Understanding Revolutions: Opening Acts in Tunisia

Authors

  • Author

  • Mouldi Lahmar

Keywords:

Tunisia, Revolution, Arab Spring

Abstract

Book Title: Understanding Revolutions: Opening Acts in Tunisia . Author: Azmi Bishara. Date of publication: 2021. Publisher: I.B. Tauris. No. of pages: 328. The first decade since the onset "Arab Spring" has occasioned tens of thousands of articles, books and studies; thousands of academic seminars and conferences; and countless hours of political meetings at regional and international levels, all dedicated to describing the events, analysing their repercussions and deliberating their ramifications. In effect, the Arab Spring has become a new field of research. Think tanks have been recruited for this very purpose. It has become required reading on university curricula and a focus for academic theses. It has engaged a constantly expanding international scholastic community whose roots date back to the waves of democratic transformation that began in Eastern Europe in the middle of the last century and Latin America before that. Azmi Bishara's Understanding Revolutions fits squarely in this complex political and intellectual context. It is essential reading for any academic student of the Arab condition and, as such, can only be read within the context of that extensive critical tradition in which discussions and debates are informed by the entire legacy of literature on political revolution and reform throughout the world.

References

  1. Azmi Bishara, Al-Thawra al-Tūnisiyya al-Majīda: Binyat Thawra wa-Ṣayrūratuhā min khilāl Yawmiyyātihā (Doha and Beirut: Arab Center for Research by Peter Daniel. Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. and Policy Studies, 2012).
  2. My mother used this anecdote as a way to teach us, as children, the ills of lying.
  3. In 2011-2012, we encountered this problem in full force while carrying out a field study on the Tunisian revolution in the areas where it started. We found that the events at the outset resembled the French revolution and that the "official" narrative of the latter was idealistic and inconsistent with reality. We cited Eric Hobsbawm in this regard. See: Mouldi Lahmar et al., Al-Qādih al-Maḥallī taḥt Mijhar al-ʿUlūm al-Insāniyya (Doha and Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2014), p. 23.
  4. Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1965). Press, 2011).
  5. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancient Regime and the Revolution , Jon Elster (ed.), Arthur Goldhammer (trans.) (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
  6. As a note in the book tells us, shortly before it went to print, the author asked the publisher to add a few pages at the end devoted to this matter. bit.ly/3LDBCQ0, min. 30.
  7. When, in 1956, Habib Bourguiba solicited the opinion of the "enlightened" jurists of the Zaytuna Mosque on the proposed Personal Status Code, their capacity was purely advisory and they did not represent an autonomous institution with the power to impose an authoritative religious opinion. After the revolution, professors from the Faculty of Islamic Law attempted to establish themselves as a jurisprudential authority that could pronounce fatwas on general political issues. For example, they issued a fatwa to prohibit people from voting for any candidate who supported gender equality in inheritance. At the time, they had no institutional foundation on which to base their legitimacy and their attempts were met with ridicule among many circles of modernist activists in civil society. See: "'Al-Taṣwīt lahum ḥarām'- Mashāyikh bi-Tūnis yuṣaʿidūn ḍidd dāʿimī al-musāwāt bi-l-mīrāth," Aljazeera Net , 19/12/2018, accessed on 5/4/2022, at: https://
  8. See: Mouldi Lahmar, "Islamists and Politics in Tunisia Today: Is the Foundation of a Democratic Islamic Party Possible?" in: Eid Mohamed & Dalia Fahmy (eds.), Arab Spring: Modernity, Identity and Change (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), pp. 39 - 53. Lahmar, Mouldi et al. Al-Qādih al-Maḥallī taḥt Mijhar al-ʿUlūm al-Insāniyya. Doha and Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2014. Mohamed, Eid & Dalia Fahmy (eds.). Arab Spring: Modernity, Identity and Change. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Lahmar, Mouldi [et al.], Al-Qadih al-Mahalli taht Majhar al-'Ulum al-Insaniyya, Doha/Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2014. Bishara, Azmi. Al-Thawra al-Tūnisiyya al-Majīda: Binyat Thawra wa-Ṣayrūratuhā min khilāl Yawmiyyātihā. Doha and Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, Brinton, Crane. The Anatomy of Revolution. New York: Vintage, de Tocqueville, Alexis. The Ancient Regime and the Revolution. Jon Elster (ed.). Arthur Goldhammer (trans.). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Cover of العدد 10, Almuntaqa

Downloads

PDF (Hosted)
HTML

Published

2022-01-01

Usage statistics

45 views 57 downloads

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 010 (2022): Issue 010

Section

Book Reviews

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Almuntaqa

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.