers who contributed to the coalescence of a marginal religious community by the end of the 2000s.Footnote 42 One case in point was the online portal launched in 2002 by Kamel Marzouqi, among the very first Salafi scholars to propose private religious instruction, which was followed by 500 students.Footnote 43 Another Salafi institute was the Ibn Massoud school, which mostly taught the Qur'an and tajwīd (Qur'anic recitation) before the revolution and was reopened in September 2012 as the Imam Malik Association.Footnote 44 Consequently, by the turn of the new millennium, Salafism had already become infused within Tunisian society, albeit forced to remain discreet and not clearly distinguished among different trends.Footnote 45
In contrast with the previous Salafi generation that had been socialized in the Tunisian context, this new generation drew its doctrinal positions mainly from Salafi and Wahhabi shaykhs in Egypt and the Gulf who condemned religious practices that were pervasive in Tunisia, such as Sufism, saint worship and, in the realm of jurisprudence, Malikism. The Salafi rejection of law schools has a long intellectual history. In the Middle Ages, the institutionalization of the four Sunni schools of law (Malikism, Shafi`ism, Hanafism, and Hanbalism) had solidified the consensus of the Sunni community around a closed corpus of interpretations of the sacred texts. This effectively meant the closure of the door of ijtihād (interpretation) outside of these established schools in about 900 A.D.Footnote 46 As Joseph Schacht explains, “This closing of the door of ijtihad, as it was called, amounted to the demand for taqlid.”Footnote 47 In other words, one had to choose one school of law or at least locate one's religious practice within the limits of this quadrilateral jurisprudential space. Although the closure of the doors of ijtihād and the obligation of taqlīd is an “unsupported historical claim” according to Khaled Abou El Fadl,Footnote 48 what interests us here—beyond historical accuracy, which is for specialists to determine—is that Ibn Taymiyya and the Salafis relied on this narrative. Three centuries later, indeed, the jurist and theologian Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) forcefully “rejected this consensus of jurists and relocated it to the Prophet's Companions, al-Salaf al-salih [the pious Ancestors].”Footnote 49 By doing so, Ibn Taymiyya reopened the door of ijtihād, which he argued should be performed based on the example of the salaf, and on that basis only. In his view, this would remedy the dissent on matters of religion, law, and government that resulted from the multiplication of juridical schools. With this unprecedented argument, Ibn Taymiyya “initiated what has become the hallmark among adherents of the modern salafiyya, namely to refuse to identify with a school of law and to insist on following only al-Salaf.”Footnote 50 His student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292–1350) similarly rejected both the maḏāhib and their taqlῑd.Footnote 51
Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim's position has had a major influence on contemporary Salafism, including Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and the Ahl-e Hadith in India.Footnote 52 In particular, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim laid the basis for a current that would later came to be known as lā madhabiyya (no school).Footnote 53 One major proponent of this current was the Yemeni Muhammad al-Shawkani (1759–1839), one of the founders of Ahl-e Hadith, who “argued that all four existing schools of Sunni jurisprudence had deviated from the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.”Footnote 54 Other thinkers such as Khayr al-Din Nuʿman al-Alusi (1836–99) also combined lā maḏhabiyya with Taymiyyan theology.Footnote 55 The most recent and perhaps most influential Salafi scholar of the lā madhabiyya trend was, however, Muhammad Nasr al-Din al-Albani (1914–99), a famous Albanian muḥadῑṯh (traditionist, expert of the hadith) who taught in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordan. As Frank Griffel explains, “Al-Albānī's position within the contemporary salafiyya movement is so strong and his decisions so revered that the lā madhabiyya attitude which he initially represented almost turned into a fifth legal madhab in Sunni Islam,”Footnote 56 in continuity with the madhab al-salaf proposed by Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim.Footnote 57 Al-Albani severely criticized Saudi Wahhabism for being too embedded in Hanbali fiqh and blindly imitating this legal school, although in theory Wahhabis advocate ijtihād.Footnote 58 Accordingly, contemporary Salafism may correspond to one of three attitudes: the lā madhabiyya approach (al-Albani), the Hanbali Wahhabis, or a combination of the two.Footnote 59 Overall, Salafis contend that law schools did not exist at the time of the Prophet, and therefore that the Qur'an, the hadith, and the consensus of the salaf have precedence over all other sources of religious normativity.Footnote 60
In Tunisia, the lā madhabiyya tradition translated into a rejection of the official school of Malikism by the second generation of Salafis. The absence of free religious curriculum in Tunisia, which escaped the direct monitoring of the state, coupled with oriental Salafism's rejection of taqlῑd created the conditions for Salafi hostility toward the state-monitored Maliki ‘ulama’ of the Zaytuna. In Tunisia, the rejection of taqlῑd was both an ideological and a political stance in times of authoritarian secularism.
