(iPoster) The Political Thought of Rached Ghannouchi: In Search of Tolerance in Islam

• In Event: Poster Session: Foundations of Political Theory 2 (Historical) & Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Foundations of Political Theory 2 (Historical)

Abstract

Discourses about Islam gained a lot of attention in the Western world after the American hostage crisis during the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 and the infamous 9/11 attacks. Given the widespread influence of radical ideas that shaped modern Islamism in the latter half of the twentieth century and the impact that it created around the globe, it has become a part of the conventional wisdom that Islam as a political ideology is essentially incapable of charting a tolerant future within the nation-state system. As different influential radical thinkers espouse a rigid conception of sovereignty and a rejection of man-made laws, I ask: Can Islamic ideals fit into a framework of tolerance, harmony, and co-existence in the twenty-first century? In this paper, I analyze the political thought of Rached Ghannouchi, one of the co-founders of the Ennahda Party in Tunisia, to identify tolerant and nonviolent traditions in Islamic thought that reject violent paths and do not otherize people from different faiths by casting them as enemies.

Denouncing a politics of hostility, Ghannouchi embraces inclusion and peaceful co-existence as pillars of a tolerant society and state. Discarding the idea of a theocratic state, he argues for democratic traditions in Islamic countries to fight radical violence (Hearst, 2016). The rationale that Ghannouchi uses is not anti-religious or anti-Islamic; instead, he uses the term “Muslim Democrat” to describe himself (Ghannouchi, 2016).

I contend that Ghannouchi’s political thought demonstrates that adopting a Rawlsian (1971) “overlapping consensus” following Islamic tradition is possible and can help us locate tolerance and political harmony in Muslim societies and beyond. Finally, instead of being fixated on essentialist arguments that Islamic ideals are incompatible with tolerance or co-existence, I call for an understanding that there are rays of hope within the Islamic framework that offer distinct perspectives on justice, human rights, and freedom.

Author

• Mohammad Rezwanul Haque Masud, University of Colorado, Boulder