When Kais Saïed proclaimed a state of exception on 25 January 2021, his objective was to implement his presidential project of a populist constitution, which combines state sovereigntism with popular sovereigntism, built on the basis of local assemblies. This project involves dismantling the representative democracy established by the 2014 Constitution, which, according to Kais Saïed, was itself drawn up by “corrupt elites” and intermediary bodies (primarily political parties), who betrayed the will of the people and diverted the revolution of 2010-2011 from its true course. The new Head of State’s goal is therefore to “rectify the revolutionary process” so as to establish a Constitution that enshrines, within the same movement, the process of building democracy from the bottom up, and the institutional primacy of the Head of State, who himself acts as guarantor of the sovereignty of the people and the unity of the nation. What is the place of religion in this political project that led to the adoption of a new constitution? Kais Said, who deploys a political style and discourse marked by religiosity, has not ceased, since his election, to position himself as a virtuous prince and as an imam, sure of his religious knowledge and defender of a conservative public morality. For Kais Saïed, involvement in political action is a religious duty. Throughout the 2019 election campaign, the president liked to recall the Qur'anic verse from Sura The Cow that instructs the believer to fight, even if that fight is unpleasant. Although Kais Said removed the reference to the religion of the country or the state from Article 1 of the constitution, he reinforced the Islamicity of the constitutional text, particularly through Article 5, by making Tunisia part of the Islamic Ummah where 'only the state is required, in a democratic regime, to achieve the purposes (maqasid) of authentic Islam in preserving the soul, honor, property, religion and liberty'. Doesn't the text written like that pave the way to an islamisation of state and political action, especially since Kais Saïed considers himself, through the presidential institution, to personify the sovereignty of the people and the Islamic Ummah?
