Former CAIR exec helping Tunisian Muslim Brotherhood campaign in U.S.
With Tunisia’s presidential and parliamentary elections fast approaching, Ennahda, a dangerous Islamist political party in the North African republic, has been making quite a few campaign stops in the United States.
Two prominent Tunisian-American activists, in particular — Radwan Masmoudi and Mongi Dhaouadi — have long supported the Ennahda cause and now appear to serve as coordinators for Ennahda’s activities inside the United States.
Most recently, in September 2019, Masmoudi organized an event featuring Rabeb Ben Letaief, Ennahda’s selected parliamentary candidate to represent the Tunisian diaspora in America. And earlier this year, In January, Dhaouadi organized an event with Ennahda politician Mehrzia Labidi, inviting Tunisians of the area to join them for a “great conversation.” During her visit, Labidi met Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), with Dhaouadi enthusiastically commenting that they were both “two amazing political leaders.”
Dhaouadi, former executive director of the Connecticut branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), is a “proud” Ennahda member. He attended the party’s tenth congress in 2016 and escorted Ennahda founder and international Islamist luminary Rachid Ghannouchi during his 2015 visit to Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, Masmoudi, also a card-carrying Ennahda member, heads the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) in Washington — for which Dhaouadi now also works. Masmoudi and Dhaouadi have spent years strengthening Ennahda’s image in the U.S. and introducing Ennahda to American officials.
Through CSID, Masmoudi has organized many events that feature high-ranking Ennahda officials. In 2014, Ali Larayedh, Ennahda’s former prime minister, delivered the keynote address at CSID’s 15th annual conference. Others present included Phillip Gordon, then the Special Assistant to President Obama; as well as then-Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) (who has his own Islamist ties). During this same event, CSID awarded the 2014 Muslim Democrat of the Year Award to the Ennahda bloc of Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly.
In 2015, CSID held a dinner in honor of Ghannouchi. This time, those in attendance included John Desrocher, then the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Egypt and Maghreb Affairs at the U.S. State Department, as well as the former U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, Gordon Gray.
Through his other group “Friends of Ennahda, USA”, Masmoudi has also organized events up and down the East Coast wit Larayedh, high-ranking Ennahda member (and recent presidential candidate) Abdelfattah Mourou, and, most recently, Ennahda parliamentary candidate Rabeb Ben Letaief.
Masmoudi claims that CSID is independent, is not part of Ennahda, and works only for the success of Tunisian democracy. But this claim of nonpartisanship is far from convincing.
In 2014, Ennahda hired American public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. According to Jeune Afrique, Masmoudi personally arranged for Burson-Marsteller Paris to manage Ennahda’s public relations in Europe.
Masmoudi has been rewarded for his unwavering support for the party. In January 2019, Sayida Ounissi, an Ennahda minister in the coalition government who had previously attended CSID events, nominated Masmoudi’s daughter for a high-ranking position in the Tunisian government, despite her scant qualifications.
Ennahda’s roots lies in international Islamism. Its founding members pledged allegiance to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Originally established as a student organization in the 1970s, over the years, Ennahda became increasingly involved in politics and national protest, eventually escalating to violence and a coup attempt in 1987.
Many prominent party members and allies were imprisoned or exiled around that time. In the West, these exiled Tunisian Islamists became closely involved with leading Islamic community groups. In the United Kingdom, for example, Mohammed Ali Harrath set up the Islam Channel, one of the most watched Islamic television stations in the West. The Islam Channel has long promoted some of the world’s most extreme Islamist clerics, including deceased Al Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki. The channel has been censured several times by British authorities for “advocating violence against women and supporting marital rape.”
Many Tunisians returned home after the 2010 revolution, which would later come to be seen as the precursor to the Arab Spring. Ennahda emerged victorious from subsequent elections. Prominent Islamist figures, such as Harrath, relied on the new Islamist regime to nullify their previous terrorism convictions. Ennahda proceeded to manage the country disastrously for only two years before being forced out of power.
