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Tunisia: president’s brother ‘affiliated with Islamist group’ 

August 24, 2021 at 12:12 pm

Abir Moussi, Tunisian leader of the Free Destourian Party (PDL) attends a parliament session on June 25, 2020 in the Tunisian capital Tunis [FETHI BELAID/AFP via Getty Images]

The head of the Free Destourian Party in Tunisia, Abir Moussi, has claimed that the president’s brother is affiliated with an Islamist organisation. Constitutional law expert Nofal Saied is said to have links with the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), although they appear to be tenuous.

Moussi is an avowed secularist. The MP has warned against what she called the “reproduction” of political Islam in Tunisia.

In a video posted on her Facebook page, Moussi referred to the affiliation of President Kais Saied’s brother to the League of Tunisia for Culture and Plurality (LTCP), headed by one of the theorists of “progressive Islamists”. She noted that the LTCP is active in partnership with the Saheb Ettabaa Association of Islamic Culture.

According to the MP, the latter “includes an advocate devoted to [Sheikh Yusuf] Al-Qaradawi’s IUMS and calls for its branch in Tunisia to be kept open to provide funding.” That, she claimed, is an obstacle to the closure of this “octopus-like web” of Islamist associations and its expulsion from Tunisia.

The politician expressed her refusal to “recycle political Islam and present it in a new form.” She also refuses to accept that the current political crisis in Tunisia can be “exploited” to pass a consensus programme in which Islamists [Ennahda movement] are allowed to take part “after shedding their old skin.”

Neither the Tunisian Presidency nor Nofal Saied has commented on Moussi’s claims.

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