BOOK REVIEW: Political Islam in Tunisia. The History of Ennahda. By Anne Wolf,. Hurst Publishing, London, 2017. ISBN 9781849048262, pp. 304. Price: £30 (hardback); £18 (paperback, published 2018, ISBN 9781787380332 )

Price: £30 (hardback); £18 (paperback, published 2018, ISBN 9781787380332). Since the fall of the Tunisian authoritarian regime in January 2011 many authors have been called upon to reflect on the greatest challenge for the Islamist party Ennahda after its victory in the first elections: to clear up the wide-spread suspicion about its commitment to democracy. While previous academic works mostly focused on the transformation of Ennahda after 2011, Wolf's book provides a comprehensive account of the evolution of Ennahda, by disentangling the complex process of transformation from movement to party, that began in the 1960s as a diffuse socio-cultural trend, into one of the country's most influential political actors. [...]while in many academic contributions the analysis of transformation of the Islamist movement remains focused on its doctrinal evolution and internal dynamics, Wolf's book emphasizes the ways in which this transformation has been related to the (conflictual) relationships with secular forces and in particular with the authoritarian regime.2 Through the use of hundreds of personal interviews and archival resources Wolf clearly introduces the historical roots of the Islamic movement by showing how religious forces flourished as a reaction to Bourghiba's modernizing efforts to curb the sway of traditional expressions of Islam. [...]she highlights the shift from a loose association Jama'a al-Islamyya (the Islamic group) to the politicized Movement of Islamic Tendency (Harakat al-Ittijāh al- Islāmī (Chapters 1 and 2).