ABSTRACT
The day when Tunisia's al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya announced to the local and international media that it wanted to be recognised as a legal political party functioning within the bounds of the constitution, was a turning-point in the history of the Tunisian Islamic movement. The accusation of violence was mainly linked to the wide unrest that had erupted among students in the secondary schools and faculties of the University of Tunisia during the spring of 1981. The Islamists had been very active in leading strikes and demonstrations around the country, to the point that they had once taken hostage the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences in Tunis in order to stop the police attacking them. Before the end of 1984, the MTI succeeded in organising its third national conference. President Bourguiba was in his native coastal town of Monastir at the beginning of August 1987. The third day of the month was his eighty-fourth birthday.
