Free Republic

The constitutional declaration shows the strong leverage the Salafist Al-Nour party has on the transitional process, already blocking two prime minister nominations. One of the main objections to the 2012 Constitution by the liberal opposition was to the Salafist-written Article 219, which elaborated on the “principles of Islamic Sharia” stated in the famous Article 2 rather than keeping the text open-ended and more flexible. The controversial Article 219 actually remains. In fact, the previous articles 1 (which mainly spoke of democracy, identity and citizenship), 2 and 219 have been merged into a unique, new, Article 1. The new article reads:The...

The Salafi contribution to the cartoon riots The current working theory in most media circles is that Sam Bacile, who claimed to be an Israeli Jew, was really a front for Coptic Christians. The truth may however be that Sam Bacile was a Salafist who used Jews and Copts as a front for a Salafist agenda. There is some evidence that suggests this may be the most logical conclusion. Salafist connections have covered this entire project from beginning to end. Sam Bacile, didn’t do much with his YouTube account, besides uploading two clips from the “Innocence of Muslims” film, but...

The stunning showing by Salafist parties in the first round of Egypt's parliamentary elections surprised Israeli officials as much as the rest of the world. The estimated 40 percent of the vote that went to the Muslim Brotherhood, the party that founded modern political Islam, was about in line with pre-election polls. But the unexpectedly strong showing by the Salafis -- fundamentalist Sunni Muslims who hold that the only true Islam was practiced around the time of the Prophet Mohammad, 1,300 years ago -- could put a group that rejects modernism in a pivotal position in Egypt's new democracy. “This...