SCRIPT

Hanene decided to wear the niqab, the full face veil, just after the uprising early last year that toppled former president Ben Ali and his regime.

The outfit is banned in Tunisian schools and 14-year old Hanene decided to give up her studies and now only leaves her home to go to the mosque.

She's not happy with her life like this but is not about to give up her beliefs.

SOUNDBITE 1 Hanene (woman) (Arabic, 11 sec):
"I think it's an obligation for Muslim women whether they're French or another nationality."

Hanane's mother completely opposes her daughter's decision.

SOUNDBITE 2 Hanane's mother (woman) (Arabic, 10 sec):
"She met people at the mosque who encouraged her to put on the niqab. I've never encouraged her to wear it. If she removes it she can live a normal life and go back to her studies. Then afterwards she can put it on again but she's doesn't want that. "

At the Faculty of Arts college in the Manouba neighbourhood of Tunis, the Salafist students are performing Friday prayers.

They have been holding a sit in at the university for two months now, disrupting both classes and exams, as they call for the right to wear the full face veil in universities and to build a mosque inside the faculty.

Those demands are only the first step in their push towards the strict application of Sharia law.

SOUNDBITE 3 Ramzi, Salafist student (man) (Arabic, 10 sec):
"The people's sovereignty is a phrase we don't want to use. We want sovereignty to be returned to God and then we can move towards democracy."

Similar calls for changing religious rules have taken place in schools in Tunisia in recent weeks, leaving teachers feeling powerless and abandoned by the authorities.

SOUNDBITE 4 Chelli Hatem (man) Professor (French, 25 sec):
"The Ministry of Higher Education is absent, the government is absent and nobody is taking any decisions."

The more moderate Islamist Ennada party that came to power in October elections has not yet responded to these recent incidents.

It may be a way of avoiding alienating their hardline supporters but their silence only serves to worry the more secular parts of Tunisian society.

SHOTLIST

MANOUBA, TUNISIA, JANUARY 25, 2012, SOURCE: AFPTV

- VAR of Hanene with her mother at their home in Tunis
- SOUNDBITE 1
- CU of Hanane's mother
- SOUNDBITE 2
- VAR of Friday prayers at the universiry in Manouba
- VAR of salafists praying
- VAR of Ramzi
- MS of students listening to the sermon
- SOUNDBITE 3
- VAR of the entrance of the Preparatory Institute for Engineering Studies in Tunis
- MS of Hatem Chelli
- SOUNDBITE 4
- VAR of student's sit-in at the university in Tunis

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AFP text story:

Tunisia-politics-Islam-religion-protest
Thousands protest conservative Islam in Tunisia
=(PICTURE)=

TUNIS, Jan 28, 2012 (AFP) - Thousands of Tunisians angered by the increasing prominence of ultra-conservative Islamists in a country only recently freed from dictatorial rule took to the streets in protest Saturday.
An AFP correspondent estimated several thousand activists, professors, artists and other demonstrators flooded the streets of the nation's capital, including along Bourguiba Avenue, a well-known thoroughfare that became a centre for dissent during protests that led to the ouster of dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali a year ago.
Some in Tunisia are angry by the growing influence of radical Islamists, known as Salafists, who have dominated headlines in recent weeks.
Police on Tuesday ended a weeks-long sit-in by Salafists at the university in Manouba, about 25 kilometres (15 miles) from Tunis. The Salafists were angry the university had banned the full-face Muslim veil, or niqab, over security concerns if students were concealed from head to toe.
Journalists have also suffered attacks at Salafist protests.
"We are here to speak out against aggression against journalists, activists and academics," said Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, founder of the Democratic Progressive Party. "And to tell the government that Tunisians' hard-fought freedoms must not be compromised."
Sarah Kalthoum, a retired teacher in her 70s, said she was concerned by what she viewed as regressive ideas from Salafists.
"We spent our lives educating people, and now some want us to go back in time 14 centuries," she said.
Some in the crowd said they are sensing an encroaching religious conservativism in their everyday lives.
"The grocer told me the other day, 'I don't like your jeans,'" said Leila Katech, a retired anaesthesiologist. "I told him I didn't like his beard."
Through this religious prism, "Everything becomes tougher: Going to see a gynaecologist, what to wear, how to talk," Katech said.
Following Ben Ali's ouster, many Tunisians in October voted for the Islamist Ennahda party, which now dominates the government.
Anxious not to alienate its more radical members, the moderate Islamist party has remained quiet or reacted timidly to some Salafist incidents.
"This government is not complicit, but it is complacent," Chebbi said.
Tunisia was the first country in the Arab world to initiate mass protests against its autocratic leadership, triggering a wave of protests across the region last year in what became known as the Arab Spring uprisings that led to the ouster of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Libya's Moamer Kadhafi.
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