Today, however, we put forth the hypothesis that a fourth trend is emerging, namely an abutment of Salafism on Malikism, similar to the way Wahhabi Salafism developed primarily on Hanbali foundations. As shown in the following pages, Tunisian Salafism is reassessing its lā madhabiyya position and moderating its rejection of taqlῑd, moving toward an acceptance of the Maliki juridical school. This evolution is contingent on the turbulent postrevolutionary Tunisian context.
Salafism and Malikism in Tunisia After 2011
After the 2010–11 revolution, a third generation of Salafi actors entered the public space in Tunisia, following a new wave of Islamic revivalism that was reminiscent of the 1970s. This new Salafi sahwa (revival) first appeared as a broad, spontaneous, and unstructured phenomenon in the aftermath of regime change and the liberalization of the religious space, left largely uncontrolled by the state during the first two years of the revolution.Footnote 61
With the fall of Ben Ali's authoritarian regime, the dimension and characteristics of the religious sphere changed dramatically. Evolving from a quietist religiosity solely concerned with individual behavior, Salafism became active and open to social and political activism. It took the shape of a semi-institutionalized system of scholar-leaders and Salafi figures who acted in different arenas, ranging from the radical (social contestation) to the scholastic (religious teaching associations) to the political (parties).Footnote 62 If Islamist activists enjoyed a hegemony on party politics through the Ennahdha party, Salafis mainly occupied the space of radical contention and religious teaching (formal and informal), especially among the newly Islamized revolutionary youth.Footnote 63 New Salafi religious teachers came from abroad (particularly Egypt, Syria, Mauritania, and Saudi Arabia), whereas the improvised “homemade” transmitters of religious knowledge of the previous period became activist shaykhs.Footnote 64 Between 2011 and 2013, at the peak of Salafi militancy, a league of religious scholars and preachers called Rabita Tunisiyya li-l-Jami'iyat al-Islamiyya (the Tunisian League of Islamic Associations) was created under the leadership of Mokhtar Jibeli (president), Bechir Ben Hassen (vice president), and Kamel Marzouqi (spiritual mentor).Footnote 65 For a while, this league became the formal institution of a religious public, oscillating between quietist and activist poles. Although this association is now inactive, we see its leading figures appearing regularly on the Tunisian Islamic channel al-Insan TV, which invites both Salafi scholars and ‘ulama’ with a more traditional Maliki formation such as Farid El Beji and ‘Umar ibn ‘Umar.Footnote 66
Stemming from this renewed Salafi milieu, the Salafi-Jihadi current emerged in postrevolutionary Tunisia. At first Salafi-Jihadis often shared teaching spaces with other Salafis, as was the case at the Imam Malik University where, according to its secretary general, many students had Jihadi sympathies and a separate Salafi-Jihadi current came into being following the creation of Ansar al-Shari‘a in April 2011.Footnote 67 The latter was a radical social movement opposed to the regime and the democratization process. In addition to relying on an ideologically distinct literature (of the Salafi-Jihadi theoreticians Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qutada al-Filastini), Salafi-Jihadis structured a new trend characterized by its stark opposition to any form of institutional participation that would lead to compromise with the emerging liberal-democratic political system. This explains why they could not rely on any shaykh or charismatic figure except those who directly participated in or supported previous armed jihads (in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, or Iraq), such as Abu Iyad al-Tunisi, a Jihadi veteran who participated in the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud in 2011 before being jailed in Tunisia in 2003.Footnote 68 Salafi-Jihadis also rejected official Maliki ‘ulama’, whom they viewed as both religiously deviant and politically subservient to the impious regime in place. In 2012, a specific council of shaykhs was created to channel this “revolutionary enthusiasm.”Footnote 69 These shaykhs—Khatib al-Idrissi, Abu Zubahir, Muhammad al-Khalif, Muhammad Abu Bakr, Khamis al-Majri, Abu ‘Abdallah, and Abu Iyad—constituted the main