While Ennahda claims to be a moderate movement, its two years in power illustrated otherwise. In 2012, Ennahda founder Rachid Ghannouchi asked young Salafi activists to be patient, saying that “secularists” still controlled the media and the economy, and so Islamists had to proceed slowly and carefully in order to “consolidate” their hold on the government. Ghannouchi’s advice, which led to widespread outrage in Tunisia, came to be seen as proof the party’s double discourse.
Ennahda once promised that it would not impose Islamic law, but Ennahda Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali subsequently proclaimed that Ennahda “w[ould] not allow the illicit, clearly enacted by God.” He added that Ennahda would one day call for the introduction of corporal punishments according to Sharia.
Worse still, Ennahda permitted Ansar Al Sharia Tunisia (AST), an Al Qaeda offshoot, to operate freely in Tunisia for several years. Only when AST was shown to be involved with the violent 2012 attack against the American embassy in Tunis did Ennahda finally distance itself from the group, which was consequently put on a Tunisian terror list. However, Larayedh nonetheless prevented the police from arresting AST leader Abu Iyadh, who was able to give a live-streamed sermon in a mosque encircled by law enforcement before mysteriously evading capture.
Ennahda was forced to relinquish power in 2014. Along with widespread protest against its policies, it was also accused by the opposition of bearing responsibility for the murders of two left-wing politicians, Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi.
In the wake of its ouster, Ennahda sought to improve its image. In 2016, Ennahda declared it was “leaving political Islam” and would be separating its political and religious wings. This separation, however, was widely regarded as “purely technical and not ideological.”
Despite Ennahda’s incontrovertible links to violent Islamism, members of the party have been frequently welcomed as moderates in the United States. Ghannouchi visited the United States several times, giving lectures at Yale University and Columbia University and attending various events with leading U.S. government officials.
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More on Ghannouchi via Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch:
Ghannouchi (many spelling variations) is the head of the Tunisian Ennahda Party, essentially the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia. Mr. Ghannouchi has been a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) and is currently and Assistant Secretary-General of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), both organizations led by Global Muslim Brotherhood Youssef Qaradawi. In2009, an Egyptian news report referred to Ghannouchi as a leader of the MB “abroad.” Ghannouchi is also one of the founding members of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a Saudi organization closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and dedicated to the propagation of “Wahabist” Islam throughout the world. Ghannouchi is known for his thinking on the issue of Islam and citizenship rights. In January 2011, Ghannouchi returned to Tunisia after a long exile in the U.K and two weeks after the Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben was forced from power in the events which triggered the “Arab Spring.”
Mr. Ghannouchi gave a 2011 Arabic-language interview in which he predicts the end of Israel, a viewpoint which is not surprising given that he has had a long history of ties to Palestinian extremism and calls for terrorism. From 1988-92, the Islamic Committee for Palestine organized conferences and rallies in the United States that featured the leading figures from Islamic extremist movements throughout the world. One example of such a conference took place in Chicago from December 22-25, 1989 and featured Mr. Gahannouchi as a speaker. Its theme was “Palestine, Intifada, and Horizons of Islamic Renaissance” and other speakers included Abd Al-‘Aziz Al’Awda, the “spiritual leader” of Islamic Jihad and Muhammad ‘Umar of Hizb Al-Tahrir, the Islamic Liberation Party.
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Prochaine monstration de la vidéo “ De mythes et de choses” à Stuttgart dans le cadre du Gabes Cinéma Fen in Stuttgart.
