Critical Studies on Terrorism

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The limit-experience and self-deradicalisation: the

example of radical Salafi youth in Tunisia

Aitemad Muhanna-Matar

To cite this article: Aitemad Muhanna-Matar (2017): The limit-experience and self-
deradicalisation: the example of radical Salafi youth in Tunisia, Critical Studies on Terrorism, DOI:
10.1080/17539153.2017.1304747

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CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM, 2017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2017.1304747

The limit-experience and self-deradicalisation: the example

of radical Salafi youth in Tunisia
Aitemad Muhanna-Matar
Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, UK

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article gives an example of self-deradicalisation from Tunisia. Tunisia; Salafi youth; radical
It addresses the potential of radicalised individuals to de-radicalise identity; critique;
themselves from within the Salafi doctrine with no external inter- limit-experience; freedom;
ventions, in comparison with the state’s religious rehabilitation self-deradicalisation
approaches to tackling radicalism which not only fail but are also
counterproductive. Deradicalisation could, of course, involve a
more comprehensive rejection of Salafi ideology. This article sug-
gests that an effective type of deradicalisation that is more likely
to make the desired change possible is one in which there is a
gradual modification of some attitudes and behaviours without
abandoning the whole underpinning Salafi ideology. Referring to
the personal narratives of 28 individual Tunisian Salafis, the article
identifies phases of radicalisation and deradicalisation as the indi-
vidual voluntarily moves from embracing radical ideology to a
more critical understanding and practice reflecting on personal
and interpersonal experiences of being radicalised. The research
shows that the process of self-deradicalisation is reflective of Salafi
youth experience of engagement with radicalism and is more
likely to happen in societies that allow political expression and
individual freedom that invoke individuals’ critical thinking.

Introduction
Despite the vast multidisciplinary literature investigating strategies of deradicalising
Muslim youth who adopt a Jihadi Salafi doctrine, including sympathisers and perpetra-
tors of violent actions, there is little empirical evidence about the actual experiences of
radical Salafis or Jihadis, and up to what point in their radicalisation they would have the
potential to deradicalise (Paul 2012; Schmid 2013; Aroun 2015). There is also little
research on deradicalisation employing ethnographic engagement with those radical
Salafis or Jihadis who are not captured by security forces or targeted by state deradica-
lisation programmes (Stump and Dixit 2013; Feddes and Gallucci 2015). Most literature
on deradicalisation focuses on assessing the effectiveness of state-led rehabilitation
programmes, the targets of which are mostly detainees accused of sympathising with,
or engagement in, terrorism (Tore and Horgan 2008; Seifert 2010; Nesser 2010; Venhaus

CONTACT Aitemad Muhanna-Matar [email protected]

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 A. MUHANNA-MATAR

2010; Schmid 2013; Sukabdi 2015). Regardless of evidence that shows that ideology, or
the religion of Islam, is not the most important factor in radicalisation (Tore and Horgan
2008; Kundnani 2015), most government interventions aimed at deradicalisation are
underpinned by a generalised assumption that Muslim radicals are basically driven by an
extremist ideology that legitimises violence. Thus, the state has to fulfil its moral
responsibility to rehabilitate, or correct, the ethical constitution of its citizens’ identity
by changing extremist Islamic ideological beliefs and behaviours to make them compa-
tible with the state’s moral principles (Aggarwal 2013; Clubb 2015; Elshimi 2015).
The religious rehabilitation approach to deradicalisation used in most Western and
non-Western countries is problematic and has not proven effective. It aims to correct the
mindset of radicals through replacing their absolutist Salafi/Jihadi ideology with an
absolutist secular liberal ideology. It also has not succeeded in identifying the particular
moments, events or encounters experienced during the process of radicalisation that
may induce individuals to firstly rethink their radical identity or particular aspects of it
and secondly shift from one attitudinal, behavioural and relational disposition to
another. The shift from one disposition to another is arguably not comprehensive, linear
or entrenched. It is part of a process of “problematisation”, through which, according to
Michel Foucault, a person asks him/herself “how and why certain things (behaviour,
phenomena, processes) became a problem” (Foucault 2001, 171).
In this article, I attempt to challenge the state-led religious rehabilitation approach to
deradicalisation by exploring a new model of deradicalisation from within the Salafi/
Jihadi doctrine. This research aims to examine the particular experience of Salafis in
Tunisia and how their engagement with Salafism and Jihadism may contribute to
changing their preferences, priorities, attitudes and practices of Salafism, and to deradi-
calising themselves. The research purposively targets individual Salafis who shifted from
being radical – belonging to, or supporting, Jihadi-Salafi groups – to being pragmatic or
reformist – that is, adopting a reformist interpretation of Salafism that denounces
violence and supports political engagement. The research analysis and findings are
drawn from an ethnographic engagement with a group of 28 Salafi youth who volunta-
rily went through an experience of both radicalisation and deradicalisation without
being a target of state-led religious rehabilitation programmes. However, the findings
of this research should not be generalised as representative of all Salafis in Tunisia and
worldwide.
The article begins with a historical contextualisation of radicalisation in the form of
Salafism in Tunisia, providing background about the historical context that contributes
to shaping a radical identity and triggering self-radicalisation. Next, it will discuss the
analytical framing of self-deradicalisation by applying Foucault’s concepts of “critique”
and “limit-experience”. This is followed by a description of the research methodology
and its ethical consideration. Finally, the article will discuss and analyse the process of
radicalisation and deradicalisation, as narrated by research participants.

The historical context of radicalisation in a form of Salafism in Tunisia

Salafism in Tunisia, as in other countries, is not static. It changes, whether through the
transformation of ideas or through intellectual, political and social practices (Abu
Rumman 2014). Salafism is broadly defined as an intellectual current in Sunni Islam
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM 3

