Salafists urge ultraconservative Islam
on post-Arab Spring governments
By _William Booth_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/william-booth/2011/03/02/ABPG4sM_page.html) ,
_Karin Brulliard_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/karin-brulliard/2011/03/02/ABLuvmP_page.html)
and _Abigail Hauslohner_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/abigail-hauslohner/2012/09/14/c36345f4-fe80-11e1-a31e-80
4fccb658f9_page.html) ,
Published: October 6 , 2012 The Washington Post
CAIRO — The elections that followed the Arab uprisings elevated Islamists
out of decades of repression and into the region’s most powerful posts.
Here in Egypt, a former prisoner became president.
But to Salafists, adherents of a puritanical form of Islam who have
embraced the country’s new freedoms with gusto, the emerging Islamist order
has a
serious flaw: It isn’t nearly Islamist enough.
“They say that the people do not want sharia,” said Gamel Saber, a
back-slapping Salafist activist who said he dreams of a day when his country’s
courts will fully implement Islamic law. “But that is not true. They are
ready.”
Saber’s dream is shared by millions of allies across North Africa, and that
reality is proving to be the most serious challenge yet for the months-old
governments struggling to find their feet in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
As moderate Islamist leaders in all three countries begin to craft
post-revolutionary constitutions, the Salafists in their midst are pushing —
sometimes at the ballot box, sometimes at the point of a gun — to create
societies that more closely mirror their ultraconservative religious beliefs
and
lifestyles.
The formidability of the Salafist awakening and the problems it poses for
the new governments are unexpected. While challenges from remnants of the
old regimes and from disgruntled liberals were widely anticipated, the
Islamist bona fides of those who took power had been considered beyond
reproach.
All have vowed to restore Islam to its rightful place at the center of
society after decades of marginalization.
But many Salafists, emboldened by what they see as growing public
enthusiasm for their cause, have denounced the new leaders for being too timid
in
injecting Islamic thought into long-standing domestic and foreign policies.
The time for more dramatic action, they say, is now.
“We are not fans of conflict, but the opportunity is here to take firm
measures and bold strides,” said Saber, who sat in a dusty Cairo office beneath
shelves filled with religious texts. “If a thief steals your monthly pay,
would you not want his hand cut off?”
Salafists — whose name comes from the word “Salaf,” meaning ancestor or
predecessor — share a common goal of fully implementing Islamic law. But they
differ widely on what that means, and on how to get there.
In Egypt, after watching warily from the sidelines of the revolution,
Salafists have embraced their role in the new democracy. They launched a dozen
television channels and, in upcoming elections, could build on their 25
percent parliamentary minority, allowing them to pressure the Muslim
Brotherhood-dominated government to appoint more Salafist cabinet ministers.
In Libya, private militias operating in the security vacuum are using
firepower, or the threat of it, to advance ultraconservative Salafist agendas.
One, Ansar al-Sharia, has been accused of involvement in the September
attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
In Tunisia, many Salafists now proudly don robes and beards but eschew
democratic participation, and a small but vocal minority has staged
high-profile attacks on art shows, bars and other displays of what they deem
un-Islamic behavior. Others say they are seeking to transform society by
proselytizing about Islam and its incompatibility with democracy, undercutting
an
Islamist-led government that has explicitly rejected sharia law.
Salafist groups are also becoming significant players in Kuwait and Yemen,
and they are even posing a challenge to Hamas, the Islamist party that
rules the Gaza Strip. The U.S. government views Hamas as a terrorist
organization, but militant Salafists fault it as too moderate because of its
de
facto cease-fire with Israel.
Salafists are hardly unified in how they regard the United States: Militant
jihadists openly express their hostility, while Emad Abdel Ghafour,
chairman of Egypt’s main Salafist political organization, _Nour_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-egypt-salafist-vote-could-prove-decisive/
2012/04/29/gIQAlrBRqT_story.html) , attended the Fourth of July party at
the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
On domestic matters, many have called for alcohol to be banned or sold only
in Christian neighborhoods. Islamic banks that abstain from interest
payments are another common demand, as is gender segregation and the
curtailment
of women’s and minority rights.
‘Do not be bait’
The most basic choice Salafists face is whether to work within or outside
the new order.
Salafist influence in Libya is accentuated by the proliferation of weapons
held by hundreds of independent militias that operate beyond the control of
the new central government. While not all are religiously motivated,
groups such as Ansar al-Sharia have used thinly veiled threats of force to
advance their agendas.
“Sharia must be the only reference for the constitution,” said Hani
al-Mansouri, a spokesman for Ansar al-Sharia. “We keep watch and we put
pressure
on the government.”
The group has gone underground since its barracks in Benghazi were _overrun
last month_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-libya-dueling-protests-reflect-struggle-for-nations-soul/2012/09/21/f32e65fa-0431-11e2-8
102-ebee9c66e190_story.html) by Libyans demanding greater government
control of the militias. But before it did, Ansar helped stage a number of
pro-sharia protests, as well as a military parade in June that many residents
described as intimidating.
