TUNIS: A Tunisian court has sentenced six radical Islamists to five years in prison for burning a Sufi Muslim shrine in one of a spate of attacks that have highlighted rising militancy in the country that ignited the Arab Spring.
Last October, Salafist Muslims descended upon Saida Manouba, a famous Sufi shrine in Tunis, setting it alight and attacking visitors. Salafists, whose ultraconservative ideology is followed by Al Qaeda, consider Sufism, a mystical form of Islam, as heretical.
Tunisia was the first country to be rocked by an Arab Spring uprising in 2011, ending the authoritarian rule of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and inspiring similar revolutions in Egypt and Libya.
Since then, the struggle over the role of Islam in government and society has emerged as the most divisive issue in politics, regularly erupting into violent clashes.
Sufi leaders have said around 40 sites were ransacked by Salafists in recent months, prompting the government to promise emergency measures to protect mausoleums and shrines.
Reuters
