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Part 3 of a series on political Islam in Egypt

Summary

Salafism has been one of the most dynamic movements in Egypt since 2011. Dealt a difficult hand when Hosni Mubarak was ousted from the presidency, Egyptian Salafists have skillfully navigated the transition. Their entry into the political marketplace marked a historic shift toward a new political Salafism and sheds light on whether an Islamist movement can integrate into pluralistic modern politics. The ouster of Mohamed Morsi by a popularly backed military coup in 2013, however, dealt a debilitating blow to the Islamist project—and left deep cleavages within the Salafist movement.

Key Moments

• Following the 2011 uprising, Salafists fell into three camps:
   
  1. Unorganized Salafists supported fellow Islamists against secularist competitors and allied with the Muslim Brotherhood.
      
  2. A formal, organized camp took the opposite approach, creating its own Salafist party to compete with the Brotherhood.
      
  3. Disaffected Islamist youths saw themselves as radical revolutionaries, shunning formal organizations and choosing actions ranging from violent jihadism to protest politics.
      
• After the 2013 coup, less-organized Salafists threw their weight behind the Brotherhood-led struggle, despite political subordination to the major Islamist group.
   
• Formal Salafist organizations accepted being co-opted by the state after the coup to secure their existence and bid for gradual political advances. Doing so, however, undermined their ideological character and credibility.

Challenges Ahead

• Egyptian Salafists have made little effort since 2011 to create a doctrinal framework to explain and guide their changing approach to political participation.
   
• Salafists remain unable to coalesce around a pluralistic ideology or to devise a minimalist program. They should become intellectually engaged in devising approaches to and positions on sectarianism, gender, censorship, minorities, secularism, and other controversial issues.
   
• Any Salafist shortcomings in delivering on their political mandate to preserve Islamic law and address socioeconomic concerns may undermine grassroots trust and squander social capital accumulated over decades among lower-income communities across Egypt.
   
• Whether Salafists succeed in preserving their key position within the Egyptian public religious sphere will depend on their pragmatic political maneuverability and positioning as functionaries within a domestic and regional balance of power rife with ideological and sectarian divisions. The Salafist Call in particular has been adept at this maneuvering.
   
• The long-term challenge facing Egyptian Salafists is ideological. Whether the Salafists will remain an Islamist movement depends on their ability to furnish a unique and workable political model distinct from authoritarian regimes and political modernity in general as well as from other failed Islamist models. This was difficult between 2011 and 2013; it may be close to impossible in 2015.

Introduction

Salafism has been one of the most dynamic sociopolitical and religious movements in Egypt since the 2011 uprising. Egypt’s Salafists were dealt a difficult hand with the ouster of Hosni Mubarak from the presidency, and, though previously apolitical, they skillfully navigated the stages of the ensuing transition. These included new party formation after January 2011, the 2011 parliamentary elections, the 2012 presidential elections, and the 2012 constitution-drafting process. The ouster of President Mohamed Morsi by a popularly backed military coup in 2013, however, served a debilitating blow to the Islamist project, leaving deep cleavages within the Salafist movement in Egypt.

The current foray into politics by Egypt’s Salafists is a case study on whether an Islamist utopia can be “normalized,” with the integration of orthodox political Islamic movements into pluralistic national modern polities.

The ouster of President Mohamed Morsi served a debilitating blow to the Islamist project, leaving deep cleavages within the Salafist movement in Egypt.

Salafist entry to the Islamist political marketplace in Egypt after the 2011 uprising marked a historical shift toward a new political Salafism. The founding of the Nour Party, the political wing of the Salafist Call (al-Dawa al-Salafiyya) association based in Alexandria, signaled a shift from the classic methods of apolitical proselytizing and abstention from politics to a direct political role involving new tools now considered more feasible and religiously justifiable. These included electoral participation and a search for footholds in newly created political institutions. To safeguard cumulative social and cultural capital, Salafists needed political protection, legal facilitators, and media exposure. Such actions were seen as a launching pad for the gradual Islamization of laws and public policies.

This new political Salafism should not be considered a step toward liberalization or modernization. Salafists are careful to identify their mission as a return to a literal understanding of an Islamic worldview, one that changes the status quo and conforms it to centuries-old rulings of pious Muslim ancestral scholars.