which calls for a return to the political and moral practice of the first Muslims, in
particular, the “righteous ancestors” known as al-Salaf al-Salih, more specifically, the
Prophet Muhammad and his companions (Kepel 2005; Meijer 2009). However, the
application of this ideology throughout the world varies due to the different socio-
economic, political and cultural contexts within which Salafis work, and due to differ-
ences in individuals’ particular experience of engagement with Salafism and the differ-
ent preferences it creates (Wiktorowicz 2005; Hegghammer 2009).
Tunisia has been home to growing radicalisation through the rise of the Salafi-Jihadi
movement since the fall of former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.
Although Salafism in Tunisia has historically been influenced by the broader doctrinal
definition of Salafi ideology linked to Wahhabism1 (the Saudi version of Salafism), its
specific definition is linked to the history of the Islamist movement in Tunisia. For
example, Tunisian Salafis comprise religiously ultra-conservative individuals who split
from the Movement of Islamic Tendency (MIT), present-day Ennahda, in the 1980s, and
have positioned themselves to the right of Ennahda in terms of their social and political
agenda (Marks 2012). Both the MIT and the Salafis were repressed and exiled by the Ben-
Ali regime in the 1990s and 2000s, and thus were largely isolated from social, political
and religious activism in Tunisia (Mabrouk 2012; Marks 2012; Merone and Cavatorta
2012; Wolf 2013a; Layachi 2013). The 2011 Tunisian Uprising and subsequent departure
of the oppressive Ben-Ali regime provided an opportunity for Islamists in general to re-
emerge and become visible and increasingly popular in Tunisia’s sociopolitical scene.
Salafis in particular thrived due to the government’s offer to Salafi leaders of amnesty
from prisons, and the return of Salafi Sheikhs from exile shortly after the fall of the Ben-
Ali regime.2 Those Salafi leaders spread in many Tunisian mosques to promulgate their
thoughts and they attracted a large number of young Tunisians, particularly in the two
years immediately after the Uprising (International Crisis Group (ICG) 2013).
Salafis in Tunisia are broadly divided into two major currents (Merone and Cavatorta
2012; Marks 2012). The first, Salafiyya elmiyya or scripturalist Salafis, rejects the use of
violence and focuses on preaching a pure version of Islam. Even within this subset,
however, differences exist. Most scripturalist Salafis are apolitical, but recently some
leaders, particularly older ones, realised that remaining outside formal politics would
lead to further isolation. Determined to meet their ultimate goal of establishing an
Islamic state, they decided to engage in formal politics (International Crisis Group (ICG)
2013, Merone and Cavatorta 2012). The second major group of Tunisian Salafis is Jihadi-
Salafis, represented by Ansar al-Sharia (AS)3 (Merone 2013; Haj-Salem 2014), which was
established in April 2011. The Tunisian government banned it in August 2013 because it
was accused of undertaking violent attacks, such as the September 2012 attack on the
US embassy in Tunis, and several other domestic attacks against Tunisians (International
Crisis Group (ICG) 2013). Jihadis in Tunisia reject political participation and consider it
kufr (blasphemy). Instead, they believe that Muslims in Tunisia have a religious obliga-
tion to engage in Jihad in order to build their Caliphate, or Islamic state (International
Crisis Group (ICG) 2013).
Despite the heterogeneous composition of Tunisia’s Salafi movement, Salafis are still
broadly perceived by secular liberal elites as a homogeneous group whose ideology
legitimising the use of violence is a major threat to Tunisia (Cavatorta 2015). Tunisian
secular elites’ fear of Salafis has been linked to the contemporary history of Tunisia since
4 A. MUHANNA-MATAR

national independence in 1956. Habib Bourguiba, the first Tunisian president, pursued a
secular modernist and socialist model of governing, in which religion was pushed out of
politics and considered primarily a private affair. He closed many mosques, prohibited the
wearing of the veil in public institutions, and undermined the power and authority of
ulama (religious scholars) to have a say in politics (Moore 1988). Zine El Abidine Ben-Ali,
who ruled Tunisia between 1987 and 2011, followed the same ideological and political
path as his predecessor. He controlled all society institutions, including the mosques,
banned the hijab in public and state institutions, and repressed and exiled most Islamist
leaders in the name of the modernisation of Tunisian society (Charrad 2007).
After the Tunisian Uprising and the establishment of a government coalition led by
the Ennahda moderate Islamist party, which was victorious in the parliamentary election
of 2011, secular liberal and neoliberal opposition parties, civil society organisations and
the General Labour Union in Tunisia fought together against the Ennahda-led govern-
ment, accusing it of being supportive of Salafis. These organisations played an important
role in forcing the resignation of the Ennahda-led government coalition (Troika) by
calling for several public protests in late 2013.4 In January 2014, a technocratic new
government was established through which the politics of fear associated with the
“national security state” model has become the dominant political discourse in Tunisia.
The new government went back to the 2003 anti-terror law used by Ben-Ali and
developed it further to restrict the freedom of Salafis, including both violent and non-
violent groups. It led to the imprisonment of thousands of individuals (1500 in the year
2014 alone) alleged to be involved in terrorism. These arrests appear to point in the
direction of a continued policy of criminalising individuals and communities, and of
using exceptional measures against violent and non-violent Salafis. In addition, in early
2014, the government decided to suspend, without due process, 157 non-governmental
religious associations, as well as several mosques, for alleged links to terrorism (Mullin
and Roubah 2014; Jamaoui 2015).
The secular Nidaa Tunis “Call of Tunisia” party5-led government that took power after
winning the October 2014 elections has intensified security operations against Salafi
groups. More than 880 suspected militants have been arrested since the government
took office in February 2015. In July 2015, the Tunisian Parliament approved a new anti-
terror bill allowing authorities to detain terror suspects for up to 15 days without access
to a lawyer.6 This has been associated with launching a programme of religious rehabi-
litation which aims to ideologically reform and rehabilitate suspects arrested in terror-
ism-related cases. This programme is managed by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which
had control over almost all mosques in Tunisia by late 2015. The Ministry appointed
authorised clerics and imams to be responsible for religious rehabilitation, including
provision of recorded sermons and religious seminars for the programme’s website and
the regular supervision of classes and sermons in mosques (Reidy 2015; Petre 2015). The
implication is that Tunisian individuals have no right to think of their religious identity
and its codes of conduct outside the control of religious authority.
In such a tense and hostile political atmosphere against Salafis, I conducted my field
research from April 2014 to March 2015. According to my field research observation, Salafis
have gradually become hidden from the public space, including those who used to be
involved in charity and civil society organisations. Some of those I interviewed during their
activism with charity and da’wa (propagation) organisations in early 2014 were not available
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM 5

during my field research visits of August and December the same year. Some of their
organisations were closed or suspended, following the government’s anti-terror policies.
Some others stopped their work in community organisations, fearing continual interrogation
and pursuit by security forces. da’wa activities through charity organisations and mosques
have almost been eliminated. Salafis have become reluctant to meet journalists or researchers,
and when they do, so they are very careful of what they say. Those I interviewed refused to
define themselves as Salafis in the first interview.

