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After decades of producing sharply worded critiques of the former regime, Om Zied isn't quieting down in the new Tunisia, or even dulling her verbal blade. 'Cavemen' is the word she used on the radio a couple of months ago to describe the ultra-conservative Salafists at the University of Manouba, in a suburb of Tunis. Salafists were pressuring administrators to permit women to wear the niqab, a full face veil, to classes. During the same radio interview the self-avowed secularist argued that few Islamists had ever tried to defend the rights of veiled women under the regime of the ousted president, Ben Ali.