History of modern Tunisia as the International Year of Youth. Starting in December 2010, Tunisian citizens began mass protesting against unemployment and Ben Ali's corruption. As mass protests grew, Ben Ali declared a state of emergency in the country, dissolved the government on 14 January 2011 and promised new legislative elections within six months. Later on that same day Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi went on state television to say he was assuming power in Tunisia and said that the President had left the country. Ben Ali fled the country on 14 January at 4:00 pm local time on a flight bound for Dubai and
Secularism in Tunisia his secularism. Following increasing economic problems, Islamist movements came about in 1970 with the revival of religious teaching in Ez-Zitouna University and the influence which came from Arab religious leaders from Syrian and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhoods. There was also influence by Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose members issued a magazine in Tunis named "Azeytouna". Government-induced secularization triggered the formation of the Islamic Tendency Movement; the movement and its leader Rached Ghannouchi turned into a rallying point for government opponents. In the aftermath, the struggle of Bourguiba and then Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who succeeded him, with political Islamists went out of