Analytical framework: state-led religious rehabilitation approach to

deradicalisation vis-à-vis self-deradicalisation
Deradicalisation research has given great emphasis to assessing the effectiveness of a
state-led religious rehabilitation approach to deradicalisation through authorised Islamic
clerics and scholars (Gunaratna 2009; Seifert 2010; Wanger 2010; Gunaratna, Jerard, and
Rubin 2011; Aggarwal 2013; Rom 2013; Sukabdi 2015; Jarvis and Lister 2015; Baker-Beall,
Heath-Kelly, and Jarvis 2015). This approach aims, as stated by Gunaratna (2009), to
“unlock the mind of a detainee or an inmate”, based on the assumption that Islamic
clerics have “the understanding, knowledge and authority to correct the Islamic mis-
conceptions a terrorist believes to be true” (150). This approach to deradicalisation
draws upon a generalised assumption that radicalisation occurs when unauthorised
extremist Sheikhs lock the minds of Muslim youth with their version of Islam. Thus,
their minds need to be unlocked by Islamic clerics authorised by governments to correct
youth’s understanding of Islam.
This dynamic of religious rehabilitation portrays radical youth as docile and unknowing
subjects who are incapable of thinking and acting rationally. This appears to contradict the
evidence that in many cases, youth radicalisation is a rational act referring to a well-defined
political goal (Mamdani 2005; Gunning and Jackson 2011; Aggarwal 2013). It also contra-
dicts the fact that radical Muslims, violent and non-violent, are not cognitively and socially
vulnerable, and that a large number of them are well educated (Abbas 2007). State-led
rehabilitation programmes also do not recognise the capacity of radical youth to reconcile
their multiple identities (Bartlett and Miller 2012), or to be critical of the different identities
they have experienced. Rather, they operate as a mode of governing, through which all
individuals rely on one machinery of thought and practice, including their understanding of
religion, in a way that does not threaten the status quo (Lindekilde 2012; Aggarwal 2013;
Elshimi 2015; Clubb 2015). Therefore, measures of deradicalisation through religious reha-
bilitation focus mainly on demolishing “the poisonous extremist Islamist ideology” that has
awoken young Muslims to revolt against the political establishment. Such an approach to
deradicalisation discounts any need to modify the political establishment by responding to
the actual socio-economic, political, and cultural grievances of radical Muslims. This is one
important reason why the top-down religious rehabilitation approach, with its restriction on
Muslims’ freedom of expression, particularly in Western countries (Paul 2012; Samti 2015;
Dunne and Williamson 2014; Lindekilde 2012), has been counterproductive (Thomas 2012).
This research challenges the state-led religious rehabilitation programmes that
attempt “to instil discipline and self-governance to render subjects obedient to the
state” (Aggarwal 2013, 272), and provide empirical evidence of self-deradicalisation
that is critical of both state and Jihadi machinery of thoughts and practices. Self-
6 A. MUHANNA-MATAR

deradicalisation in this research relies basically on individuals’ capacity to be critical of

their radical Islamic identity and to deradicalise themselves without necessarily following
a government’s authorised version of Islam that is compliant with the state value system,
or without abandoning their Islamic identity. The model of self-deradicalisation
employed in the analysis is drawn from Michel Foucault’s theory of critique and
experience. Self-deradicalisation can be defined as a certain way of rejecting being
fully governed by dogmatic practices in the name of absolutist ideology, whether
religious or non-religious (Foucault 1997). It is through individuals’ experience of
engagement with an absolutist ideology and interaction with the structure of power
which establishes that radical people may have the chance to question the effects of
their radical identity, the particular discourse of truth it presents in relation to the
existing system of power, and the effect of power on discourses of truth (ibid., 47).
Questioning the experienced relationship between identity, truth discourses, and
power – which Foucault calls “critique” – urges the person to move beyond the limits
imposed by this experience and to start thinking and acting differently. Critique is
associated with experience and does not have a limit. It is a continuous and accumu-
lative process of repetitive practices of specific beliefs, an assessment of the effects and
consequences of these beliefs and their practices on real life, and as a result, a devel-
opment of alternative modes of thought and practices that makes the desired change
possible (Lemke 2011).
Self-deradicalisation, as a critique of self in relation to others, does not mean com-
plete destruction and denial of the radical identity and its normative categories. Rather,
it is, according to Foucault’s later pragmatic thought, “an experimental critique of self
that seeks to expose normative categories, to put them to the test”, and to spell out
“alternative forms of rights and different modes of subjectivity beyond the dominant
ones” (ibid., 40). Critique of radical identity does not necessarily occur entirely outside of
dominant discourses, but “through and around” them (Reynolds 2004, 953).
Yet, self-deradicalisation is not a linear process leading to determined progressive
outcomes. Rather, it is a strategy that moves back and forth, depending on the changing
context and the dominant discourses and the freedom individuals have to experiment
with their alternative modes of thought and practice, and to validate or invalidate, their
attempts to make positive change within the existing dynamics of power. For Foucault,
freedom is an essential condition that enables individuals to anticipate the plurality of
values through extra-discursive experience and to reconcile conflicting truth statements,
while at the same time recognising their own beliefs (Foucault 1997, 298). Otherwise,
individuals would remain hostage to a singular absolutist truth or ideology, and the
fixed identity it establishes, whether religious or non-religious.
Within this understanding, self-deradicalisation happens with different accelerations
and contingent outcomes due to the particularity, as well as the intensity, of experience
of each person. This experience may jeopardise a person’s life, social and political
continuity, or/and faith in meeting the desired change. This is what Foucault calls a
‘limit-experience’. Limit-experience is when a person, through discursive practice of a
particular identity, reaches “a certain point in life that is as close as possible to the
‘inlivable’, which can’t be lived through”. Thus, questioning or problematising a radical
identity does not occur without a person generating “the maximum of experience
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM 7

intensity and the maximum of impossibility to go on with the identity it establishes”

(Foucault 2000, 241–242).
The concept of “limit-experience” is arguably applicable in understanding and analys-
ing both youth radicalisation and deradicalisation. In the case of Tunisia and elsewhere,
many Muslim youth are spiritually and cognitively affected by radical Salafi ideology as a
revolutionary opportunity because they have reached a limit of experience with the
oppressive governing regime and cannot hold to the identity it establishes (Ellner 2005;
Merone 2013). Some of them also get deradicalised by experimenting with radical
identity to a point where it threatens their continuity and they realise that it can no
longer meet their desire for change. In the two cases, the level of radicalisation and
deradicalisation varies, as particular aspects of the experienced identity (meanings,
behaviours and relations) prove able or unable to create change at individual and
societal levels.
For example, referring to the deradicalisation literature, deradicalisation may include
the denouncement of violence as a tactical act undertaken as a response to state coercive
actions or other incentives, but not as an ideological or political delegitimisation of
violence (Silke 2011); delegitimising violence without relinquishing radical attitudes,
which is defined as disengagement by Tore and Horgan (2008); deradicalising attitudes
and behaviours based on moderate Islamic interpretation to meet political ends (Ashour
2009); or, comprehensively relinquishing religion and adopting an opposing ideology or
living life with no particular religious and political orientation and affiliation (Muhanna-
Matar and Winter Forthcoming). On the other hand, self-deradicalisation due to “limit-
experience” may also lead to recidivism or reengagement with violence, when for exam-
ple, deradicalised people are not recognised and their freedom to express their new non-
violent religious views is further oppressed by the governmental regime (Dunne and
Williamson 2014).

