The standard of Tunisian-ness, also known as Tunisianité, has deep roots in Tunisian history. (Merone, 2015; Zemni, 2016; Helal, 2019). The process of democratization that started in 2011 maintained the stigma of Islamists, Salafists, and illiberal Muslims as backward and non-modern, only updating the requirements of Tunisianité. Once Ennahdha, the Islamist party in government, reshaped the boundaries of Tunisianité to secure their survival (Cavatorta and Merone, 2015; Haugbølle, 2015), the illiberal, pious women activists became the new excluded from the opportunity of being model citizens. They do not fit in the frame of Tunisianité because their will of performing a non-Nahdawi, non-moderate understanding of Islam, does not match with the needs of a liberal and laïque political system. (Asad, 2003). After a progressive securitization of Tunisian politics, illiberal, pious Muslim women activists today do not engage in active political opposition, do not organize direct actions against the state nor encourage other people to do so. Yet, they feel marginalized and excluded from their own society and government. Despite the perception of exclusion, they employ their time and energies imagining an alternative and more Islamic society, resisting and challenging the restrictive state-led impositions and narratives such as the unique model for being a ‘proper’ Tunisian citizen. The methodology consists of extensive, ethnographic fieldwork in Tunisia where I spent two years from 2018 to 2020, conducting interviews and participant observation for my doctoral dissertation. During this time, I managed to observe and interview what I called pious illiberal women within the environment of Koranic associations, non-electoral parties, and independent activists. Within the Koranic associations, I took part myself in tilawa classes, while I had access to the members of non-electoral parties and independent activists through the snowballing method. I managed to conduct a survey of eighteen women from the Koranic association and did semi-structured and informal interviews with fifteen pious illiberal women in total. Thus, this study, as the result of my Ph.D. research, claims that pious illiberal women do have agency by showing evidence of their political activism – within the koranic associations and not only – and their resistance to the national identity myth of Tunisianité.