religious references of the Salafi-Jihadi public. Among them, Abu Iyad was the initiator of the Salafi-Jihadi organization Ansar al-Shari‘a (AST), which by 2013 had attracted the sympathy (or the direct militancy) of most of the Salafi public.Footnote 70 Shaykh Khatib al-Idrissi, considered to be the “shaykh of the Jihadis,” however, opposed any form of organization and later distanced himself from AST with a small group of dissident Salafi-Jihadis.Footnote 71 After August 2013, when Ansar al-Shari‘a was outlawed as a terrorist organization, the group imploded.Footnote 72 Although some leaders such as Seif Eddine al-Rais, Sami Essid, and Hassen el-Brik maintained a nonviolent approach, repression led to the radicalization of large swaths of the Salafi-Jihadi movement, who either joined jihadi fronts abroad (such as Abu Iyad in Libya and Kamel Zarrouk in Syria) or the Tunisia-based fighting group Uqba ibn Nafiʿ.Footnote 73 Violence in the country was tamped down for two years but resurfaced forcefully with the Bardo National Museum attack in March 2015, the Sousse beach attack in June 2015, the attack on presidential guard personnel in Tunis in November 2015, and an attempt to take over the town of Ben Gardane on the Libyan border in March 2016. Simultaneously, the state arrested hundreds of Jihadis, and 16,000 individuals were prevented from leaving the country for jihad between 2014–16, according to government sources.Footnote 74 Today, Salafi-Jihadis have lost their popular appeal and remain at the margin.
Those who have renounced violence constitute a pool of possible recruits for non-Jihadi Salafis, and in particular for two tendencies: the scientific or scripturalist (ʿilmī) and the political (siyasī).Footnote 75 Scientific Salafism can in turn be split into two subcategories: scholastic and quietist. The above-mentioned shaykhs, Bechir Ben Hassen, Kamel Marzouqi, and Mokhtar Jibeli, are the most recognizable scholastic Salafis in the Tunisian public sphere. They focus on religious teaching and learning, although they are not opposed to social activism and can join or create networks of associations to achieve their objectives (such as the aforementioned league). However, some tension with the most activist orientation of this trend, embodied by Jibeli, may appear. This was the case, for instance, on the issue of the radical Salafi youths Jibeli wanted to integrate into a large Salafi front alongside scholastic and political Salafis, which Marzouqi and Ben Hassan refused.Footnote 76 In contrast with this scholastic-activist current, the so-called madkhalī current (that is, the followers of Saudi shaykh Rabiʿ al-Madkhali) embodies a quietist trend that refuses any form of organization, activism, or opposition to the state. For this reason, and because they remain a marginal group with little coordination and no leading shaykh at present, it is more difficult to identify them. They are found in some mosques in al-Mourouj (the southeast suburbs of Tunis), such as the al-Fawz mosque in Mourouj 5.Footnote 77 They usually claim to operate outside law schools, although in practice they tend to follow the Hanbali maddhab favored by official Wahhabi shaykhs.Footnote 78
Finally, we find the proper political Salafis, those who formally legalized Salafist political engagement after the fall of the regime. Although several Salafi parties tried their electoral chances after 2011,Footnote 79 the main representative of this trend was Jabhat al-Islah, stemming from the al-Jabha al-Islamiyya, which did not refuse Malikism.Footnote 80 Less concerned with religious learning and matters of law schools than scholastic Salafis, they nevertheless played an important role in mediating between the nonpolitical Salafis and the official Islamist political establishment (Ennahdha). In the period between 2011 and 2013 they endeavored to channel the mass of radical Salafis into their party.Footnote 81 Ennahdha also exploited this party to maintain a channel of communication with the radical Salafis, until mid-2013. The party finally grew distant from Ennahdha and converged toward new, oppositional political experiences during the 2019 elections.Footnote 82 Their electoral failures in 2011 and 2014, their low appeal in the Salafi community, the dislocation of their Salafi base following the repressive turn, as well as their inability to get out of Ennahdha's shadow caused the near disappearance of this political Salafi trend after the 2014 elections.Footnote 83
