In post-revolution, newly-free Tunisia, universities have become the front line in the heated debate over the rights of women to don the niqab, reports Bill Code.
'They said we could have a prayer room if we dropped our demand to let niqabs in the classroom' Mohammed told me through an interpreter, stroking his long, patchy beard. 'So we said no.'
Tunis's Manouba University has, if the newspapers are to be believed, become the front line in a new national debate over the place of religion - and religious attire - in post-revolution Tunisia.
Mohammed, a young man with a friendly-enough demeanour and tinted glasses hiding an eye twitch, is the lead Salafist on campus.
At least that's what I'm told - as tends to happen in Tunisia, where Tunisians themselves are still learning, he says he's not a Salafist.
It certainly is something of a bogey word amongst the secular elite and sections of the media here and overseas, and it's used to attack people like him, he says.
He has two main goals he is keen to push: a prayer room on campus, and giving girls the right to wear the niqab into class.
On the day I visit, the Tunisian flag is flying high above the entrance to the university. Last year, the university gained notoriety when 'Salafists' took the flag down and replaced it with their black-flag of choice, following the denial of entry to a female student in Niqab, and the tremendous he-said she-said which ensued.
The issue scandalised the Tunisian media and made world headlines. In a country which was still debating the role of Sharia in the constitution, the position of minorities in the country, and what it means to be a Tunisian, it has rallied supporters of different causes.
But while plenty of secular Tunisians spit venom when talking about growing hordes of 'barbarians' with the beards and niqabs, many students on campus think the university mishandled the matter.
Habib Karzdaghli, dean of the Arts and Humanities department, is keen on defending his handling of the ensuing hunger strike and the ongoing ban on the niqab in class.
'I think you can better understand others when they're not wearing the niqab' he says from behind his large, cluttered desk - a desk he was prevented from even accessing at the height of confrontations. 'Body language is important.'
Women can now wear the niqab on campus, he claims - but not in class. Two girls come to the campus each day now but don't go into their classes, he says.
'And they won't pass the exams.'
Sawsen, a girl in headscarf and a long, concealing brown dress, does not agree with this analysis, and modestly refuses my newbie attempt to shake her hand. She wears the niqab outside of university, and would be quick to don it, along with 'many others', were it to be allowed on campus, she says. If the university has ruled that niqabs are now allowed on campus, the message hasn't reached some of the girls who are keenest on it.
I meet Sawsen while engaged with a group of students from the UGTE, the newest of the two main unions. Like the rest of the country, Tunisia's universities have opened up.
After years of being the only union permitted, the UGTE, with a strong element of islamist students, is challenging the hegemony of the long-standing, and therefore largely secular, UGET.
Veiled and unveiled, bearded and not, these UGTE students were clear on one point - the freedom of students to wear what they want on campus.
Back in his office, Karzdaghli roughly agrees with Mohammed's analysis of the offer of a prayer-room in exchange for dropping the niqab demands, stressing the unbendable 'rules' when it comes to clothing.
'It's not just for the girls, it's for the professors as well', he says. Girls need to show their teachers their faces, and their male counterparts need to stop harassing teachers, he says.
He waves a piece of paper in my direction hailing from the ministry, purporting to give him full jurisdiction and decision-making powers.
The problem's not solved. 'In mid-May there will be exams', he says, reiterating to me that face-covering means no place at the exam table, before offering an analysis which does well to describe many elements of a post-revolution Tunisian not quite on tenterhooks, but harbouring a very incomplete feeling.
'We're not at war', he muses. 'And we're not in peace.'
