http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1047/eg40.htm
12 - 18 May 2011
Issue No. 1047
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Salafism: The unknown quantity
Sectarian incidents like the burning of churches in Imbaba have put the
spotlight on Salafis. Who are they, and what do they espouse, asks Amani Maged
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Click to view caption
Although a few know who the Salafis really are, they have become the talk
of the nation
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Who exactly are the Salafis? What kinds of them are there? What is their
relationship to the government and what is their political future? Some have
announced that they plan to establish political parties. How will recent events
affect their popularity?
It appears that Salafis come in various shades. They do not rally behind a
single leader, such as the Muslim Brotherhood or Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya. Rather,
they have a collection of sheikhs, each of which has its own following, and
they have their own associations.
The history of Salafism in Egypt dates to the height of the university student
movements in the 1970s, which is when Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya first made its
appearance. Although most of the members of this society signed up with the
Muslim Brotherhood, a significant number moved in another direction. This
applies in particular to the Islamist students in Alexandria University who
were influenced by Salafi thought that hailed from Saudi Arabia and was
transmitted primarily by Al-Azhar university professors. Instead of joining the
Muslim Brotherhood after withdrawing from Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, such
individuals, most known among who was Mohamed Ismail Al-Muqaddam, formed a
kernel of Salafism that began to grow as more and more students were attracted
to that school of thought.
The competition between Salafi youth and the Muslim Brothers to attract
students and dominate mosques grew increasingly intense, culminating in the
violent clash of 1980. Subsequently, the Salafis decided to operate more
systematically. They created the "Salafist School", headed by Mohamed
Abdel-Fattah (aka Abu Idris). Then, following several years of grassroots work,
they changed its name to the Salafist Calling. By this time, their following
grew to hundreds of thousands spread across the entire country, although they
were better known as the Salafis of Alexandria, Egypt's northern port city
being the starting point for some of the best known Salafi leaders, notably
Mohamed Ismail Al-Muqaddam, Ahmed Farid, Said Abdel-Azim, Mohamed Abdel-Fattah,
Yasser Brahimi, Ahmed Hatiba, Abdel-Moneim El-Shahat, Mahmoud Abdel-Hamid and
Abu Idris.
While there are many shades of Salafism, for the most part they can be divided
into two primary aspects: the ideological and the organisational. The former,
according to Salah El-Adl, a professor at Al-Azhar University and specialist on
Islamic movements and schools of thought, consists of three groups. One he
terms the scholastic Salafis who, as noted above, founded the Salafist Calling
in Alexandria in the 1970s and now number in the hundreds of thousands. With
branches in virtually every governorate, they are headed by sheikhs who
generally work closely together. Although they were opposed to the 25 January
Revolution, they have since become increasingly active in the social and
political domains. Prior to 25 January, they were prohibited from interacting
with the public, and state security forces would round up hundreds of their
activists. Now that they enjoy greater freedom, they have moved into the open,
proselytising in the streets, holding conferences and occupying mosques, the
most recent example of which occurred when Salafis moved to restore control of
the Nour Mosque to the control of Sheikh Hafez Salama, leader of the popular
resistance in the governorate of Suez.
The second group, which El-Adl calls the activist Salafis, also trace their
beginnings to the 1970s, but to the populous Shubra district in Cairo. Their
most prominent sheikh was Fawzi El-Said and other major leaders included
Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, Sayed El-Arabi and Sheikh Nashaat Ibrahim. Like their
Alexandrian counterparts, the activists subscribe to the belief that a ruler is
heretic if he does not govern by God's decrees, a belief that they proclaim
openly in their sermonising. Yet, while they also criticise the lack of the
veil, bodily display and other such forms of corruption in society as
manifestations of jahiliya, or the state of ignorance of divine guidance, they
do not go so far as to condemn them as heresy. They also maintain that the
slightest departure from the Sharia of Islam is bidaa -- an innovation, and
hence heretical.
These Salafis had formerly refused to participate in democratic elections.
Democracy and parliaments were heresies. They had long argued that
parliamentary democracy differed from the Islamic concept of shura
(consultation) because it did not take God's law as its authority. However,
they have since backtracked and now approve of participation in the democratic
process. In fact, they were particularly active in the run- up to the
referendum on the constitutional amendments and they have announced that they
would support the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya candidates who
agree with their reformist vision. Moreover, some Salafis have decided to form
political parties.
The third group consists of "jihadists", a term that is generally applied to
radical Islamist groups that espouse violence as a means to bring about change.
The jihadist Salafis take their inspiration from leaders of the first
generations of Islam, or the "pious forefathers", for whom jihad -- holy war --
was a pillar of the creed. They hold that a pious Muslim is duty-bound to fight
governments and rulers who do not apply Islamic law and the principle of the
dominion of God, and who also ally with non-Muslim countries that make war on
Muslim peoples and occupy Muslim territories. Sayed Qotb is regarded as the
father of modern jihadist Salafi thought. The movement's most famous leaders
are the billionaire founder of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, who was recently
assassinated by the United States, and the Egyptian physician Ayman El-Zawahri,
and two of its most notorious ideological mentors are Abu Mohamed Al-Maqdisi
and Abu Qatada Al-Filistini.
