Rashid al-Ghannushi

Rashid al-Ghannushi is a co-founder of the Ennahda Party that won the 2011 Tunisian elections. A Socialist at university in Damascus, he later became more religious and turned to Islamism. In the early 1980s, the then-dictator of Tunisia allowed some political freedoms, and al-Ghannushi used this opportunity to form the political party that would later become Ennahda. Three months after its founding, the leaders were imprisoned, and seven years later, al-Ghannushi would be sent into exile.

He stayed in exile until two weeks after Ben Ali's exit. Upon his return to Tunisia, he was greeted with a hero's welcome, which worried many secular Tunisians. Since then, he has tried to assuage the fears of those secularists, assuring them that the party, while being Islamist, is moderate. He has released a statement promising that the people will choose whether to enact Islamic standards concerning modesty and the availability of alcohol.

For more information, see http://bit.ly/o8EYSR.