The 2013–2014 Turning Point: Securitization and Domestication of the Religious Field
In 2013, the assassination of two prominent Tunisian politicians (Chokri Belaid and Muhammad Brahmi) by a Jihadi commando allegedly linked to Ansar al-Shari‘a triggered a severe political crisis that brought criticism of Ennahda's leniency vis-à-vis Salafis to a climax.Footnote 84 On 27 August 2013, Prime Minister `Ali Larayedh listed Ansar al-Shari‘a as a terrorist organization, before Ennahdha was forced to relinquish power to a technocratic government to preserve the stability of the country and secure its survival in the precarious political situation.Footnote 85
Once the new constitution was adopted in January 2014 and Ennahdha stepped down from power, the newly established technocratic government led by Mehdi Jomaa (January 2014–February 2015) launched a large security campaign targeting Salafi teaching and preaching activities (e.g., daʿwa tents of Ansar al-Shari‘a in marginalized neighborhoods, but also charitable activities with a religious orientation).Footnote 86 In June 2014, the Ministry of Religious Affairs declared that 90 out of 5,100 mosques still escaped control of the government and later dismissed “radical” imams such as Bechir Ben Hassan in July 2015 and Ridha Jawadi in September 2015. The Jomaa government, followed by the Habib Essid government (February 2015–August 2016), also clamped down on Salafi associations and schools for charges of illicit foreign funding or terrorism in the framework of a “normalization” campaign.Footnote 87
The aim of this repressive turn was twofold: one, the eradication of dubious Salafi activists who challenged the state and, second, the (re-)regulation of the religious field.Footnote 88 New legal measures undertaken by the Jomaa government established transparency and control over religious associations to overcome the deficiencies and loopholes of the 2011 decree.Footnote 89 According to ‘Ali Amira, the General Director of Associations and Political Parties at the Presidency of the Government between 2014 and 2017, “the decree-law on associations, enacted immediately after the revolution, is too vague, since it gave too much freedom to all Tunisians wishing to create an association. . . . We have to better clarify certain aspects concerning the associative life, otherwise, we are going to lose control, especially over Salafi associations, their illicit funding and their link with terrorist groups.”Footnote 90 In 2014, 449 associations were sanctioned for failing to register the receipt of probable illicit foreign funding, 179 because their statute was not clear or breached the law (for example, charitable associations overstepped the legal statute by teaching the Qur'an), and 236 associations were closed due to their links with terrorist groups.Footnote 91 In accordance with these measures, three associative branches of the Imam Malik Association, respectively based in Nabeul, Soussa, and Bizerte, were closed, and the core association faced two closure attempts in 2015 and 2017, but won both hearings.Footnote 92
Interestingly, this crackdown has been accompanied by a campaign promoting “a moderate and Tunisian Islam.”Footnote 93 Indeed, parallel to the repressive campaign, a series of actions were taken to monitor the content of religious education. Governmental measures were instituted to check the educational background of teachers (who could no longer be recruited from abroad) and control the materials (such as books) used in support of religious studies.Footnote 94 In June 2014, Prime Minister Medhi Jomoa and Minister of Religious Affairs Mounir Tlili also announced the creation of a religious institute in Kairouan based on the Zaytuni teaching curriculum and supervised by the Zaytuna in coordination with the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The two officials based this initiative on article 42 of the constitution, which promotes “values of tolerance [and the] rejection of violence.”Footnote 95 They presented this as a way to contain the diffusion of Salafi ideology.Footnote 96 The Ministry of Religious Affairs also promoted the Rabita Qur'aniyya, the league of Qur'anic associations founded in Tunisia at the end of the 1960s, as the model of religious teaching for associations to emulate.Footnote 97 According to the vice director of the religious organization, “All our religious courses rely on the Zaytuni tradition, our source is a Tunisian Islam of Maliki inspiration.”Footnote 98 Overall, the state endeavored to promote a “moderate Tunisian” Islam derived from both the spirit of the new constitution as well as the specificity of traditional Tunisian Islam rooted in Malikism.Footnote 99