The organisational side of the Salafis also has several branches or
institutions, most notably the Ansar Al-Sunna Al-Mohamediya Society (the
Followers of the Sunna of the Prophet Mohamed), founded by Sheikh Mohamed Hamed
El-Fiqi, an Al-Azhar scholar. The society advocates a staunch monotheism and
strict adherence to the Sunna, as understood by the Companions of the Prophet,
and to Quranic scripture. It is, therefore, opposed to practices that are based
on superstition and calls for an all-embracing Islam the embraces both faith
and society, and the mode of worship and the mode of rule.
A precursor of the Ansar Al-Sunna Al-Mohamediya is Al-Gamiya Al-Sharia for the
cooperation between kuttab (religious elementary schools) workers, established
by Sheikh Mahmoud Khattab El-Sobki in 1912. Still active in the social domain
in Egypt, its aims are to teach and promote adherence to the Sunna. With
branches throughout the country, it offers one of the most prominent and
influential charity and philanthropic networks in Egypt. Its current director
is Mahmoud El-Mokhtar Mohamed El-Mahdi, an Al-Azhar scholar. The society,
together with its various mosques and religious academies, is registered with
the Ministry of Social Affairs, operates in accordance with the law and is,
therefore, accepted by national security.
The third organisational form of Salafism is Wahhabism. Originating in Saudi
Arabia and first introduced into Egypt more than a quarter of a century ago,
Wahhabism acquired increasing currency in Egypt with the return of Egyptian
workers following the Gulf War in 1991.
Another major trend in Salafism is what we might call the independents that
surfaced on religious satellite television stations. They are united solely by
a common fondness for the teachings of one or another of several sheikhs who
appear on these programmes, such as Sheikh Mohamed Hassan, Sheikh Mohamed
Hussein Yaqoub, Sheikh Abu Ishaq El-Howeini, Al-Azhar professor of Islamic
jurisprudence Osama Abdel-Azim and Sheikh Mustafa El-Adawi. According to the
expert on political Islam, Sayed Abdel-Fattah El-Wagdi, adherents of this trend
generally subscribe to the principle of reform from the bottom-up, which is to
say changing the self first. Reform, in this case, means to purify the faith of
all innovation, and its advocates tend to engage in various forms of
proselytising activities, such as teaching in mosques, producing cassette tapes
and preaching on satellite television programmes.
The Salafis have begun to play important roles in sectarian affairs. It is
significant, for example, that the Higher Council of the Armed Forces asked the
well-known Salafi Sheikh Mohamed Hassan to go to Atfeeh in order to help
resolve the sectarian crisis that had erupted in that neighbourhood of Helwan
last month. The highly influential sheikh has also participated in other mass
action activities recently. Nor should we forget the part the Salafis played in
the campaign in favour of a "yes" vote in the referendum on the constitutional
amendments, which they cast as a means to protect the state and safeguard
constitutional Article 2, regardless of the fact that this article had not even
come up for discussion yet. In a sermon following the referendum, Sheikh
Mohamed Hussein Yaqoub described results as a "victory in the raid of the
ballot boxes".
There is a general tendency to confuse the whole of Salafism with Wahhabism.
The Shia and Sufis in Egypt frequently accuse Salafis of obtaining financial
support from Saudi Arabia. In fact, Wahhabism, which was founded by Sheikh
Mohamed Abdel-Wahab in Saudi Arabia, is not the same as the Egyptian Salafist
movement, even though some Wahhabists like to encourage the confusion between
the two. Technically, Wahhabism goes no further than its founder but its
followers have used the term "Salafism" to give the impression that they are
spiritually connected to the pious forefathers and that they are the guardians
of the Salafist creed. Ideologically, however, it cannot be denied that a
portion of the Salafist creed has its roots in Wahhabist soil.
While one might find the main divisions and overlaps between the various
Salafist branches and outlooks confusing, it is palpably clear that the Salafi
genie has burst from the lantern that the security agencies had once kept
tightly corked. Although the regime had used the Salafis in the 1980s and 1990s
as a means to counter the Muslim Brotherhood, it succeeded in bringing them
under control again. Then, however, it offered them outlets on satellite
television, primarily in order to distract public attention from major
political issues by focussing their attention on religiously lawful or
proscribed food and clothing. Indeed, one recalls programmes in which viewers
would phone in to ask a sheikh such questions as whether it was lawful to
purchase a watermelon that had been cut open to reveal the colour of its flesh,
or why it was forbidden to force feed ducks when a mother force feeds her
children, or whether using beer yeast to make bread would induce intoxication.
As the scholar of Salafist movements Ammar Ali Hassan put it, the Salafi
emphasis on the formalities in religious observance became an obsession that
left the Egyptian intellect in the lurch, making it all the easier for the
"conversion of a Coptic woman" to become the gateway to sectarian strife and
acts of sabotage.
Without a doubt, the Salafis and their influence on the public benefited from
the vacuum created by the long absence of Al-Azhar as a social force and major
shaper of public opinion. Although it is clear that Al-Azhar was not
responsible for the Imbaba incident, Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayeb
nevertheless felt it urgent to meet with Sheikh Mohamed Hassan on Tuesday in an
attempt to promote Salafist ideological revisions, preparatory to a general
conference that would include all Islamist movements in Egypt. The question
remains as to how the Salafis' popularity will be affected by the recent
events. Will these events enhance their prospects in the forthcoming elections
or those of their rivals? Will their parties be able to compete or will they
have to raise the white flag? Developments over the coming days will shed much
light on such questions.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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