18-20 septembre 2020
Avec des films et des vidéos d'
Ismail Bahri, Nicène Kossentini, Souad Mani, Amine Koudhai, Alaeddin Abou Taleb, Malek Gnaoui, Haythem Zakaria, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Younes Ben Slimane, Fakhri El Ghezal, Hedi Ladjimi, Fakhri El Ghezal, Rabeb M'barki, Erige Sehiri, JIlani Saâdi
Curater
Negar Tahsili
#souadmani #gabescinemafen
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Just. Watch. Me
read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Ix5Mnd
by WhyWhyNot
How Rabeb Jiddah found her vocation
Words: 213, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
Series: Part 4 of The world built by those who came before us
Fandoms: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: Gen
Characters: Maximilienne Havoc, Rabeb Jiddah
Additional Tags: one century later, Racism
read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Ix5Mnd
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RABEB FERSI IS THE WINNER OF THE 7th EDITION WITH HER PROJECT "CROP'S TALK
The 7th edition of the “Challenge App Afrique” was won by Tunisian Rabeb Fersi for her project "Crop's Talk", a mobile application for agricultural advice aimed at helping small farmers improve their productivity and resilience to climate change.
Open to all Africans and young companies from the continent, the seventh edition of the Challenge App Afrique aimed to support the development of digital applications in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to support agriculture. More than 800 applications from over 20 countries were received.
On Tuesday 11 April, Rabeb Fersi was the guest of a special program, co-presented by Anne-Cécile Bras (RFI) and Valériane Gauthier (France 24), broadcast on Facebook live on the accounts of RFI, RFI Afrique, France 24 and Challenge App Afrique.
Find the relay of the final here
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CHIARAVALLE, 15 maggio 2018 – Dopo Sanremo ecco Perugia.
Gli studenti dell’istituto Podesti – Calzecchi Onesti, unica scuola superiore di Chiaravalle, trionfano anche all’Euroschool Festival dopo aver vinto la kermesse internazionale sanremese dedicata alla musica scolastica. In Umbria i ragazzi preparati dal docente di musica Vittorio Petrucci si sono aggiudicati l’ambito premio di merito per la sezione canzoni d’autore.
L’Euroschool Festival di Perugia ha visto partecipare oltre 10000 studenti, con 639 docenti e 622 accompagnatori: cifre che evidenziano l’importanza della manifestazione che investe giovani di tutta Europa e che coinvolge vari settori, dalla pittura al fumetto, dalla moda alla narrativa, alla fotografia alla musica. Gli studenti chiaravallesi sono stati premiati dal giornalista Luigi Giorgetti e da Samia Zakhama, presidente dell’associazione no profit per la promozione della cultura e dell’arte della ricreazione.
Gli studenti che hanno partecipato all’evento perugino sono i cantanti Maya Petrucci, Lucia Di Diego Lubrano, Eleonora Gabriele, Dalila Rabbani, i ballerini Vivian Owen, Sirin Chouchane, Anastasia Giannini, Merdassi Rabeb, Matilde Raffaelli, Mariangela Ferri, Francesca Mucci, Francesco Rosi, Daniele Vissani, Jihad Chemmaoui, Alessia Balzano, Khadija Khesouma e i musicisti Fatima Faraji al pianoforte, Tommaso Murri alla chitarra elettrica.
Gli insegnanti che hanno accompagnato gli studenti sono stati Roberta Maggiori, Vittorio Petrucci e Sonia Scipioni.
I ragazzi hanno eseguito il brano di Renato Zero, “Nei giardini che nessuno sa”, con arrangiamento inedito del prof. Petrucci e di Dalila Rabbani. Ancora una volta, quindi, gli alunni del Podesti Calzecchi Onesti sono protagonisti di successi di prestigio.
Gianluca Fenucci
CHIARAVALLE / GLI STUDENTI DEL PODESTI VINCONO ANCHE ALL’EUROSCHOOL FESTIVAL DI PERUGIA CHIARAVALLE, 15 maggio 2018 - Dopo Sanremo ecco Perugia. Gli studenti dell’istituto Podesti – Calzecchi Onesti, unica scuola superiore di Chiaravalle, trionfano anche all’Euroschool Festival dopo aver vinto la kermesse internazionale sanremese dedicata alla musica scolastica.
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