GABES, Tunisia — If you walk by Mubarak Baadache’s home in this palm-filled seaside oasis town near Tunisia’s border with Libya during the Muslim month of Muharram, you will hear a sound blasting from an old cassette that is heard almost nowhere else in Tunisia: Shiite prayers.
Baadache is the self-proclaimed leader of the Shiite population in Tunisia and one of the only Tunisian Shiites to proudly and publicly confess his faith to the media.