In fact, the Maliki rite is often cited by ‘ulama’, state officials, and outside observers as a key aspect of Tunisian religious tolerance, contrasting starkly with the Salafi version of Islam.Footnote 100 After 2011, the disconnect with the religious tradition of the country was often pointed out by scholars as the cause of the religious radicalization of the new generations. According to the researcher Raphaël Lefèvre, the rise of Salafism in the entire North African region following the Arab revolutions constituted “a symptom of the failure of ‘traditional’ or ‘official’ Islam built on the Maliki school of religious law.”Footnote 101 Consequently, addressing the postrevolutionary “Salafi surge” would entail addressing the “Maliki crisis” by “repositioning traditional Maliki teachings at the heart of North Africa's religious scene.”Footnote 102 On the side of religious actors, we observe a similar discourse. For example, the secretary general of the Rabita Qur'aniyya stated: “The specificity of Tunisia is that our Islam has a Maliki reference, so it is moderate, in contrast with Salafism.”Footnote 103 The emblematic status of the Zaytuna in this Tunisian Islam also is reasserted. According to an imam of the Association of Shari‘a Sciences in La Marsa, “our main reference is the Zaytuna university, as it represents the pillar of Tunisian Islam. This is for us inspirational, as a matter of fact its professors work with us.”Footnote 104
Interestingly, another actor contributed to the promotion of a moderate domestic Islam, namely the Islamist party Ennahdha. Although the old generation of Ennahda's militants had historically opposed the majority of Zaytuni ‘ulama’ (considered too passive regarding the secularist policies of the Bourguiba regime), after the revolution the Islamist party restored the Zaytuna mosque and university tradition as a positive heritage and proactively promoted the revival of its educational role as the guarantor of religious moderation.Footnote 105 The result of this reevaluation was the readoption of Tunisian custom prompted by the historical leaders, such as H'mida Ennaifer, one the most prominent figures linked to the Zaytuna mosque.Footnote 106 According to Ennaifer, “after the revolution, things evolved differently. There was this idea [among Islamists], following the rise of Wahhabism, . . . this willingness to promote [valoriser] this return to Malikism, because it seemed more tolerant, more open, more traditional.”Footnote 107
Reference to traditions ran parallel to the claim of a moderate Islam. As explicitly expressed in the conclusive statement of the 2012 Congress: “The Ennahda Party . . . believes it is a continuation of the Arab-Islamic reform movement of Khaireddine Ettounisi.”Footnote 108 Ettounisi (1822/23–90), taking inspiration from Ibn Khaldun's theories, put forward the concepts of freedom, equality, democracy, and individual rights in an Islamic language. According to the secretary general of the Tunis section of Daʿwa wa Islah, an association founded by Ennahda's activists after the 2012 Congress: “Our aim is to reform (islāḥ) Islamic thought and action by applying Islamic values to modern life, yet in tune with the religious traditions of the country.”Footnote 109
This repositioning of Ennahdha vis-à-vis the Zaytuni heritage stemmed directly from its strategy of integration and normalization in postrevolutionary politics. Indeed, seeking legitimacy in the new democratic landscape, the party progressively positioned itself as the keeper of a “national Islam” that was in tune with the constitutional principles set out in the 2014 charter.Footnote 110 The preamble to the constitution states that the Tunisian people are committed to “the teachings of Islam” (taʿlīm al-islām), which is an open and moderate Islam “inspired by the heritage of our civilization, . . . of our history, from our enlightened reformist movements that are based on the foundations of our Arab-Islamic identity.”Footnote 111 This formulation was preferred to the notion of shari‘a that Salafis wanted to enshrine in the constitution, but that Ennahdha had chosen to abandon as soon as March 2012.
