Tunisia

November 2006 | Risk Summary

The Tunisian government has moved to re-enforce the ban on the headscarf in public spaces with the Minister of Religious Affairs, Boubaker Al-Akhzouri, declaring that 'imported sectarian [dress] has nothing to do with religion whatsoever. Some people have adopted it as a symbol of [their Islamist] political affiliation'. This is unlikely to go down well in significant parts of what is essentially an overwhelmingly Muslim population. The banned Islamist group al-Nadha Movement has called it a 'Ramadan offensive' and the country has been criticised both domestically and across the region. The extent of the government's sensitivity to the matter was

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