Though democracy’s instruments are to be adopted in the pursuit of applying Islamic sharia, democracy based on full popular sovereignty and equality in political rights regardless of religion, sect, ideology, and gender is considered haram—forbidden—and requiring restrictions by sharia-based authorities. This ideological trademark clearly leaves Salafists in opposition to liberal democracy.

This paper will try exploring questions such as, who are the Salafists and what do they stand for in the midst of post-Mubarak politics? Will the Salafists’ fortunes be eclipsed in the post-Morsi political environment? Or are they capable of reconfiguring a new Salafist politics to fit into the complicated new context of Egyptian politics and Islamism? Claiming pure Islamic authenticity, how can the Salafists construct an Islamic totalistic alternative to the existing system in Egypt? And how can this materialize while participating within the rules of that system and internalizing the same political power dynamics from an even weaker position?

Analysis will begin with the historical origins of the Salafist doctrine, its different sub-schools, its historical relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the question of politics and democracy. Special attention will be given to the Salafist Call as the main case study. Then, post-2011 developments, such as the creation of parties and their crises, and changing relations with the Brotherhood will be examined.

The current post-Morsi Salafist crisis is key to understanding the future of the movement and whether ongoing Salafist revisions can redress its previous shortcomings. At the heart of that is the weakening of the shared long-term ideology of iqamat ad-din, or the application in Egypt of Islamic sharia, in favor of a more realistic short-term vision. The greatest aspiration of that vision is for Salafists to monopolize the Islamic public sphere, disregarding all but their own religious authorities. At the very least, the short-term ambition is to politically secure the social, religious, and proselytizing networks developed during the Mubarak years.

Salafist have yet to resolve how to stay true to their Islamic sharia ideology and to address such real-time nationalist concerns as socioeconomic distress.

The ideological coherence that long characterized Islamist movements has faded away in the wake of the political populism of the 2011 uprising. Political instrumentalism has deferred any serious intellectual deepening of Salafist ideology. Moreover, the current regime’s crackdown on the Muslim Brothers and the political sphere—and the rise of angry waves of revolutionary Islamists—has left Salafists factionalized and drawn into the cauldron. The pro-Brotherhood Salafists diluted their differences with the Brothers and joined forces with their post-2013 confrontational politics out of ideological solidarity, while pro-regime Salafists feel compelled to engage in politics, if only to counter secularists and keep radical Islamist factions from gaining religious appeal. At the same time, they have yet to resolve how to stay true to their Islamic sharia ideology and to address such real-time nationalist concerns as socioeconomic distress. Their future, and to some extent, Egypt’s future, is uncertain.

Salafists: Historical Origins and Doctrine

Salafism, like other movements, has a long and complicated history. In Arabic, “salaf” means “the past,” and “Salafists” means “the ancestors or predecessors.” Each school of Islamic thought has its own salaf that is venerated to the exclusion of the others. Moreover, the term has been used by different intellectual movements in the modern age. By the early twentieth century, influential “national Salafist intellectual schools” were operating in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and North Africa. They endeavored to reexplore Islamic heritage through both conservative understandings (like those of Shehab al-Din al-Alousi, Muhammad Rashid Rida, Moheb al-Din al-Khateeb, Tahir al-Jazairi, Ahmed and Mahmoud Shaker, and others) and more modernist, rationalist ones (for example, Muhammad Abduh). Periodicals and publications carried Salafist labels.¹ Unlike the religious partisanship of Najdi Salafism (better known as Wahhabism outside the Arabian Peninsula), these reformist and conservative schools emphasized integrating within the modern urban society and engaging with its problems via culture, intellect, and education.

By the second half of the twentieth century, however, the term Salafism came to exclusively describe another religious revivalist doctrine that claimed lineage to a particular ancient school of Islamic theology, the Ahl al-Hadith, members of which described themselves as Ahl al-Sunna. This brand of Salafism prioritizes an orthodox literalist following of Islamic texts (including the Quran, valid sunna, and the Prophet’s companions’ heritage). Unlike more rationalist schools of law and theology, Salafism limits free reasoning, and it considers Muslim heterodox schools such as the Sufis, Gnostics, and philosophers to be full of bidah, or incorrect religious innovations.²

This new literalist return to the Islamic original scriptures is allegedly exactly how al-Salaf al-Salih interpreted these texts. Al-Salaf al-Salih, according to the Salafists, are the revered Muslim ancestors of the early centuries of Islamic history. They include the Prophet’s companions, the companions’ followers, and selected scholars (largely from the Ahl al-Hadith school, including Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyyah, and Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya). Their body of teachings and rulings are considered the ultimate point of reference for deducing opinions on Islam as a religion, worldview, value system, legal order, culture, and social tradition.