The summer of 2013 actually marked a watershed for the transformation of the Islamist party, as Ennahda definitively divorced itself from the Salafist wing, abandoning the Islamic project of transformation of Tunisian society solicited in particular by the Salafi-Jihadi movement Ansar al-Shari‘a. Notably, Ennahda pushed forward its strategy of transformation into a post-Islamist party rooted in the Tunisian religious tradition to secure its acceptance by secular forces. This became particularly clear in 2016, when at its 10th congress Ennahdha announced its “specialization” (takhaṣuṣ) in politics, thus abandoning all religious activities as required by organic and constitutional law.Footnote 112 This measure eventually forged the Ennahda's moderation discourse during a legitimacy crisis. The Tunisian president himself, during the opening ceremony held in Radès, stated: “Ennahda has become a civil party and within our traditions Islam does not contradict democracy.”Footnote 113 Overall, after the political crisis of 2013, and in tune with the new “constitutional spirit,” Ennahdha contributed to rehabilitation of a domestic Islam, rooted in the Tunisian traditions, standing in opposition to Salafism.
With this broad contextual excursus as a background, in the following pages we will show how Salafi actors have recently adapted their religious categories to this context. Notably, we argue that the securitization campaign backed by the promotion of a moderate and domestic Islam in the official religious discourse created the conditions for the development of Salafi-Malikism. In a context in which the religious sphere became highly regulated and where this re-regulation saw the legitimization of broad strata of the political and civil society, including religious actors, residual Salafi actors increasingly adapted by reassessing their stance on Malikism. The adaptation to Malikism was the sine qua non condition for Salafis to be recognized as practicing an indigenous and moderate form of Islam and ultimately to preserve their preaching and teaching activities.
Salafi-Malikism: The Discourse of Jurisprudential Compromise
At first sight the adaptation of Salafism to Malikism and to a Tunisian nationalist identity may look paradoxical, first because the academic literature has pointed out that Salafis traditionally reject schools of law, and second because in Tunisia Salafis are routinely associated with Saudi Wahhabism. Critics of Salafism emphasize the latter point, contending that it brings to Tunisia a type of religious practice that is not suitable to the specific national traditions of the country.Footnote 114 By overcoming those obstacles and reacting to its religious nationalist critics, the shapers of Salafi-Malikism endeavor to demonstrate that Salafism and Malikism are not antagonistic. They frame a new discourse that allows Salafism to adapt to national circumstances and accept “Tunisification.” This is both a response to the official discourse described above emphasizing a Tunisian Islam, and indication of a willingness to integrate a Tunisian religious specificity. Three core arguments feature in the Salafi-Maliki discourse: (a) Malikism and Salafism are not in contradiction with each other; (b) the Zaytuni learning tradition also is a Salafi one; and (c) Salafism is not to be equated with Saudi Wahhabism.
This evolution is particularly salient in the discourse of the two main associations of scholastic Salafism, the Imam Malik University and the Imam Malik Association, both of which managed to survive the 2014 crackdown. We also rely on the discourse of grassroots Salafi militants as well as independent Salafi shaykhs such as Bechir Ben Hassen, whose speech at the Carthage presidential palace played a pioneering role in demonstrating the compatibility of Salafism and Malikism and thus constitutes a good starting point for analysis:
Unfortunately, some people think that the Salafi methodology is a new religion that is invading Tunisia. This is amazing! In the first place, this republic and these people are Muslim and those who brought Islam to them are the Prophet's companions. . . . Second, if we talk about the school of law, it is the school of the Imam Malik. Where is the Imam Malik coming from? From Madina; he doesn't come from Tunis or Kairouan but from the city of the Prophet. He . . . is among the pious ancestors and the Maliki school is at its origin a Salafi school. . . . We do not isolate the Salafi from the Maliki school, because Malik and the Malikis follow the Salafi method.Footnote 115
