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Mon, Feb 07, 2011 | The Rubin Report | By Barry Rubin

Rachid Ghanouchi

Tunisia and “Moderate Islamists”: Rachid Ghanouchi Says it All

It’s true that Tunisia’s Islamist movement is less radical than that in other Arab countries. But it really says a lot that Rachid Ghanouchi, the most important Tunisian Islamist, who has just returned home after a long exile thanks to the anti-regime revolt there, can say:

“Why do people want to compare me to Bin Laden or Khomeini, when I am closer to [Turkish Prime Minister] Erdogan?”

So Ghanouchi is not going to attack New York and Washington, nor is he going to try to get nuclear weapons, spread Islamist revolution, and help take over Lebanon. That’s the good news.

If he’s like Erdogan, however, he might just align with Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah, along with the possible new radical Egyptian regime, while subverting U.S. policy.

But this is a good point. The threat is not only from reckless states obsessed with spreading Islamist revolution but also hostile states that take part in that bloc. This is a more likely outcome for Egypt than a Muslim Brotherhood Jihadi state.

But of course the Islamists are far from being able to take any power in Tunisia and that country has a real chance of succeeding at democracy.

Sun, Jan 30, 2011 | Associated Press | By Bouazza Ben Bouazza and Jeffrey Schaeffer

Tunisian Islamist Leader: I’m No Khomeini

(AP) TUNIS, Tunisia – The leader of a long-outlawed Tunisian Islamist party has returned home after two decades in exile, telling The Associated Press in his first interview on arrival that his views are moderate and that his Westward-looking country has nothing to fear.

Rachid Ghanouchi and about 70 other exiled members of Ennahdha, or Renaissance, flew home from Britain two weeks after autocratic President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced from power by violent protests. Ghanouchi rejected any comparison to more radical figures, including the hardline father of the Iranian Revolution.

“Some Western media portray me like (Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini, but that’s not me,” Rachid Ghanouchi told the AP.

[…]

“I am not going to run for president of Tunisia, nor as a minister nor as a parliamentarian,” he said in an interview at his brother’s home, where family members celebrated with a festive meal of couscous. Another long-exiled opponent – Moncef Marzouki, a secular leftist and human rights activist – was there to welcome him. Ghanouchi, 69, left the country as Ben Ali came to power in 1987. In 1991, he was convicted in absentia to life in prison, as were most of the party’s leaders. Ben Ali banned the party, accusing it of conspiring to kill him and establish a Muslim fundamentalist state. Ennahdha denied those accusations.

[…]

“So why are (certain) women afraid of me?” Ghanouchi said. In a reference to Muslim headscarves, he also asked: “Why don’t ‘liberated’ women defend the right of other women to wear what they want?”

Asked about his view on abortion, he dodged the question, saying the issue was complicated. Ghanouchi compared his politics to those of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Despite Erdogan’s Islamist roots, he has been widely viewed as a pragmatist largely loyal to the legacy of Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who sought to create a secular, modern state.

“Why do people want to compare me to (Osama) Bin Laden or Khomeini, when I am closer to Erdogan?” Ghanouchi said.

Read full article here.

So let’s put it this way:

There are states that are active on the anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Israel, revolutionary Islamist side: Iran, Syria, Lebanon under Hizballah, and the Gaza Strip under Hamas.

And there are states following the Turkish regime model that merely tilt more toward the new Islamist bloc. A post-Mubarak regime Egypt might well be in this category but with a specific mission in trying to help Hamas and the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood overthrow the Palestinian Authority and the Jordanian monarchy, respectively, and try to wipe Israel off the map.

As the Western mass media tell us how wonderfully things are going the entire U.S. and Western position in the Middle East is going down the drain.

Feel better now?