Free Republic

"The Muslim Brotherhood youth in Egypt reject any form of violence." So said Rachid Ghannouchi, who - you'll no doubt be stunned to hear - heads up the Muslim Brotherhood's Tunisian branch, Ennahda. Naturally, Ghannouchi gave his Egyptian confederates a clean bill of health while speaking as an invited guest of the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington. He is a master of the Brotherhood game, consulted by the State Department and a bipartisan Beltway clerisy ever on the hunt for that elusive "moderate Islamist." He is an Islamic supremacist who knows he can worm his way into Washington's heart...

counterrevolutions against Islamist rule in Egypt and Tunisia. The Muslim Brotherhood fell hard and fast in Egypt. In Tunisia it’s been more of a slow drawn out fight ... now the Arab Spring wellspring has fallen. A few days ago the New York Times was predicting that the Islamist Ennahda party would rebound and portraying them as the victims. So much for that. ... Ennahda isn’t as done as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, it could still climb back, but this is a severe blow to the political Islamists and their Western backers who hoped to propel them to power through...

A radical Tunisian sheik who has called for the murder of U.S. troops abroad and was banned from the United States for supporting the terror group Hamas is scheduled to headline an event on Tuesday at Yale University focusing ... Sheikh Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the head of Tunisia’s controversial Islamist Ennahda Movement. ... Al-Ghannouchi’s upcoming appearance at the Ivy League school could become controversial given the sheik’s longtime support for radical terror groups and his past calls for Muslims to wage “unceasing war against the Americans.” ... he praised Palestinian terrorism as “wonderful” and said that he admires rockets fired at...

Tunisia’s governing Islamist party, Ennahda, thrust into power by the Arab Spring, has agreed to step down after months of political wrangling with a hard-bargaining opposition. In three weeks, the Ennahda-led government is to hand over power to an independent caretaker government that will lead the country through elections in the spring. The deal comes as part of negotiations to restart Tunisia’s democratic transition after secular opposition groups, protesting the assassinations of two of their politicians, stalled work on a new constitution and an election law this summer. Since the assassination of a prominent leftist politician, Chokri Belaid, in February,...

A Tunisian court convicted on Thursday a rap artist for insulting police with a song calling them dogs and sentenced him to two years in prison, his lawyer said. … Yacoub’s song “Boulicia Kleb,” or “The Police Are Dogs,” was released on YouTube. He was originally tried and convicted in absentia for inciting violence against officials and insulting police back in March. He turned himself in and was retried, but given the same two-year sentence. …

The Tunisian Embassy says one of two men accused of plotting to derail a train in Canada is a Tunisian citizen. The embassy said Thursday that 30-year-old Chiheb Esseghaier came to Quebec in August 2008 and is registered at the Consulate of Tunisia in Montreal. …

The cradle of the Arab Spring is increasingly looking like the birthplace of jihadists. Long before Tunisia ousted its dictator and inspired the North African pro-democracy movement, the small, relatively prosperous country had the more dubious distinction of exporting Islamic militants. Now, as the country wrestles with the creation of a new government after the killing of a liberal opposition leader, experts say the flow of fighters is getting worse. The repressive measures of the old secular dictatorship fueled the anger that produced jihadi movements, but its ruthless security apparatus also kept them largely in check. The much more relaxed...

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid was buried as a martyr for freedom and democracy in a country that is threatened with the loss of both, as an uprising against the ruling Islamist party gained momentum. Mr. Belaid’s assassination triggered a ferocious backlash against the main Islamist party, Ennahda, one that continued during the funeral Friday, attended by as many as 100,000 people. The midafternoon funeral on Friday was a largely peaceful event marred by bouts of violence – and brief periods of panic – as crowds tried to outrun billowing clouds of tear gas aimed at demonstrators and looters on...

SNIPPET: "A radical Tunisian Islamist leader, denied an entry visa into the United States during the 1990s, is scheduled to make two appearances on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of Tunisia's Ennahda Party, will attend a forum on the Arab Spring at the Cannon Office Building, an announcement from the event's sponsor, the Muslim Public Affairs Council's (MPAC) said. He'll also attend a special dinner Tuesday evening. Ghannouchi's Ennahda Party recently won the majority in the first free parliamentary elections since the ouster of Tunisia's longtime ruler, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali." SNIPPET: "In a May interview with the...

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) -- A moderate, once-banned Islamist party in Tunisia is on track to win the largest number of seats in the first elections prompted by the Arab Spring uprisings, according to partial domestic results Tuesday. The Tunisian electoral commission said the Ennahda party has won 18 out of 44 domestic seats so far in a 217-member assembly meant to write a new constitution.

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisian authorities counted votes Monday in carefully watched elections, with early signs that a once-banned Islamist party is leading in many constituencies in the country that unleashed uprisings across the Arab world. Tunisia was known for decades for its repressive leadership but also for its progressive legislation on women and families, which secular-leaning Tunisians fear the moderate Islamist party Ennahda would roll back if it takes a commanding number of seats in the new assembly being created by Sunday's elections. Ennahda believes that Islam should be the reference point for the country's system and laws but...

AFP - Tunisia's Islamist movement Ennahda, banned under the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was toppled in January, has been legalised 30 years after it was formed, it announced Tuesday. "The Ennahda movement has just been legalised," spokesman Ali El-Aryadh told AFP. The interim government installed after Ben Ali's fall on January 14 after weeks of street protests granted unprecedented freedoms and allowed exiles to return despite the bans from the old regime. Ennahda (Awakening) leader Rached Ghannouchi returned on January 30 after nearly 20 years in exile, mostly in London, to be welcomed by thousands of...