Islamist cyber-activism: contesting the message, redefining the public

Abstract

Islamist groups are using social media as a counter-space to challenge the prevailing secular media narrative in Tunisia and redefine the public sphere. Since the 2011 uprising, these groups have brought Islam into the public and redefined a space previously circumscribed under the secular state project of the former regime. While Islamists have increased their activism, the secular message remains dominant. This discursive marginalisation leaves many groups seen, but not heard, in the media. Drawing on the theories of Henri Lefebvre on space and contentious politics, I demonstrate how perceptions of media exclusion give rise to Islamist online activism. Semi-structured interviews with Islamist and Salafist activists and media professionals inform the analysis. The Salafist Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia movement serves as a case study to unpack the role cyber-activism plays in giving voice to the resistance and redefining the public. This case study examines how the Salafist current uses the Internet to challenge the narrative and mobilise on the ground. It goes even further to access how the ideology itself serves these ends. This article also finds that Islamist activists' online contestation depends on the extent to which their ideology accepts, tolerates and navigates Tunisia's ever present secular political system. Contention is greatest where the disjuncture between public engagement and discursive marginalisation is strongest.

Keywords:

• Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia
• space
• dawa
• jihad

Funding

This research was funded by the University of Cambridge–al-Jazeera Centre for Studies Media Project. The author would like to thank al-Jazeera Media Network for its generous support in making this research possible.

Notes

1. Others that Miller and Martin cite as having contributed to more recent literature on spatial politics include Dynamics of Contention (2001) by Doug McAdam, Sydney Tarrow and Charles Tilly.

2. See, for example, Aaron Zelin, a prolific writer for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and his private blogs on jihadist social media, including Tunisia (http://jihadology.net/); similarly, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross who has written at length about AST (see references and notes in this article). Both approaches, however, tend towards examining jihadist discourse from a Western national security perspective, emphasising threat implications for the state rather than apprehending jihadist social media as a site of resistance in both spatial and ideological terms.

3. Euben (1999, Chap. 2, “Projections and Refractions”, 20–48).

4. I agree with Mandaville that ‘who speaks for Islam’ is an inherently political question that dates back to the passing of the Prophet Mohamed and the question of succession. More concretely, I understand political Islam to be an evolution of Islamic thought from modernists such as Mohamed Abduh, Rashid Rida, Jamal Al-Afghani in the nineteenth century towards the successive ideological movements of contemporary political Islam starting with Hassan Al-Banna in Egypt for example.

5. See references for a list of works by these authors on Salafism.

6. For a more extensive global typology of Islamist and Jihadist movements, see Hegghammer (2008, 6). This typology draws on examples from across the Middle East, from Al-Qaeda in Yemen to Jamaa Islamiyya in Egypt to the pan-Islamic Hizb Ah Tahrir movement.

7. Merone and Cavatorta (2012). Mouvance as defined by Merone on radical Salafism: 'mouvance or tendency with unitary ideological pillars, religious and social references and political goals, yet without unified organisation structure, that can speak for the whole camp', 9.

8. The Risk Advisory Group, where I work currently as the North Africa intelligence analyst, has access to these forums.

9. For more on how both governments of Bourguiba and Ben Ali co-opted some elements of Islamist politics to reinforce state power, see Hamdi (1998, Chaps 1, 3–4).

10. Even the historically secular regime of Turkey took similar measures of appropriating Islamic signs and symbols in the service of the state, particularly during the 1980s ‘Turkish-Islamic Synthesis Project’. For more on this, see Yavuz (2003).

11. The Ministry of Interior in December 2012 announced the dismantling of a terrorist cell in Kasserine, with links to AQIM; in January and July 2013, unidentified gunmen assassinated opposition leaders Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi.

12. Interview with the author, 5 June 2014, Jamal Dellali, email correspondence, London.

13. Interview with the author, 23 April 2014, with Mohamed Khalfallah at Tunis University, Faculté des Sciences Juridiques, Politiques et Sociales de Tunis.

14. For in-depth studies and analysis of the evolution of the Salafist current in Tunisia, please see Marks (2013) and Merone and Cavatorta (2012); this definition of Salafism is drawn from Meijer (2010).

