Tunisia's Hamadi Jebali, left, likely to be the next prime minister, has alarmed liberals and secularists.

Tunisia's Hamadi Jebali, left, likely to be the next prime minister, has alarmed liberals and secularists. Photo: AFP

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''.

Hamadi Jebali, secretary-general of al-Nahda, the party which won 89 of 217 seats in the assembly to draft a new constitution, 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 a 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.

The left-of-centre, secular al-Takatol party, which came third in the vote, suspended talks over forming a coalition 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 Jebali's remarks come after Libyan gunmen broke into the Saif al-Nasr mosque in Tripoli this month and removed the remains of Saif al-Nasr, a scholar who died 155 years ago. Some Islamists consider shrines to dead men inside mosques to be heretical.

''These bodies have been moved to a Muslim cemetery,'' announced graffiti on the walls.

Sufi militiamen are now guarding other mosques in the Libyan capital, including the Shaab Mosque, where another revered scholar is interred.

TELEGRAPH, BLOOMBERG