broadcast of Marjane Satrapi's film Persepolis roils Tunisia before election

The episode began when a relatively small group of ultraconservative Islamists attacked the television station that had broadcast the 2007 film, about a Muslim girl growing up in post-revolutionary Iran, because of a scene in which she rails at God. He is depicted as she imagines him, violating an Islamic injunction against personifying him.

But it soon became clear that ultraconservatives were hardly the only ones offended. The broadcast has touched a nerve among a far broader section of Tunisia’s Muslims, even in the coastal regions where many pride themselves on their cosmopolitanism. “It is true we do not all fast, and we do not all pray,” said Saleh Mohamed Khoudi, 53, a director of technology at a private company. “But this is too much.”

Semiha Sehli, 33, who works in finance, said she wanted nothing to do with the Islamists and did not trust Ennahda. But even she was shocked when she saw the offending scene on Facebook. Sure, she acknowledged, all little children imagine a personified God. “You can imagine it, but you shouldn’t put it in a movie,” she said.