Rached Ghannouchi Quotes
The party no longer accepts the label of "Islamism"—–a concept that has been disfigured in recent years by radical extremists—–as a description of their approach.
The party to which he was referring was the Ennahda Party of which he was a founder. Note that party's acknowledgement that Islamic extremists had hijacked the terms "Islamic" and "Islamism", thus requiring them to change vocabulary to distinguish themselves and their more democratic values.
"From Political Islam to Muslim Democracy", Foreign Affairs, September / October 2016
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The "we" referred to the Tunisian Ennahda Party of which he was the founder.
Over a century ago, modern Islamists were critical of the Wahhabi sect for their extremism. Unfortunately, the Saudi Arabian royal family whose absolute control of the kingdom could be threatened by an extremist religious movement, cut a deal with the Wahhabi that not only gave them control over all religious and legal interpretations of Sharia in the kingdom, but also gave them large amounts of money with which the Wahhabi expanded and exported their extremist brand of Islam to many other counties—including the United States. A large part of the Islamic terrorism of the end of the 20th century into the 21st was caused by fanatics who had been exposed to Wahhabi schools (madrassas), mosques or materials which are virulently anti-Christian and ant-Semitic. Muslim intellectuals like Muhammad Abduh had warned about extremism in general and Wahhabi extremism in particular.
Islamic religious extremists do not allow freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, right to life, freedom from torture and mutilation, self-government, gender equality, protection of children or women from violence, sexual freedom, freedom of expression, reproductive rights for women, right work, which are just a few. The modern Islamic extremists allow about the same human rights as did the Christian Kings and the Church of 1000 years ago. Ironically, it is less respect for human rights that many of the great Islamic societies provided 1000 years ago.
Rached Ghannouchi, also spelled Rachid al-Ghannouchi or Rached el-Ghannouchi, is a Tunisian politician and thinker, co-founder of the Ennahdha Party and serving as its "intellectual leader". He was born Rashad Khriji (راشد الخريجي).
