Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi

Analysis

BBC

News, Politics

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2012

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Should the world fear the rise of political Islam in the newly democratic Middle East? The Arab Spring has thrust the ideas and ideology of one man into the centre of this crucial question. Before the revolutions began, Sheikh Rachid Gannouchi lived in Hemel Hempstead and was one of the world's leading Islamist ideologues, urging the Muslim Brotherhood to accommodate modate the ideas of secularism, democracy and acceptance of equal political rights for non-Muslims. But after the region begun to rise up against dictators, he has become even more powerful and his ideas have been tested as never before. He returned to his native Tunisia in 2011 and is now spiritual leader of Tunisia's largest political party, but his influence extends far beyond North Africa. As the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideological brethren try and find a place in a democratic world, his controversial ideas have won acolytes in the Arab World, Turkey and South East Asia.

For Analysis, the BBC Radio 4 series that probes the ideas that shape the world, Owen Bennett-Jones travels to Tunis to meet this controversial thinker and examines his ideas and influence.

The documentary features a full length interview with Sheikh Rachid Gannouchi.

In addition, Owen interviews Dr Maha Azzam, of Chatham House in London; Anas Altikriti, Islamist intellectual and son of the former leader of the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood; Wan Saiful Wan Jan, a member of the Islamic Party of Malaysia; Abdel Kader Heshimi, leader of a group of Salafi Muslim students in Tunis, and a group of feminist law students in Tunis.

Producer: Mukul Devichand.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:36.0	Thank you for downloading Analysis, the BBC Radio Program about the ideas that shape the world.
0:43.0	In this week's edition, should the world fear Islamists who are winning elections in the Arab Spring?
0:49.0	Owen Bennett Jones travels to Tunisia to investigate the democratic visions of Rashid Ganushi, the globally
0:56.1	influential Sheikh who developed his big idea while living here in Britain. The emergence of Rasha-Dranosha being the sort of spiritual leader, the kingmaker, if you will,
1:09.0	has made him one of the foremost, if not, the most important figure in the Arab world and
1:15.5	modern politics today.
1:16.7	Why is he so important?
1:18.0	Because everyone's looking to see whether his ideas of the past 30-40 years will work.
1:28.0	This is Woodville Road in Ealing, West London.
1:32.0	It's classic tre-lined suburbia. And many of the
1:36.4	residents here probably don't realize that when they were going to work and
1:40.3	taking the children to school and mowing the front lawn and so on,
1:43.0	one of their former neighbors
1:45.0	was engaged in a rather different project
1:48.0	making his radical Islamic ideology
1:51.0	fit in with a democratic system.
	...

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