Research methodology
Research sample
In this research, I attempted to avoid homogenising and generalising the portrayal of
Salafis within the Tunisian context. Therefore, I give more attention to Salafis who do not
fit with the stereotype promoted in mainstream media which portrays most Tunisian
Salafis as extremists from marginalised socio-economic groups and areas (Torelli, Merone,
and Cavatorta 2012; Haj-Salem 2014). In this research, I selected only Salafis who came
from a middle-class background with a high level of education and stable employment in
order to isolate their experiences of de/radicalisation, rather than those of socially margin-
alised youth who are mostly classified as Jihadi-Salafis. I conducted in-depth interviews
with 28 Salafis from the age group of 22–32 years (18 men and 10 women) divided equally
between two sites: Tunis, the capital, and Sfax, a more economically advantaged industrial
city located on the south-east coast of Tunisia. The two cities were selected to represent
different geographical locations and socio-economic statuses.
Based on my understanding of the security constraints that Salafis in Tunisia encoun-
tered from security forces during the period of my field research (April 2014 to
March 2015), I developed an effective strategy that created a considerable level of
8 A. MUHANNA-MATAR

trust with Salafi organisations and individuals, and allowed me to reach a good number
of research participants and to create an ethnographic engagement with them.
First, from the early days of my field research, I worked through a mediator. In my case,
as a female Arab researcher speaking the same language and sharing a similar culture
with my research participants, my mediator had to be a woman who was well known and
trusted by the community and different Salafi groups and charity organisations (reformist
and Jihadi Salafi groups) in order for my communication with research participants to be
socially and culturally accepted. My mediator was a middle-aged professional woman and
a member of the Ennahda party, with whom I had worked previously. She has strong
personal and social networks with Salafi leaders and activists both in Tunis and in Sfax. I
lived in her house for several months during my field research visits to Tunisia and joined
her social day-to-day activities, including making visits to homes and offices of some Salafi
leaders and activists and attending some of the religious classes and sermons organised
by Salafi male and female preachers. With her as my mediator, some leaders of Salafi
charity organisations, who facilitated my contact with Salafis who had been affiliated to, or
sympathisers of, Ansar Al-Sharia (AS), came to trust me.
Second, in order to ensure reaching the appropriate research participants – in terms of
age, socio-economic backgrounds and their experience of shifting from radical to refor-
mist Salafi attitudes and behaviours – I used a snowball sampling technique, i.e. relying on
the first group of research participants I interviewed to generate additional research
participants (Lewis-Beck, Michael, and Futing 2004). Third, I built strong links with several
Salafi charity organisations in Tunis and Sfax and joined their public activities, such as
several demonstrations against the government’s decision to suspend the organisations.
Through this involvement I was able to recruit more research participants.

Research method and ethical considerations

This research relies on the method of personal narrative to study how humans experi-
ence themselves and the world around them (Connelly and Clandinin 1990). The study
of personal narratives of Salafis is useful because it explores ‘acts of meaning’ that
describe a ‘lived time’, where a person selects events and stories that are relevant to
their significant beliefs (Bruner 2004, 692). The personal narrative interviews conducted
in this research were unstructured in order to allow for the free flow of information. I
focused on only one general question that did not entail any prior assumptions, specific
meanings, judgments or labelling: ‘why and how have you become Salafi and what
changes happened throughout your experience of becoming Salafi?’ Through informal
conversation with research participants, I wished to identify the sequence of events and
their reactions to these events by asking sub-questions such as: when and why did such
an event happen in relation to previous events mentioned, and what were the inter-
viewees’ emotional and cognitive reactions to such event/s? The reason for that is to
ensure that events and stories told mediate subsequent experiences, and create possi-
bilities for attitudinal and behavioural change (Holland and Leander 2004). Focusing on
the sequence of events and their interpretation allowed me to isolate the moment, or
the limit of experience, at which interviewees altered their course from Jihadism/
radicalism to deradicalisation.
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM 9

Each research participant was interviewed two to three times within a period of
12 months. The period of each interview lasted from 90 minutes to two hours. Each
interview transcript was reviewed before the second interview, and gaps in information
and analysis were discussed again to compile a comprehensive narrative of each
individual’s experience. All interviews were recorded with verbal consent from the
research participants. Before recording started, all research participants were informed
that the interviews would be anonymised and their personal information would remain
confidential. Thus, all names included in this research are not real names. With the good
level of trust created with my research participants, I managed to interview some of
them in their homes or workplaces, and at public events and observe some of their
social encounters. Conducting interviews every two to three months allowed me to
analyse the ongoing process of their deradicalisation and changing ideological beliefs
and behaviours. Each time, the interviewees related new knowledge and experiences.

The process of radicalisation and deradicalisation: ethnographic analysis

The narratives of both male and female participants showed that they have undergone four
interlinked phases of shifting from one disposition to another within the Salafi doctrine.
There were differences in the intensity of events and levels of engagement in religious and
political debates due to the position each interviewee held within the Salafi groups and the
different level of Islamic knowledge each acquired. However, it is not anticipated that the
level of deradicalisation revealed in this research has reached an end point, or will stay fixed.
Arguably deradicalisation, like radicalisation, is a process of discursive practices of certain
ideas, behaviours and relations that may create progressive and regressive change due to
the satisfactory or unsatisfactory effects these practices generate.

Phase one: radicalised by rejecting the imposed identity of the old regime
All interviewees embraced the radical Salafi ideology as a means of rejecting aspects of
Western modernity and secularity imposed by the former authoritarian regime. Fifteen out
of the 18 male research participants were radicalised before the Tunisian Uprising, mostly
when they were teenagers, as opposed to only four out of the 10 women who were
radicalised before the Uprising. However, women who got engaged with Salafism shortly
after the Uprising also referred to their experience with the oppressive Ben-Ali regime as
one of the main driving factors that lured them to the moral cause of Salafi doctrine. The
interviewees’ narratives confirm that they were all subjugated directly or indirectly
through their family members by the authoritarian secular state led by Ben-Ali. Their
subjugation took different forms, including prohibition of their family members from
practising their faith by praying, wearing the hijab or participating in Islamic social groups,
and/or being imprisoned and tortured. Salma, a 22-year-old woman, said, “I still remember
when Ben-Ali’s police forced and humiliated women in my neighbourhood to remove
their veil in the street. Shall we stay silent against the police humiliating our religion?”.
At this phase, the embrace of Salafism was a means of resistance against the regime’s
repression of traditional Islamic practices, which is described by the interviewees as a
degradation of their human dignity. The historical consciousness of humiliation and
violence practised against fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya and Palestine
10 A. MUHANNA-MATAR

