Tunisia's transitional government on Thursday condemned verbal attacks on Jews by Muslims outside the Tunis synagogue last week and called on religious and civic leaders to denounce such actions.
In a statement released by the official TAP news agency, the ministry of religious affairs denounced any act likely to undermine respect for different faiths and expressed regret that the incident had taken place.
The ministry stressed that Tunisia had always been a meeting place for different civilisations, religions and cultures. "In line with our ideals and the spirit of our grand people's revolution, we can only be more devoted to the traditions of freedom of religious expression, as much in beliefs as in the practice of the faith," the statement said.
Last Friday, at the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, a group of men shouted anti-Semitic slogans outside the synagogue, "Be gone the Jews, the army of Mohammed is back!"
The leader of the Muslim country's small centuries-old Jewish community, Roger Bismuth, said he had met Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi and informed him of the Islamist demonstration.
"About 40 religious people gathered Friday in front of the main synagogue in Tunis and started chanting ant-Jewish slogans and inappropriate words," he said. "I think this is something that might happen again," he said.
Pictures and videos taken by witnesses at the anti-Jewish demonstration showed Islamists, some dressed in black, carrying banners bearing verses from the Quran and shouting slogans hostile to the Jews. It happened after the exit from the nearby Alfath mosque.
The demonstrators shouted anti-Semitic slogans and called for the murder of all Jews in the world. "We'll redo the battle of Khaybar" recalling the killing in 628 of the Jews living in the oasis of Khaybar in the Arabian Pensinsula, now Saudi Arabia.
The Jewish community in Tunisia -- estimated at some 1,500 strong, most of whom in Djerba, 500 kilometres (300 miles) south of Tunis -- expressed its concern to the authorities after this incident at the synagogue in the capital.
The government condemned all extremist activity outside places of worship.
A leader of the Jewish community in Djerba, Rene Trabelsi, said that the trouble-makers came from the Muslim fundamentalist movement El-Tahrir (Freedom), "very silent under the regime of (toppled) president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, but now out to cause chaos."
"The situation in the country calls for vigilance" because extremists "take advantage of a vacuum," said Roger Bismuth.