The Islamist politician likely to become Tunisia's first democratically elected prime minister has alarmed liberals and secularists by claiming the arrival of the "sixth caliphate", a controversial term for a Muslim empire.
Hamadi Jebeli, secretary-general of Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party which romped to victory in last month's elections, told a rally in the city of Sousse: "My brothers, you are at a historic moment in a new cycle of civilisation, God willing. We are in sixth caliphate, God willing."
Party officials, who have spent months insisting they wanted to pursue secular democratic politics rather than an international Islamist agenda, were forced on the defensive after his comments were posted on the internet.
But they may have scuppered the party's hopes of forging a broad-based coalition. The left-of-centre secular Ettakatol, which came third in the vote, suspended talks with Ennahda over forming a government.
"We thought we were going to build a second republic with our partner – not a sixth caliphate," Khemais Ksila, a senior member, said.
Mr Jebeli was imprisoned under the dictatorship of Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali for his Islamist beliefs. But since the country's revolution in January, the party has argued it wants to work within a democratic political system along western lines.
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