Why is a rumpled, bespectacled professor of modern Tunisian history with a toothy grin and mop of silver hair being featured on a Muslim "blacklist"? (Although we are speaking in French, Kazdaghli uses the word in English.) He begins by explaining that money and influence are pouring into Tunisia from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These patriarchal countries regard the secular traditions of Tunisia as a threat to their fundamentalist, Wahhabist strain of Islam.

"Tunisia is the only country in the Muslim world where women have the same rights as men to ask for a divorce," he says. "We don't practice polygamy. Tunisia is a special case. It is a counter model, which is why they want to get rid of it. Without Tunisia, they can say that certain customs are practiced only in the West. They are embarrassed that we, as Muslims, have the same equality between men and women as one finds in the land of the 'nonbelievers.'"

The pressure on Tunisia from the Gulf states is taking its toll, says Kazdaghli. "Political instability makes us ripe for their work. The salafists are the instruments for applying these policies. We are resisting, but every day the resistance grows weaker. At the university, we no longer have police defending our buildings. They have been removed, as the suspicion grows that we are no longer 'good Muslims.'"

"The salafists are violent and empowered in this violence by invoking the name of Allah," he says. "This gives them their credibility. A week can go by, or two weeks, and then suddenly they swarm into action."

The list of demands made on the university by the salafists comes entirely from the Wahhabist playbook. "They want the university divided in half, with a wall down the middle," says Kazdaghli. "One part will be reserved for women, one for men. The women will be taught only by women, the men only by men. 'This is how it works in Saudi Arabia,' they told me.

"'But we're in Tunisia,' I replied. 'We have a different history and culture. We have had two constitutions and are about to get our third. In Saudi Arabia they don't have a constitution. The Saudis say the Koran is their constitution. The salafists say that everything they need to know is in the Koran. You don't need a dean. You don't need professors. You just read the Koran, and when you're done, you'll know everything you need to know."

Several people witnessed Kazdaghli's office being trashed, and the president of the film club, who was in the building, shot a video of the event. One of Kazdaghli's attackers, after fainting and being removed from campus by an ambulance, found a doctor willing to say that she bore traces of a slap on her right cheek, for which he prescribed 10 days of bed rest. "I am right-handed; if had been able to catch her when she was running around my office, I would have slapped her on the left check," says Kazdaghli with a laugh. The doctor's testimony, lacking photos, measurements, or other evidence supporting the diagnosis, was thrown out of court.