They've watched their leaders jailed, their offices closed and their movement repeatedly attacked.
But five years after President Kais Saied seized sweeping powers and dismantled Tunisia's democratic institutions, supporters of Ennahda insist the country's largest Islamist movement is preparing to rise from the ashes.
Rather than seeing the past five years as the movement's final chapter, many of the group's younger members describe the crackdown as another episode in a history marked by imprisonment, exile and political persecution.
They say it has forced Ennahda to confront its mistakes, renew its leadership and prepare for a future beyond Saied's rule.
"The idea that Ennahda has been defeated and that Tunisians no longer want Islamic parties is simply not true," said Ahmed, a 23-year-old resident of Ettadhamen, a working-class suburb of Tunis with a long history of support for Islamist movements.
"More and more young people want a movement that is rooted in Islam, a movement that speaks to our identity and will stand up for Muslims being oppressed across the world."
Ahmed's optimism stands in stark contrast to the movement's current predicament.
Since Saied suspended parliament on 25 July 2021, Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi and dozens of senior opposition figures have been imprisoned, while much of the movement's leadership has been prosecuted or pushed into exile.
Once the dominant force in Tunisia's democratic transition, Ennahda is today weaker than at any point since the rule of former strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Inside the movement, however, few believe its story has ended.
Founded in the early 1980s, Ennahda emerged as Tunisia's principal Islamist opposition movement under Ben Ali, with thousands of its members imprisoned, tortured or forced into exile.
When the Arab Spring toppled his decades-long rule, the movement returned to public life and won Tunisia's first democratic elections, presenting itself as a model of what its leaders called "Muslim democracy".
Unlike many Islamist movements elsewhere in the region, Ennahda argued that Islam and democracy were complementary rather than contradictory.
Over time it moved away from the idea of an Islamist party towards what Ghannouchi described as a party of "Muslim democrats", committed to pluralism, constitutional rule and peaceful transfers of power.
At its landmark 2016 congress, the movement formally separated its political and religious activities, arguing that mosques should not become arenas for party politics.
Rather than advocating the imposition of Islamic law, Ennahda said religion should provide society with moral guidance while democratic institutions, competitive elections and an independent judiciary remained the basis of government.
Its manifesto committed the movement to civil liberties, equal citizenship and political pluralism, positions that distinguished it from many other Islamist parties across the region.
That evolution won cautious support from Western governments eager to see Tunisia succeed where much of the Arab Spring had faltered.
Following Ennahda's election victory in 2011, the US State Department said it looked forward to working with Tunisia's newly elected leaders as they built "a democratic future".
Britain's Foreign Office likewise welcomed the country's free and fair elections and pledged its support for Tunisia's democratic transition.