According to Ben Hassen, then, Salafism and Malikism are not antagonistic. Malik ibn Anas (the founding father of Malikism) used a Salafi method and was himself a salaf, therefore there is no contradiction in being simultaneously Salafi and Maliki. This statement finds confirmation in the declarations of other Salafis. For example, Hassine, a student of the Imam Malik Association, says that “We should not look at Malikism as being in contradiction with Salafism. Malik was a Salafi. To bring the two into opposition is a mistake.”Footnote 116
The Salafi-Maliki discourse also focuses on a shared Zaytuni tradition. By appropriating its heritage, in fact, Tunisian Salafis call for recognition as a part of the Tunisian religious fabric. “We see people who want to separate the Salafi method from the Zaytuni education system. And this also is a mistake. Why? Because we have imams in the history of Zaytuna who followed the Salafi methodology.”Footnote 117 In what way were they Salafis? In that “they fought the blameworthy practices of worshipping tombs and other practices contrary to the pure ṭawḥīd [Oneness of God].” Bechir Ben Hassen's statement is clear: There is no Zaytuni tradition that diverges from Salafism. Zaytuni shaykhs were Salafis and therefore contemporary Salafis should feel themselves to be legitimate repositories of their heritage.Footnote 118 Shaykh Kamel Marzouqi, president of Imam Malik University, reiterated the same point in a 2013 interview, asserting that “A Zaytuni tradition different from a Salafi one does not exist. The Zaytuni shaykhs, such as Tahar Ben Achour, were Salafis. We also adopt Malikism.”Footnote 119 Maliki fiqh thus occupies a central place in the teaching curriculum of both the Imam Malik Association and the University Imam Malik led by Marzouqi. One student described this latter association as a “Salafi ‘ilmī [scientific, scripturalist] school that embraces Malikism.”Footnote 120
This integration of Malikism and the Zaytuni tradition is not credible, however, without dissociation of Tunisian Salafism from Wahhabism. According to Bechir Ben Hassen, “associating so-called Wahhabism with Salafism is a mistake. . . . Salafism is not a jamaʿa [group], or a way of dressing, a trend or an ideology, but a methodology [manhaj].”Footnote 121 Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab in the context of this speech is a “son of the Arabian peninsula” and his relationship with Tunisia is described as merely “emotional.”Footnote 122 Salafis do not deny a natural link with Saudi Arabia, but they express it in terms of a natural relationship with the land where Islam originated; in so doing, they seek to downplay its implications for cultural and ideological influences. Shaykh Marzouqi told us: “We made an agreement with the University of Madina, where [the founding member] shaykh Shawat studied. . . . It is clear that we have ‘emotional relations’ with this country (our prophet was from there). . . . This is the country of all Muslims.”Footnote 123 Nevertheless, Salafis interviewed in Tunisia were keen on distinguishing historical Salafism from its contemporary Wahhabi version. For example, Houcem al-Ajmi, a teacher at the Imam Malik Association, explains that historical Salafism “means a Salafism that refers to the ‘aqīda (creed) in the way of the salaf al-ṣālīḥ (pious predecessors) before the formation of the four schools; before the split between Asharism and the muḥaddithūn (hadith specialists) of the 9th century. The other [contemporary] Salafism is that of Saudi Arabia, which refers to Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and Ibn Taymiyya.”Footnote 124 This resonates with Lauzière's account that in medieval times the original Salafi creed simply amounted to a Hanbali theology (rejection of rationalism and fideism) that could be combined with any of the four legal schools as long as it remained faithful to the method of the forefathers (the salaf).Footnote 125 By distancing themselves from Wahhabi Salafism, Salafis are able to claim a historical form of Salafism that was neither embedded in any school of law nor opposed to the schools in principle.
