They also claimed the party was behind the 2013 assassinations of Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, two progressive political leaders of the leftist Popular Front electoral alliance.

It said that the Popular Front was exploiting the two assassination cases and using blood as an excuse to reach the government after failing to do so through democratic means.

[22] Following 2011 and the "Arab Spring" mainstream media reports, journalist Robert F. Worth calls it "the mildest and most democratic Islamist party in history.

[31][32] Their influence in 1984 was such that, according to Robin Wright, a British journalist living in Tunisia, stated that the Islamic Tendency was "the single most threatening opposition force in Tunis.

Its main leader Rached Ghannouchi, has been criticized for calling for jihad against Israel[34] and "openly threatened U.S. interests, supported Iraq against the United States and campaigned against the Arab-Israeli peace process".

[36] Ennahda's newspaper Al-Fajr was banned in Tunisia and its editor, Hamadi Jebali, was sentenced to sixteen years imprisonment in 1992 for membership in the un-authorized organisation and for "aggression with the intention of changing the nature of the state".

The party was described as moving "quickly to carve out a place" in the Tunisian political scene, "taking part in demonstrations and meeting with the prime minister.

In May 2011, Ennahda's General Secretary Hamadi Jebali traveled to Washington, D.C., on the invitation of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy[44] He also met U.S.

Moreover, he named Turkey a model, regarding the relation of state and religion, and compared the party's Islamic democratic ideology to Christian democracy in Italy and Germany.

[47] On 31 December 2021, Ennahda claimed in a statement that the party's Vice President and member of the Tunisian Parliament, Noureddine El-Beheiry, had been abducted by “security forces with civilian clothes and taken to an unknown destination.”[48][49] On 2 January 2022, AFP reported that El-Beheiry had been rushed to intensive care at a hospital in the northern town Bizerte and was in a "critical condition".

[50] The speaker of Tunisia's suspended parliament, Rached Ghannouchi wrote to President Kais Saied asking him to reveal the whereabouts and condition of El-Beheiry.

According to scholar Noah Feldman, rather than being a "puzzling disappointment for the forces of democracy", the Ennahda victory is a natural outcome of inevitable differences between revolution's leaders and the fact that "Tunisians see Islam as a defining feature of their personal and political identities."

"[15] Subsequently, it agreed with the two runners-up, the centre-left secular Congress for the Republic (CPR) and Ettakatol, to co-operate in the Assembly and to share the three highest positions in state.

[57] The government was criticized for mediocre economic performance, not stimulating the tourism industry, poor relations with Tunisia's biggest trading partner France.

In particular it was criticized for not monitoring and controlling radical Islamists (such as Ansar al-Sharia) who were blamed for, among other things, attempting to Islamise the country, the 2012 ransacking and burning of the American embassy.

[60] On 19 February 2013, following the assassination of Chokri Belaid and ensuing protests, Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali resigned from his office,[61] a move which was deemed unprecedented by analysts.

[76] In 2021, Ennahda faced widespread public anger as the country experienced a political crisis due to 2021 Tunisian protests.

[77] The Tunisian government has detained at least 17 current or former members of the party, including its head, and closed its offices around the nation since December 2022.

[82][83] The party is generally described as socially centrist with mild support for economic liberalism and has been compared to European Christian democrats.

"[86] Political scientist Riadh Sidaoui explains that the Ennahda leader models his approach on the moderate Islamism of Turkey; he says: "The leadership was forced into exile in London for a long time [because of harassment by Tunisian police] and understood about the need to have a balanced outlook... No one wants a repeat of the 1991 Algerian scenario.

While the tone was said do be sharply in contrast to official statements of the party,[88] Jebali was appointed Prime Minister of Tunisia a mere month later.

[89] Ahmed Ibrahim of the Tunisian Pole Democratique Moderniste political bloc complained to a foreign journalist that Ennahda appears "soft" on television, "but in the mosques, it is completely different.

[90] The general manager of Al Arabiya wrote an editorial expressing the opinion that Ennahda is fundamentally a conservative Islamist party with a moderate leadership.

The position sparked outrage among Tunisian progressives and liberals who accused the party of lying about its embrace of democracy, and turning back to its Islamic radical origins.

[98] In 2021, Fathi Layouni, Ennahda mayor of Le Kram, declared to a local radio station that the natural place for homosexuals is either prisons or psychiatric hospitals and that they are forbidden from entering his city.