New expressions of Islam in Tunisia: an ethnographic approach

This article analyses 'new expressions of Islam' in Tunisia before the popular uprising in 2010-2011. It does so from an ethnographic approach through which the researcher follows people as they go about their daily lives. The four `new expressions' which constitute the framework of the analysis are new in the sense that they have not been presented before, have a twist to them in either message or form, and have attracted very little attention from scholars both inside and outside Tunisia. The article concludes that Islam did not disappear in the decades under President Bourguiba and Ben Ali's rule, but shifted from the public to the private realm; that pictures, sounds, and changes in the physical surroundings created by the regimes within the area of Islam were important factors for peoples' experience of being in society; that many Tunisians were searching for values which could counter other changes in society; and that society did not remain silent, passive, or immune to reforms launched by the regime, but reacted and responded in ways which were originally detached from the regime and politics.