Islamists Storm School In Tunisia After Barring Veiled Student

Islamists storm school in Tunisia Wednesday after a Tunisian school barred entry to a teenage girl wearing a face veil or niqab, Reuters reported. Radical Muslims bursted into the Tunisian school and assaulted its chief. Teachers said that the incident highlights rising Islamist-secularist tensions in the country.

Since secular dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in the first “Arab Spring” uprising almost two years ago, the country has seen mounting strife between secularists who has long held power and Islamists whose influence is heightening.

The country’s moderate Ennahda Islamists’ party won a free election and now heads the Tunis government. However, hardline Salafists are pushing for Islam to be made the law of the land, which raises secularist fears for a loss of individual freedoms, women’s right and democracy.

Murad Ben Hamouda of the teachers’ union Manzel Bouzelfa has said that the Salafists who initiated the attack, smashed a few cars in the school compound and “tried to kill the director for refusing the entry of a schoolgirl dressed in niqab into the classroom."

The school’s superintendent Abdelwaheed Sentati was beaten with sticks and stones and has suffered several broken bones from the incident, according to Hamouda. The assailants fled and there have been no arrests and police had no immediate comment on the issue.

The number of Salafists involved in the attack was not clear. However, teachers who witnessed the event said that dozens of radicals loitered around the premise afterwards, spewing anti-secular chants and remarks.

One of the teachers at the attacked school, Khalifa Dif, said that classes have been suspended in protest and the union is considering a strike.

After a fierce and extended debate, the education ministry released a decision last year to preserve a classroom ban on women wearing the full-face veil of strict Muslims.

Manzel Bouzelfa is around 28 miles east of the capital Tunis and near Hammamet, a well-known tourist spot in the country.

In another sign of growing Islamist-secularist friction, Habib Kozdhogli, head of the arts faculty of Tunis University, will go on trial later this month. He is being charged for slapping a veiled student who insisted on entering a class last year.

Last year, hundreds of Islamists demanding segregated school classes and the right of women to wear full-faced veils at university clashed with many secular students near Tunis.

Tunisian police authorities blamed Salafists for the assassination of secular opposition politician Chokri Belaid on February 6, which brought the largest street protest in Tunisia since the overthrow of Ben Ali in January 2011.

Aside from the current conflicts the Salafists have caused thus far and their tensions with secularist, it also has prevented concerts and plays from being staged in several Tunisian cities last year, imposing the idea that they violated Islamic principles. Hardline Islamists also ransacked the U.S. Embassy in September during a global Muslim protests over a video posted online which they said insulted the Prophet Mohammed.