Following attacks on U.S. missions in Benghazi, Tunis and Cairo last month,
Libyan President Mohammed Magarief, a moderate Islamist, called for the
immediate disbandment of militias not allied with the government. Along with
leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, he condemned the anti-American violence. But
the region’s governments have also been criticized for being soft on
Salafists.
“They don’t want to set off a civil war,” said Fawzi Wanis al-Gaddafi, who
heads Benghazi’s Supreme Security Committee, a loose federation of
government-backed militias in the city.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi bowed to the popularity of right-wing
sentiment in his address to the U.N. General Assembly last month, calling for
limits to freedom of expression following the uproar over an anti-Islam
video that appeared on YouTube.
In Tunisia, where secular dictators firmly enforced — concocted, some
scholars say — a mild brand of Islam, the elected government has sought to
bring
Salafists into the fold. Led by the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, the
government has endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw
blasphemy and has legalized a handful of Salafist parties, including one
headed
by a former militant who has now disavowed violence.
Few Salafists seem to have bought in. Instead, the most prominent Salafist
organization is the Tunisian branch of Ansar al-Sharia, which analysts say
is only loosely connected to its Libyan counterpart. Though it had been
considered nonviolent, it was accused of instigating the _attack on the U.S.
Embassy _
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-tunisia-embassy-attack-tests-fledgling-democracy/2012/09/20/19f3986a-0273-11e2-8102-ebee9c66
e190_story.html) in Tunis last month, and Tunisian security forces have
arrested dozens of its members. Authorities say they are pursuing its leader.
That leader, Saif Allah bin Hussein, has used the manhunt to depict a
battle between Tunisia’s mostly Muslim population and the post-revolutionary
government. During a campaign-style speech in a crowded mosque three days
after the embassy attack, bin Hussein, a former fighter in Afghanistan,
scorned what he called a “new dictatorship” that denigrates pure Muslim youth.
“God made the causes of this revolution, forced the tyrant to flee, and it
is God who prepares what will happen soon. Trust him,” he told followers. “
Do not be bait in the hands of these players.”
That rhetoric is resonating with many young people, including those who
participated in the revolution.
“We will establish the Islamic dream, which is a caliphate state. We have a
book to spread our ideas and a sword to defend the ideas,” said Bilel
Chaouachi, a 26-year-old theology graduate student in Tunis, who said he lists
Osama bin Laden among his spiritual leaders.
His studies, he said, led him to conclude that Muslim countries’ failures
were due to their distance from Islam, and that “secularism and moderate
Islam are not the real Islam.”
Leaving ‘a bubble’
Before the revolutions of the Arab Spring, Salafists like Chaouachi say
they had little room to breathe. The repressive regimes of Hosni Mubarak in
Egypt, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Moammar Gaddafi in Libya
tightly regulated religious expression and routinely harassed and imprisoned
those who appeared outwardly pious, especially men with long beards. That made
it impossible to gauge the strength and popularity of Salafist ideology.
Mohamed Tolba, a Salafist activist in Egypt, said he was detained 22 times
under Mubarak’s regime, and that police would harass him if he walked by
the tourist hotels or museums, taunting him and speculating aloud that he was
a troublemaker or a terrorist. “Before, for the Salafists, it was not our
country. We lived in a bubble,” he said. “Now we are leaving it and
getting involved in society.”
Egypt is slated to hold a new parliamentary election within months, and
Salafists stand to gain in a country still reeling from the economic and
security collapse that followed Mubarak’s downfall, and which the
Brotherhood-led government has been slow to remedy.
How a larger Salafists presence in government would translate into law and
practice remains unclear. Not all Salafists are pushing for dramatic action
overnight.
“We know the whole society cannot apply sharia at once,” said Nader
Bakkar, the media-savvy and ubiquitous spokesman for Nour, which is in the
midst
of an internal struggle over how quickly to push for change. “We are not
here to judge people or make them do what they don’t want to do.”
Arab liberals and policymakers in Western capitals have watched the
Salafists rise with a wary eye. An influential Salafist role complicates
matters
for Washington, which already struggles to understand the ideologies of
newly empowered moderate Islamist parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Intelligence officials also worry that the line between Salafists who play
by the rules and those who don’t is a gray one, particularly in Libya,
where the security vacuum has been partly blamed for the rise in activity
among
armed extremist groups.
In Libya, the powerful Rafallah al-Sahati militia falls into such a gray
area.
In the absence of a strong national security force, the group played a key
role in securing last summer’s election of the National Congress. But the
militia’s base was also among those raided by anti-militia protesters
following the attack against the U.S. mission, and the central government
acknowledged later that the group was too important and too powerful to
dismantle.
The militia’s commander, Ismail Salabi, said the group exists only to
contribute to the development of a secure Libya. But he said his fighters
espouse specific views on what a secure, successful Libya would look like.
Choosing one’s leadership is “not against Islam,” he said.
But he explained that any vote that granted women the right to travel
without the permission of male relatives would be. Where democracy ends and
personal freedoms begin has a different definition for Salafists than it does
for others, he said.
“We believe in the existence of other opinions that respect Islam,” he
said. “We don’t respect any opinion that goes against Islam.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Booth reported from Cairo, Brulliard reported from Tunis, and Hauslohner
reported from Benghazi, Libya.
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