ABSTRACT
Since the Revolution in 2011,1 the Tunisian political and social landscape has appeared to be increasingly polarised between secularist and Islamist activism. The public sphere, the arena in which civil society operates, appears to reflect this polarisation, raising concerns that the tolerance, pluralism and inclusivity required for a thriving democratic body-politik are insufficient to sustain a democratic transition. Secularist political groups have sought to portray their Islamist counterparts as inherently undemocratic instrumentalists who endorse democratic processes and structures only as a means for achieving power in the short term, a discourse which the western liberal media sometime has been guilty of unquestioningly reproducing. In the meantime, the democratic commitments of secularist civil society groups themselves go largely unquestioned.