by Western and colonial secular forces had also angered the interviewees and spurred
them towards Salafi ideology. Most interviewees frequently said that Ben-Ali, who
oppressed Muslims in Tunisia, was a strategic ally to those who killed Muslims else-
where, pointing to Western forces, particularly those of the USA. This consciousness was
strengthened by the available Salafi knowledge that had been circulated in the media in
the late 1990s and 2000s, and stimulated them to get involved in Salafi groups when
they were in their teens and early twenties.
Most interviewees expressed their excitement at being introduced to Salafism, includ-
ing Jihadism, that they believed would rescue them from degradation and social immor-
ality practised by the old regime, which was supported by the international system of
power. They all affirmed that the process of becoming a Salafi began with a desire to
reclaim what Tunisians had been prohibited to be under the rule of Ben Ali and his
corrupt regime. One of the male interviewees said, “I like the word Salafi because it refers
me to the ideal and authentic model of Muslim Umma that I have never experienced
before.” Another male Salafi said, “we hold the name ‘Salafi’ to express our anger at the
deviant and corrupted behaviours that we see everywhere around us.” Sara, a female
journalist in her mid-20s, said, “Through my journalist work, I discovered that being a Salafi
is not only to worship, but to fight against corruption and to change people’s attitudes.”
Ziad, a 30-year-old engineer who manages a construction business with a good source of
income and who experienced torture from the Ben-Ali police, said, “It was the police
brutality that motivates me to search more about Salafism and to find out why Ben-Ali
feared Islamists.” Hassan, an Information Technology engineer and university lecturer in
his early 30, was unable to stop his sister from being beaten in front of him by Ben-Ali’s
police when he was a teenager. That event inflamed his anger and attracted him to the
Salafi ideology which called for the destruction of the Ben-Ali anti-Muslim secular regime.
Hassan committed himself to Salafi groups in 1999. He used to believe that people’s lives
would not change unless sharia governed all aspects of their life.
According to the narrative of most interviewees, they confirmed that they had limited
knowledge of Salafism during the Ben-Ali regime. It was not easy to generate knowledge
about Salafism before the Tunisian Uprising due to the strict government censorship of
the religious books sold in Tunisia. One interviewee said that he used to save his pocket
money to buy these books without any of his family knowing. A female interviewee said
that she used to get these books through her female friend’s brother, and returned them
to him when she finished reading them, in order that they could be given to someone
else. Interviewees who became Salafis before the Uprising confirmed that the main
motive that lured them to Salafi ideology was not primarily their religious knowledge.
Rather, it was their anger at the Ben-Ali regime’s brutality against Tunisian Muslims and
their rejection of the particular model of secular identity that Ben-Ali imposed on them.
Salafi youth were first influenced by the religious discourse presented in Islamic TV
channels such as Al-Resalah (the message), Iqraa (read/recite) and Al-Nas (the people)
(Abualrob 2013). Several charismatic Saudi and Egyptian preachers whose lectures were
broadcast regularly on the religious TV channels, particularly the Egyptian activist and
television preacher, Amr Khaled, also affected them. As stated by most research parti-
cipants both in Tunis and in Sfax, religious preachers and friends were the most
influential people who lured them to the Salafi ideology, while a few were influenced
by their fathers or family members who were imprisoned during the Ben-Ali era.
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM 11

In answer to the question “what was the first thing that made you attracted to the
radical Salafi ideology and through whom?”, Lobna, a 24-year-old female teacher in a
kindergarten, said,

My uncle used to alert me not to listen to radical Salafi because they are dangerous. That
made me more excited to know why those people are dangerous. They definitely have
strong values that deserve to be listened to. With no knowledge in Islam, I listened to some
Salafi friends in the university, who did not harm anyone and were very peaceful and largely
involved in charity to help poor people. They affected me not only with their convincing
arguments, but also with their strengths and human sensitivity.

From the perspective of Foucault’s theory of human subject or identity, Salafi youth had
gone through an early phase of self-investigation, or problematisation of the identity
imposed on them by the Ben-Ali regime, reflecting on their direct and indirect experi-
ence of subjugation by the regime. The outcome of this phase was that they decided
what position they wanted to take. They rejected the existing identity imposed on them
by the dictator and his dominant discourses (Foucault 1994), but had not yet actualised
or materialised the new desired Salafi identity.

Phase two: actualisation of radical Salafi identity

In the early phase of converting to the Salafi doctrine, all the interviewees were attracted
to the radical version of Salafism, including Jihadism, and excited by the idea of a radical
transformation of the self and of society becoming only ruled by sharia. Most of them
invested in the religious freedom shortly after the Uprising to practise the aesthetic of
being different. They felt the need to destroy the prior identity imposed on them by
dictators and create a new one governed exclusively by the radical Salafi moral codes of
conduct, as the ideal model of identity (Valerie 2012, 133). As a result, these youth
changed their appearances and daily practices: men grew beards, dressed and prayed
differently, stopped smoking and playing cards in cafes, limited their social relations to
committed Muslims, and avoided people who did not practise Islam. Women also
changed their appearances and behaviours: dressed in niqab (face cover) and segre-
gated themselves from men in public, and some thought to quit their education and
their jobs. Ahlam, a 25-year-old female schoolteacher, commented about her early few
months of belonging to AS, saying, “At that time I was so excited. I wanted to be an ideal
Salafi that crazily made me thinking of quitting my college education.” Other female
interviewees passionately told their stories of wearing niqab. Ghada, a 22-year-old
female university student, said, “if niqab is not obligatory in Salafi Islam, it is fine. I
love it because it makes me imitating the wives of the prophet.”
In the first two years after the 2011 overthrow of the Ben Ali regime, young Salafis
had the freedom to speak publicly about their Salafi beliefs. They worked through social
media, charity organisations, and in mosques to mobilise people through their authentic
understanding of Islam. They became intensively engaged in da’wa activities, eager to
transfer their religious beliefs to the public. As expressed by several interviewees, they
were passionate about the new style of life and its introduction in their daily practice, in
addition to the power they were wielding in their local communities. They felt a sense of
12 A. MUHANNA-MATAR

belonging, in addition to satisfaction from acting to please God by supporting people in

need, and by exercising their freedom of expression.
Fadi, a 28-year-old employee in a financial company, described himself in the
first year after the Uprising when he was intensely involved in Salafi activism as enjoying
the actualisation of his Salafi identity:
I was a Salafi before the Uprising but I was not able to speak it out. Our life was empty
during Ben-Ali. The first year after the Uprising was the first time I did things that I believe
in. We, Salafis, have a common cause, cooperate with each other to transfer the words of
God and help our own people to have a better life.

Salah, an IT engineer aged 27 years old, said,

I was one of those Salafi youth who were thirsted to freedom. After the Uprising, we
gathered together freely away from Ben-Ali surveillance. We practised our religion freely
and helped our people. Ordinary people, old and young, listened to us and respected us.
Young boys started to wake up very early to go for al fajr (morning) pray in mosques with
their friends and relatives. We were all motivated to attend religious lessons to know more
about Salafism.

