Gamle og nye udtryk for islam i Tunesien: Regimerne og den islamiske Radio Zitouna

Abstract

In 2007 Tunisia’s first Islamic radio channel, Radio Zitouna, was launched. The year before, in 2006, a public expression of Islam by the population culminated when Ben Ali and his regime cracked down on women wearing the Islamic veil in public. Same year the regime caught an Islamist group planning an attack on strategic places and the president and therefore described by the regime as terrorists. With a point of departure in the theories presented by studies of the Arab authoritarian regimes it would be obvious to explain the launch of Radio Zitouna as a regime response to a threat against one of its power strongholds, Islam. However, this article widens the perspective of Radio Zitouna and includes other aspects than the relation between the radio station and the regime. Bases on analysis of a number of programmes broadcast from 2007 to 2009 and interviews with the staff at the radio station in 2009 and 2010 the article presents other contexts which do not only link to the current events in Tunisia but rather relates to a broader historical and political context.