Analysing revolutionary Islamism: Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia according to Gramsci

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article offers a reading of Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia, a radical Salafist movement active in Tunisia between 2011 and 2013, as a revolutionary Islamist movement. Although referring to different theological sources, such radical movements end up reproducing the same model of radical Islamist politics traditionally associated to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)-inspired movements. The article draws on a Gramscian Islamist framework of revolutionary politics first employed in Thomas Bukto's 2004 article ‘Revelation or revolution: a Gramscian approach to the rise of Political Islam’. The objective of using such an analytical frame is to comprehend the revolutionary logic of radical Islamism. Although the Islamist/Salafi discourse is rooted in religious language and ideology, this article argues that it is no less revolutionary-minded, in the modern sense of the term, than the one of non-Islamist radical movements. Islamism is in fact able to provide the alternative worldview (ideology) necessary for revolutionary movements to oppose the dominant structure of power.