Born in the village of El-Hamma in the south of Tunisia in 1941, Mr Ghannouchi was educated in Tunisia's Zaitouna university, and then continued with studying philosophy in Cairo, Damascus, and Paris. Mr Ghannouchi became active in politics by setting up the Islamic Tendency movement in 1981, later changed to Ennahdha (Renaissance). He was imprisoned due to his political activities from 1981 to 1984 and again from 1987 to 1988. After the falsification of the 1989 legislative elections by former president Ben Ali, Mr Ghannouchi left for London where he lived as a political exile for two decades, until his return home on 30 January 2011, after the Tunisian revolution.
Mr Ghannouchi is one of the most important and prolific thinkers in modern Islamic Political thought and theory. Since the early 1980's, he has been an advocate of the compatibility between Islam and the principles of pluralism, freedom, modernity and democratic governance. His views and writings are influential in Tunisia, and the rest of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

He has written many books, which have been translated in several languages, including:

• Public Freedoms in an Islamic State
• The right of citizenship in an Islamic state
• Democracy and Human Rights in Islam
• Women between the Quran and reality
• Essays on secularism and civil society
• From the experience of the Islamic movement in Tunisia
• Our path to civilisation
• The Islamic movement and the issue of change
• Destiny in Ibn Taymiah's thought