France Press

TUNIS: A Tunisian minister condemned Thursday a university’s ban on full-face veils that sparked a weeks-long sit-in by conservative Muslims, saying they had completely mishandled the issue.
 
The three-month conflict at Manouba University, about 25 kilometers from Tunis, should never have happened, Moncef Ben Salem, minister for higher education, told reporters at the presidential palace.
 
“The Manouba affair is a false problem,” he said.
 
“We have 96 girls in all of Tunisia who wear the niqab [full-face veil] in the 193 university institutions, and there has been a problem nowhere except at Manouba,” he added.
 
The head of the faculty there “did not do what needed to be done to resolve the situation peacefully and he has ulterior political motives,” the minister added.
 
Salem was speaking a day after Islamic activists took down the Tunisian flag from the roof of a university building and replaced it with the black flag of the ultraconservative Salafist Muslims.
 
The protest came after six students were disciplined for wearing the niqab.
 
“It’s an unacceptable gesture,” said Salem. “But if this is what it’s come to it is because of an accumulation of mistakes,” in how the dispute was handled, he added, accusing both sides of extremism.
 
Salem said he had no view either way concerning the wearing of the full-face veil during classes. But Manouba and the media had blown the issue up out of all proportion, he said.
 
“It’s for the National Constituent Assembly to decide on,” he added.
 
The university banned the niqab over security concerns if students were concealed from head to toe, and officials there have for some time expressed frustration at the government’s failure to act over the protest.
 
On Jan. 24, Tunisian police ended the protest sit-in at the university.
 
Student protesters, most of whom were not enroled at the university, had been camped out there since Nov. 28 in support of the right of women students to wear the full veil. They also wanted a place of prayer on campus.
 
During the protest, some Salafists had attacked the Arabic department, according to witnesses.