Salafi-Malikis also describe the reconsideration of Malikism as the product of societal pressure on Salafism, understood as the public delegitimization of Salafi beliefs and practices. According to Houcem al-Ajmi, many Salafis began to embrace Malikism because people accused them of seeking to impose religious practices that people were not accustomed to. Malikism “became the way to be integrated and accepted by Tunisian society,” he said.Footnote 126 This intervention occurred in a context in which the self-appellation “Salafi” had become a negative marker, eliciting high suspicion from both state and society, which many therefore chose to abandon or did not publicly disclose.Footnote 127 As a consequence, we observe a process of absorption of Malikism by Salafism, or a type of Salafism (partially) embedded in the Maliki school that claims to respect “Tunisian specificity.”Footnote 128 Salafis felt the need to accommodate the society around them, as had happened previously with the Ennahdha.Footnote 129
Bechir Ben Hassen's statements also are interesting because they are not addressed to non-Salafi critics only, but also to a Salafi public that is unconvinced about being Maliki and Salafi at the same time. “Many of the [Salafi] youth have a prejudice against Malikism because they saw how people [in the authoritarian regime] used it to deny the evidence of the [Qur'anic and prophetic] text [dalīl qaṭʿay].” Under certain conditions, however, it is acceptable to use Malikism, Ben Hassan contends: “Malik is a human like all humans. He can be wrong, so it is not necessary to imitate each of his ḥukm [judgments] in a blind way; each argument must be supported by a dalīl [textual proof] from the Qur'an and the sunna anyway.”Footnote 130 A former student of the Imam Malik Association put it this way: “Salafis are not against any particular madhab in principle, but against any extremism in the application of the madhhahīb that should not be considered sacred untouchable sources. The Salafis may take from the four schools if there is a clear dalīl for that in the tradition [sunna] of the Prophet.”Footnote 131 Salafi-Malikis formulate the conditions under which it is permissible to use Maliki sources; the latter cannot supersede the authority of the Qur'an and the hadith.
Convincing Salafis of this, however, was not an easy process. As Houcem al-Ajmi recalls, after the revolution “it was fashionable (à la mode) to be Salafi. . . . Once I was contacted by young people who came to me to obtain legal opinions; as soon as I referred to the Maliki school for a judgment they left after castigating my reference as a bidʿa [innovation]. Over time however, they changed their minds. Today they are reconsidering Malikism without preconceptions.”Footnote 132 This is confirmed by Muhammad Amin, director of the Imam Malik Association, for whom “the wave of scholars who wanted to take directly and exclusively from the ṣaḥāba [the Prophet's companions] has now passed. Those who still want to do it are not cultivated enough, whereas those who have knowledge of a specific school of law are more qualified. We however do not say that the madhab is one hundred percent right; only the Qur'an is one hundred percent right.”Footnote 133
Conclusion
In this article we have discussed the evolution of Tunisian Salafism according to the transformation of the political context. Notably, we investigated the adaptive strategies of the scholastic Salafi branch, the only visible expression of Salafism nowadays. Our main argument is that Salafism in Tunisia has been undergoing a process of Malikization—or Islamic Tunisification—to avoid being targeted as a form of religious extremism imported from the Gulf and ultimately to be allowed to operate within the renewed legal framework established after the 2013–14 campaign of religious securitization.
This recent evolution is of particular importance since contemporary Salafism generally argues against the very principle of Islamic schools (although Wahhabi Salafism tends to be embedded in Hanbalism) and claims the right to perform ijtiḥād (free interpretation). In contrast, Tunisian Salafis conceive their Maliki evolution to be in continuity with the medieval Salafi creed theoretically compatible with all juridical schools. In this understanding, Salafi-Malikism appears more as a manhaj (methodology) of looking for Prophetic proofs than as a fixed doctrine (‘aqīda) incompatible with fiqh codifications. Salafi-Malikism thus constitutes a genuine endeavor to anchor Salafism in the Tunisian soil; one that integrates the peculiarities of the Tunisian context (both in terms of state monitoring and religious tradition) while maintaining its specific method of establishing religious normativity through the example of the pious ancestors (al-salaf al-ṣālīḥ).
The accommodation of Malikism by Salafis should not be interpreted as a total theological overhaul of Salafism. The strict conditions under which Maliki jurisprudence can be used allow Salafis to maintain their theological methodology, which favors direct interpretation over reliance on secondary interpretation by the schools of law. Salafis may take juridical opinions in any of the four madhhahīb if they are backed by evidence in the Qur'an or the sunna (whereas groundless elements should be left aside).Footnote 134 This entails that the absorption of Malikism does not fundamentally change the nature of Salafism, which remains a theological approach that checks the validity of religious sources against the primal source of Islam, the salaf. Restricting Islam to one madhhab is thus still proscribed.Footnote 135 In other words, Salafis have not turned into Malikis. What is new is the permission and even encouragement to use Maliki jurisprudence, in contrast to the radical interpretations of canonical Salafis, who claim the right to interpret the sacred texts without the mediation of law schools. This constitutes a major evolution toward the Tunisification of Salafism, and religious nationalization.