At this phase, Salafi youth were still in the spiritual phase of shaping their new identity,
or as Foucault describes it, a “spiritual experience of truth”, exemplified in a new
stylisation or fashioning of self, arguably aimed at assuring themselves that this was
actually who they were. Their narratives of this phase do not show that they were
“fundamentally capable of truth”. They all affirmed that they needed to accomplish
several actions on themselves “to become capable of knowing” (Foucault 2000, 184), i.e.
to read more about Salafism and practise it in their daily life. In this phase, the
interviewees were arguably not concerned about the rules for constructing true religious
beliefs and practices; rather, they were concerned to achieve inner harmony between
the new ethical Salafi identity, exemplified in the absolute rightness of being exclusively
ruled by sharia in all aspects of life, and the kind of person this identity establishes
(Franek 2006).

Phase three: experimenting with radical Salafi identity

The freedom that radical Salafis attained after the Uprising did not last for long. Salafis in
the aforementioned phases assumed that their freedom of expression and conduct
would operate separately from the government, particularly reflecting on their experi-
ence in the first year of the Tunisian government led by the Islamist party, Ennahda
(2011–2012). The latter offered a space of freedom for Salafi groups, including AS, to
practise their non-violent activism and to establish their da’wa and charity organisations
(Merone and Cavatorta 2012). Most of the interviewees affirmed that they supported AS
at the earlier phase of its establishment (April 2011), due to their historical knowledge of
the group as non-violent and largely involved in charity and da’wa work. For the
interviewees, AS members, similar to other Salafis, originally intended to transfer the
word of God, or sharia, in Tunisian society and provide social services to people in need.
For the interviewees, it is the state and its security apparatuses that are blamed for
AS’s shift to violence since they divided Salafis, some of whom wished to inflame
violence and to bring the old regime back into power. The interviewees commented
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM 13

that the secular forces within and outside the government have achieved what they
wanted; some Salafis got involved in violence legitimating the return to power of the old
regime on the pretext of national security. As a result, the Nidaa Tounes won the 2014
parliamentary elections against the Ennahda Islamist party, and its leader, Beji Caid
Essebsi, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under Ben-Ali’s regime, became the
president of Tunisia following the presidential election of December 2014.
A lawyer in his early thirties, who had experienced the brutality of the Ben-Ali anti-
terror policies, commented on the victory of Caid Essebsi saying,
Essebsi government will not be different from Ben-Ali’s regime. All Salafis, regardless of their
varying political agendas, will rely on one machine, the state’s policing system and its anti-
terror policies. Those who disagree with the state are treated as enemies of modernity and
civilization, and therefore have to be defeated by force, whether they are violent or non-
violent.

Responding to brutal anti-terror policies imposed by the government, particularly from

early 2014, as noted by the interviewees, a large group of young Salafis became more
radicalised and joined Jihadi groups outside Tunisia. In contrast to this group, the
interviewees have started to reassess their radical Salafi identity and its politics, devel-
oping a pragmatic alternative aimed at preserving their Salafi identity from being
completely dissolved by the police state. Hassan, mentioned earlier, invested in the
freedom of religious expression attained by the Tunisian Uprising, becoming actively
involved in religious and political debates and observed the changing context of
political power. During the field research, he was an active member in different Civil
Society Organisations and Islamic organisation networks. Through this experience of
engagement, Hassan realised that the Salafi identity that he believes in will be easily
demolished if Salafis continue with their isolationist approach. He said,
Through my experience with Salafi groups before and after the Uprising, I realised that we
(Salafis) will be defeated if we do not create alliances with political parties that believe in
social justice and human rights. The implementation of sharia can be left for a later stage.

Hassan applied his pragmatic views of Salafism by actively getting involved in the
presidential election campaign of Al-Marzouqi in December 2014. Al-Marzouqi repre-
sented a middle-left ideology and political agenda in contrast with the candidate of the
old regime. Hassan said, “Having a non-Islamic president who is committed with the
principles of social justice and human rights is less dangerous than having a corrupted
Muslim president”. Hassan has gradually deradicalised his Salafi views to protect his
desired Salafi identity from being defeated by the changing context of power. Yet, it is
uncertain whether Hassan’s tactical view of postponing the goal of implementing sharia
will remain fixed, or might also be changed due to changing sociopolitical
circumstances.
Mona, a 23-year-old female member of one of the reformist Salafi parties, commented
on why she shifted from AS to a reformist Salafi party:
In the beginning, I was so passionate with the idea of imposing sharia in Tunisian society
and dreaming of building an Islamic state. I thought that is the only way to clean up the
society from deviance. I worked with several Salafi charity organisations for three years
and I discovered that although all Salafis call for authentic Islam and for sharia to be our
only reference, in practice, none is ideal. Thus I prefer to work with those who focus on
14 A. MUHANNA-MATAR

issues on the ground and keen to make change to people’s life rather than making it
harder.

Salem is a 29-year-old working for a human rights organisation responsible for defend-
ing detainees who were suspected of terrorism. He was a sympathiser of AS in the first
two years after the Uprising. Through his engagement with human rights organisations
and debating human rights issues with non-Salafi lawyers, who work on the same
mission, he gradually rethought Salafism. He said,
Although we, Salafis, don’t support all the conventions of the international laws, considering
those that are not consistent with our religion, we believe that many other conventions are
applicable within an Islamic state.

These narratives show that the reconstitution of radical Salafi identity is experimental.
A new mode of Salafi identity is constituted through problematising, or questioning,
the old identity and its potential to make the desired change (Foucault 1988).
According to Foucault, problematisation of radical identity is not to claim a “valid”
solution to ethical and political problems of such an identity. Rather, it is a realisation
that the radical identity is “in crisis” and “therefore stands in need of critique”
(Foucault 2001, 47). Such realisation is an essential condition that led the interviewees
to transform themselves.

Phase four: the limit experience of radicalism and the choice to self-deradicialise
Deradicalisation in the case of the interviewees is not purely an individualistic task taken
in isolation from their connections with other radical Salafis and from the changing
social and political context. It is an outcome of the combination of all: state repression
and personal and interpersonal experiences among and between Salafis (Ashour 2009).
The narratives of the interviewees show that the continuity and discontinuity of radical
identity are dependent on the capacity of individuals to capture the particular experi-
enced aspects of identity that do not only undermine possibilities of change, but
generate danger to self and others, as will be illustrated later.
Hamed is a 32-year-old university graduate. He owns a business which gives him a
middle income. In the first two years after the Tunisian Uprising, Hamed was the imam
of a Jihadi mosque for six months and participated in several demonstrations organised
by AS. His six-month-long experience as imam afforded Hamed the opportunity to
communicate with Jihadi youth about their understanding of Jihadism that may justify
the use of violence against other Muslims. He said,
It is only through my connections with Jihadi youth I discovered the danger of this ideology.
Young Jihadists do not search for the truth and they take what they heard from their
sheikhs for granted. They were so stubborn with their mistaken understanding of Jihad and
don’t want to listen to anyone. Sadly, by their irrational act they give an evil image to all
Salafis.

