Tunisian Revolution a national television broadcast on , President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali criticized people for their protests calling the perpetrators "extremists and mercenaries" and warned of "firm" punishment. He also accused "certain foreign television channels of broadcasting false allegations without verification, based on dramatization, fermentation and deformation by media hostile to Tunisia." His remarks were ignored and the protests continued. On 29 December, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali shuffled his cabinet to remove his communications minister Oussama Romdhani, while also announcing changes to the trade and handicrafts, religious affairs, communication and youth portfolios. The next day he also announced the
Secularism in Tunisia his secularism. Following increasing economic problems, Islamist movements came about in 1970 with the revival of religious teaching in Ez-Zitouna University and the influence which came from Arab religious leaders from Syrian and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhoods. There was also influence by Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose members issued a magazine in Tunis named "Azeytouna". Government-induced secularization triggered the formation of the Islamic Tendency Movement; the movement and its leader Rached Ghannouchi turned into a rallying point for government opponents. In the aftermath, the struggle of Bourguiba and then Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who succeeded him, with political Islamists went out of