Throughout the 1970s, Tunisia experienced a popular Islamic revival which by 1978 had acquired a distinctly political tone. A group of young sheikhs who had met in 1970 in Tunis under the leadership of Rached el-Ghannouchi and published the Islamic review ‘El Maarifa’ (The Conscience) had coalesced into the Mouvement de la tendance islamique (MTI) and emerged as the bulwark of a political movement offering a strong challenge to the secular regime established by President Habib Bourguiba. The present article tells the story of the emergence of MTI in three stages, looking first at the dismantlement of the Tunisian Islamic elite and its institutions by a secularizing State in the course of the modernizing revolution initiated by Bourguiba in the years following independence; secondly at the emergence of the popular Islamic revival in the context of the political and socioeconomic disruptions faced by Tunisia in the late 1960s and early 1970s; and finally, at the politicization of the Islamic revival in the late 1970s and its implications in the light of increased opposition to Bourguiba’s authoritarian rule. Notes, ref.