Hamed spent a few months trying to change the attitudes of Jihadi youth with regard to
the use of violence, investing in his position as an imam, as well as his deep knowledge
of Islam. He confirmed that he did not fear the police state and its anti-terror policies
because he had similar experiences during the Ben-Ali regime. Rather, he fears the
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM 15

consequences of the Jihadi discourse on the continuity of non-Jihadi Salafi groups to

work with and for their society.
Unfortunately, Hamed’s attempts to change young Jihadis’ attitudes failed. The
reasons for failure according to Hamed’s analysis are twofold: first, “young Jihadis with
no proper knowledge in Islam did not have the courage and will to say no to their
dogmatic Sheikhs”; second, “young Jihadis have other material motivations than know-
ing the truth of Islam”. Instead, they accused Hamed of betraying the Salafi doctrine, and
as a result, may have justified violence against him. Hamed realised that his experience
with a Jihadi group reached its “maximum intensity” that made him feel “no longer
himself” (Foucault 1994, 241). Thus, he detached himself from the Jihadi groups and
focused on better understanding of the Salafi doctrine to find out the truth and to
develop an appropriate framework for its application in the particular context of Tunisia.
Summarising his experience with Salafism and Jihadism, Hamed commented in a way
that can be interpreted as anti-Salafism, although he confirms that he still adopts the
Salafi doctrine and identity:

We cannot approach people in 2014 with the same logic of the seventh century. This is
impossible. Quran text and Sunna were able to solve the problems of that time. We also
have to understand the text to solve our current time’s problems. We have to understand
that the game of power is more complex than what the Jihadi youth imagine. The short
sighted understanding of Salafism has helped the old regime to come back with the same
power and impose the same anti-terror policies used in the past. See, you can’t see any
Jihadi in the streets. They are all hidden because of the return of the policing state. They
even have become more radicalised as a large number of them travelled to Libya and Syria
to join da’esh (ISIS).

He adds,

We, Salafis, need to learn from our previous experience how to manoeuvre with the policing
system in order to keep our continuity. Otherwise we will be lost. This does not mean to
abandon our doctrine, but to ensure that we practise it in a way that brings positive effects,
rather than creating more destruction.

Ziad, mentioned earlier, has been acting as a preacher and activist for 10 years. He had
radical thoughts until a year after the Tunisian Uprising, believing that Jihad is a religious
duty to impose sharia. He became fully occupied with da’wa activities after the Uprising,
which allowed him to open dialogues with different groups of Salafis and non-Salafis
following his slogan: “listen to us and don’t listen about us”. During the first two years
after the Tunisian Uprising, when Salafi da’wa activities in Tunisia were widely expanded,
Ziad enjoyed his role as a preacher and gradually developed a tolerant approach
towards secular groups, whom he used to call non-believers. He said, ‘Seculars do not
have to fear us, as long as each group has a space of freedom to mobilise for its ideology
without coercion … let’s leave people decide what beliefs and values they chose’. Ziad’s
story is consistent with Foucault’s concept of the ‘game of truth’, which in the context of
Tunisia requires political and ideological dialogue between the holders of conflicting
discourses, with ‘as little domination as possible’ (Foucault 1997, 298).
In response to the harsh anti-terror policies adopted by the state and the security
restrictions imposed on all Salafis to practice da’wa, Ziad started to feel that his desired
identity as a Salafi preacher was threatened within the changing context of power. That
16 A. MUHANNA-MATAR

induced him to search for alternative ways to maintain his preaching activities, without
necessarily clashing with the security forces. He first reformed the contents of his
sermons so as not to include any incitements. He also changed his political attitudes
and supported engagement with formal politics. However, he stated that his reformist
Salafi identity is conditioned with what results this reformism would bring to him and to
Tunisian society. He said,

My reformist Salafi approach is still experimental, but I am ready to create alternatives if my

reformist approach is not recognised. If doors for da’wa are closed, I am ready to find
another pathway to go on spreading the message of Islam, which is the meaning of my
existence.

In the last interview with Ziad in December 2014, he developed a new strategy to make
possible the change he desires, saying,

I chose to get enrolled in a high diploma course in sharia, which is under the surveillance of
the government. It aims to graduate a number of moderate imams and preachers to
officially work in the mosques … if this is what the government wants to suppress our
voice that is fine, I will go for it if it helps me to go on with da’wa activities. But, what to do
if the police keeps chasing us (preachers)!

With women, interpersonal limit-experiences among female Salafis appeared to be the

main motives for their deradicalisation. Fatima, 25 years old, was arrested by the police
with a conviction of supporting Jihadis in October 2014. She spent 5 days in detention.
The police forced her to remove her niqab by putting pressure on her family. She
removed it in order to satisfy her family and to avoid being chased by the police
again. However, as she noted, that was not the main reason for disengaging with
Jihadis. During her imprisonment and after her release, Fatima did not receive any
support from any of her Salafi fellows (men and women). She was shocked and started
to question the trustworthiness of Jihadis and the potentiality of their discourse to
create an ideal Muslim. As a result, she distanced herself from all Jihadi Salafi groups.
Yet, it is hard to predict if distancing herself from Jihadi groups will create an opportu-
nity for new friends who encourage further deradicalisation, or whether she will re-
engage with Jihadi groups.
A last example is Leila, a female lawyer in her early thirties. She had identified herself
as a Jihadi for five years. She spent all these years struggling to idealise her Jihadi-Salafi
identity. For example, she became fully veiled including her face; she stopped her work
as a lawyer and abandoned any contact with men; and she mobilised youth for the holy
Jihad. Leila, who comes from a wealthy liberal Tunisian family, sacrificed her previous
luxurious lifestyle and married a poor Jihadi man from a marginalised social background.
A few months after marriage, she started to face serious problems with her husband and
she was unable to endure the harsh socio-economic consequences of embracing the
Jihadi ideology and its dogmatic social rules, never experienced before with her family.
After five years of painful experience of being a Jihadi-Salafi, and a wife of a socially and
economically undependable Jihadi, Leila realised that “this is not who I am”. After being
beaten by her husband, Leila asked for a divorce and detached herself completely from
Jihadi groups. Yet, she did not abandon Salafism as a whole but reconstructed it in a
way that satisfied her desires and interests in life. As she said in her last interview,
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM 17

Now, I admire both the secular liberal and spiritual Salafi worlds. From the first one, I learn
discipline, techniques of communication, and modern style of life that generates individual
success and happiness; while through religion I enjoy spirituality that protects me from
falling into corruption or deviance. This is the Salafi image of world that I would like to live.

