TUNIS — In the final week of the first election campaign of the Arab Spring, political discourse here in Tunisia has been all but consumed by contention over the television broadcast of an animated film, “Persepolis,” which touched off accusations of heresy and censorship.

In a campaign that people here often describe in terms of a choice between East and West, the debate has come closer than any poll to identifying the political center, underscoring why so many expect a victory for Tunisia’s mainstream Islamist party, Ennahda.

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.”