15. The author thanks Michael Marcusa, Ph.D. Candidate at Yale University, for pointing this out.

16. An interesting theory put forth by Zelin is that AST dawa campaigns may still be organised under another network name ‘Shabaab Al-Tawhid’, which claims local branches across Tunisia in its social media activism. While it may be the case that local Salafists are seeking to maintain localised networks online, I question to what extent this is a rebranding effort on the part of AST given that its centralised messaging persists, and is regularly updated with news and statements of encouragement for its sympathisers. For more on Zelin's analysis, see Zelin (2014).

17. Ansar al Sharia Video from Twitter, 28 December 2013 https://twitter.com/AnsarShariaa_tn/status/417066867186860033.

18. AST Video, “The missing truth about Ansar al-Sharia,” Clip 7, 25 March 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_3NOAbvylQ.

19. Meijer, ‘Salafism’ on quietist and activist applications of this principle (2009, Chap. 3, 37–60).

20. “The Missing Truth about Ansar al-Sharia,” Clip 11, 7 April 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV5YGJlHTLE#t=247.

21. SLF blogger Bader Lanouar told the author many of his friends, including AST member left Sousse to perform jihad in Syria. This seems to reflect a more outward looking shift towards foreign theatres as repression of the movement increased in 2013 and it became clear the Tunisian government would not adopt Islamic law, nor would it tolerate coercive efforts of the Salafist to Islamise society through bottom-up grassroots mobilisation.

22. Ansar al-Sharia official web site, in early 2014, under the fatwa section, there was an article discussing whether or not to carry out jihad in Syria or dawa in Tunisia, also linked to AST forum posts. The official web site as of June 2014 has since been malfunctioning.

23. 23 February 2014 Launch of ‘Victory for AST Campaign’. Official website, and subsequently posted on social media outlets. http://www.ansar-alsharee3a.com/showthread.php?t=4751.

24. Thanks to in-house Risk Advisory terrorism analyst Judith Jacob for commentary on Inspire.

25. AST Poster advertising Jihadist competition circulated in social media, April 2014. http://goo.gl/mZcqZM.

26. For analysis on the active application of the principles of hisba, see Meijer (2010) and Gartenstein-Ross (2013); for its application in the Egyptian context using Jamaa Islamiyya as a case study, see Ismail (2000)'

27. Ismail's work on the Islamic Group in Egypt during the 1980s and 1990s provides a strong example of the activist application of hisba as a means of coercive regulation and redefinition of public space within the subaltern Cairo suburbs of Imbaba and Ain Shams. Her work also captures the socio-spatial elements that played a role in providing fertile ground for Islamist insertion into these poorer neighbourhoods and the controversy and conflict stirred up when local understandings of the public good conflicted with those of the Islamists.

28. For more on these incidents, see Gartenstein-Ross (2013) and or El-Issawi (2012).

29. AST video, ‘Abou Iyadh on the incidents at Manouba’, 2012 http://www.ansar-ashariaa.com/index.php?option=com_webplayer&view=video&wid=40.

30. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/tunisian-jihadists-syria.html#.

31. The Tunisian government has accused AST members of being responsible for the two political assassinations in 2013 that threw the country into political crisis. Mandraud (2013); before the designation, I recorded at least eight terrorist plots or attacks in Tunisia since December 2012, using open source terrorist incidents database TerrorismTracker, http://www.riskadvisory.net/terrorismtracker/

32. For a more in-depth discussion of the struggle for control over mosques in Tunisia, please see the International Crisis Group (2013, 33).

33. 16 April 2014, published on AST Twitter account, ‘Rescuing Muslim prisoners through fighting’. Translation: Sheikh Az Abd Al Salaam said, God keep him,

Rescuing Muslim prisoners is from the hands of the Kuffar (non-believers) is among the best means of worship, for the religious scholars say: if they imprison one Muslim, it is upon us to persevere in fighting them until he is freed, or we annihilate them; so what is to be thought if they imprison many Muslims?! (citing Rules of Jihad and Its Divisions, 97, https://twitter.com/AnsarShariaa_tn/status/456539207280758784/photo/1)

34. The author thanks Fabio Merone for pointing this particular statement by AST out.

35. For more on this, see Gartenstein-Ross (2014).

36. Interview with the author in Sousse, Bader Lanouar, owner of SLF Magazine, 24 April 2014.

37. Romain Lecompte is a strong critic of overemphasising the role of social media in the revolution, for more on this, see Lecompte (2011).