The narratives of the Salafi men and women show that they do not validate the right-
eousness or falseness of their radical Salafi, or Jihadi, identity until they experiment with
it in their social and political environment and examine its effect in changing their lives
for the better. Through the practice of radical Salafism and its interrelational dynamics,
the interviewees assessed the effect and consequences of their radical attitudes, beha-
viours and social relations, and found a way to reconcile conflicting truth statements,
identities and social behaviours, aiming to protect their desired Salafi identity from
being dissolved by the state anti-terror policies, the irrational violent Jihadi practices,
and from the lack of interpersonal trustworthiness and interdependence between Salafi
fellows. In most cases, it is the “limit-experience” of radicalism that according to Foucault
(2000) “… has the function of wrenching the subject from itself” and stimulates search-
ing for an alternative identity, or subjectivity.

Conclusion
The narratives of the deradicalised research participants show that there is a strong
possibility for more radicals to self-deradicalise by reflecting on their particular experi-
ence of engagement with radicalism, without necessarily abandoning the whole Salafi
ideology. Does this suggest that we need to wait until Muslim youth get engaged in
violence and realise by their experience the ineligibility of their radical identity? The
answer is definitely no. It is that state-led rehabilitation programmes should understate
their focus on a top-down ideological rehabilitation approach that is reliant on
authorised Islamic clerics, and give more emphasis to understanding the “limit-
experience” of radicalisation and deradicalisation. The latter includes an understanding
and analysis of the particular limit-experience of those who self-deradicalise, or for
instance, the Jihadi returnees, and an investment in those people’s knowledge and
experience to deradicalise others.
The example of self-deradicalisation, as it is revealed in this research, significantly
contributes to developing the existing strategies of deradicalisation by investing in the
actual experiences of deradicalised youth to make deradicalisation programmes more
responsive, as well as reflexive to the internal dynamics of radicalisation and deradica-
lisation within the Salafi-Jihadi groups. Arguably, valuing the agency of the self-
deradicalised youth and encouraging them to become more involved in politics and
activism is an effective long-term strategy of deradicalisation from within. Those who
have experienced radical Salafism are more capable of understanding the motivations
and experiences of radical Salafis than those who have not. They can also aid the
deradicalisation process by revealing conflicting ideas within the radical strand without
attacking the Salafi ideology as a whole. However, deradicalised Salafis need to feel free
to express their ideas and be protected by the state, in order for them to communicate
their experiences with other Salafis.
18 A. MUHANNA-MATAR

The current Tunisian state’s assumption, similar to that of the old one, that Salafis are
deradicalised only through the use of force, or fear of it, is mistaken. As demonstrated by
the interviewees in this research, signs of deradicalisation started shortly after the
Uprising when Salafis were to some extent freely engaged in da’wa activities and with
opposing ideologies, and less subjugated by the state, at least compared to the Ben Ali
era. This experience of engagement allowed radical Salafis to be exposed to new ideas
and the machinery of the state, and to learn how to manoeuvre with it. Engagement
with ideologies challenging their own led them to rethink their discourse and strategies
for gaining supporters, preferring those activities less likely to lead to further govern-
ment crackdown by working within the existing system, and more likely to gain socio-
political recognition.
Fear of government crackdown, then, did not grant Salafis freedom to experiment
with alternative means of political engagement. On the contrary, repression of radical
Salafis drove them further underground, making them increasingly isolated from con-
flicting ideas that can lead to deradicalisation. As Foucault noted, freedom is a precondi-
tion for self-problematisation by which the human subject encounters different
dominant discourses and the relations of power they imply, and has an opportunity to
reflect on, and to learn from, the outcome of actions and experiences undertaken
(Foucault 1994). Yet, this encounter may not lead to a complete rejection of the old
value system and the identity it establishes. Rather it operates based on, and within, it
(Franek 2006).
With the return to the former regime’s use of severe anti-terror policies, deradicalised
Salafis face a major challenge to their ideology and to their ability to function as
recognised actors. As is asserted by most interviewees, they have been treated by the
state’s policing system the same way as radical Salafis, thereby impinging on their ability
to express their alternative Salafi way of thinking and acting. This gives legitimacy for
radical Salafis to accuse them of betrayal of the Salafi doctrine by obeying the laws of
the secular state and, in some respects, permits violence against them. In this situation,
deradicalised Salafis have three options: they may go back to radicalism, as has hap-
pened in Egypt where members of the moderate Muslim Brotherhood and non-violent
Salafi groups have been pushed into the arms of extremist Jihadi groups (Dunne and
Williamson 2014); they may isolate themselves from the public domain to escape the
policing system; or they may be co-opted by the state and its religious authority. Either
way, deradicalised Salafis would be denied their right to express their ideas and to
potentially contribute to deradicalisation.
It is also the responsibility of the state to fulfil its obligations towards the rights and
freedoms of its citizens, even if the value system of deradicalised Salafis remains incompa-
tible with the principle of secular state sovereignty and its universal liberal values (Foucault
1994). Encouraging deradicalised Salafis to achieve positive effects and to gain recognition
in Tunisia is a technique that helps Salafis to affect others, and potentially deradicalise
them, through their discourse, and be affected by others’ discourses, thereby encouraging
coexistence of multiple identities and a pluralistic political society.
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM 19

Notes
1. Wahabism is named after an 18th-century Arabian theologian, Muhammad bin Abd al-
Wahhab, belonging to the Ruling Al-Saud family. He called for the “purification” of Islam by
returning to the Islam of the Prophet Mohammed and the three successive generations of
followers. See more details in Abu Rumman (2014, p. 60).
2. Two weeks after the fall of Ben-Ali, the government released all imprisoned under the 2003
anti-terrorism law. According to an official’s statement, “1,200 Salafis, including 300 who
fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia, left prison”. At the same time, many
scripturalist and Jihadi Salafi Sheikhs, mostly imams at mosques in Europe, returned to
Tunisia. See more in International Crisis Group (ICG) (2013, p. 14).
3. Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST), founded in late April, 2011, was banned in August, 2012,
because it was accused as responsible for all the violent actions that happened in Tunisia. See
details in Haj-Salem (2014).
4. See Gall (2013).
5. Nidaa Tounis party was founded in April 2012 as a competing party against Ennahda in
response to the institutional chaos and insecurity created after the Tunisian Uprising and
during the rule of the Islamist Ennahda party. Its most influential members are those who
belonged to Ben Ali’s regime. See more details in Wolf (2014).
6. See Al-Jazeera (2015).

Acknowledgment
This research is supported by a grant from the LSE Collaboration Program with Arab Universities
funded from the Emirates Foundation.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This research is supported by a grant from the LSE Collaboration Program with Arab Universities
funded from the Emirates Foundation.

Notes on contributor
Aitemad Muhanna-Matar is an assistant Professorial Research Fellow in the LSE's Middle East
Centre. She is the author of a book Agency and Gender in Gaza by Routledge 2016. She is also the
author of an article ‘Women Moral Agency in the Politics of Religion in the Gaza Strip’, published
by the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion in 2015.

ORCID
Aitemad http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2744-2581
20 A. MUHANNA-MATAR

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