Salafists consider spreading the word of Islam a religious duty.

Modern scholarly and ideological contributions have also been influential, particularly scholarship from contemporary Najdi Salafists, and the work of Nasr al-Din al-Albani and the radical, controversial theorist Sayyid Qutb. The Salafist mission, which is predicated on education and preaching, is to create an audience committed to Salafist teachings. Salafists consider spreading the word of Islam a religious duty. So, too, is creating a society of exclusive followers of the Salafist manhaj (system and method of action).

Contemporary Salafism has shared with other Islamic revivalist movements an antagonistic relationship with inherited Islamic scholarship and jurisprudence. Revivalists saw these traditions as too stagnant and outdated to bolster the role of Islam in contemporary Muslim societies. Instead, revivalism needed simpler, more relevant, and practical understandings of Islam. Three routes were possible in this context. The first was to create a modernized version of Islam through a rational historicist reinterpretation of the original scriptures. Muhammad Abduh and his disciples pioneered this intellectual school. The second was adopted by the Muslim Brotherhood: to forgo intellectual debates and pursue action-oriented engagement with society to change it at all levels. The third route was to return to early ancestors’ understandings of original scriptures and reproduce them literally, projecting them on reality as the ahistorical and correct monolithic practice of Islam. That last one was the Salafist option.

Salafism: Manhaj, Ideology, and Sub-Schools in Egypt

The current wave of Salafism in Egypt is an offspring of the Islamic Sahwa movement, or Islamic Awakening, that was started in the 1970s by a broad array of religiously inspired actors in Egyptian universities, civil society, politics, and other arenas of Egyptian public and private life. The Salafists share the fundamental goal of the Islamic Sahwa: the revival of the central role of Islam in Egyptian life according to a scriptualist approach to Islam. Salafist activity in Egypt has largely taken form as a loose movement, under which diverse activities are carried out independently in areas of proselytizing, education, charity, religious media, cyberspace, and social work.

With its doctrinal understanding of Islam, Salafism has arguably been anti-tradition. By returning to ancestral scripture, Salafists have tried surpassing the diverse heritage of Muslim law, jurisprudence, and theology developed cumulatively over the later centuries. This has placed Salafists in clear conflict with al-Azhar, the official religious institution and the representative of such traditions in Egypt, and its new master—the modern state of Egypt.³

Salafists have generally rejected democratic participation because it does not rest on God’s sovereignty and is considered to foment divisive partisanship, endless opposition, and social strife.⁴ Democracy is seen as equating men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims, Sunnis and non-Sunnis, Islamists and secularists, as well as promoting rule by demagogic masses instead of a sharia rule guarded by ulema (religious scholars). Parliaments are considered human-made creations that wrestle the right to legislation from God.⁵

Salafist activity in Egypt has largely taken form as a loose movement, under which diverse activities are carried out independently in areas of proselytizing, education, charity, religious media, cyberspace, and social work.

Many Salafists believe that living under illegitimate rulers is a test of piety for Muslims. Political rebellion is discouraged; indeed, it is considered worse than the original evil of an un-Islamic ruler. Such political quietism generally fits with mainstream traditions of Sunni Islam, which has also discouraged revolt and political infighting.

Under Mubarak, favorable conditions such as intermittent toleration by the state, the regime’s focus on combating a politically active Brotherhood, and dwindling jihadist popularity created opportunities for Salafists to grow in religious influence and secure considerable popularity. Even before the 2011 uprising, however, and apart from a general commitment to the purification of the Islamic creed and the general puritanical behavioral similarities, Salafists were intolerably divided on various lines. Different Salafist sub-schools have debated the detailed implementation of their manhaj, questioning how far variations in methods of change, standpoints on political participation, and gradualism in the application of sharia can be tolerated.

Different Salafist sub-schools include:

• Scholastic Salafism (al-Salafiyya Almiyya), which believes in the primacy of religious education. Key manhaj is al-tasfeya, liquidating religious innovations, and al-tarbeya, raising people on monotheism or tawhid (the core of the Islamic creed, the oneness of God). This sub-school implicitly recognizes the Islamic illegitimacy of ruling regimes but does not believe in political engagement or collective action, instead exclusively focusing on scholasticism and proselytizing.⁶ In Egypt, clusters of such scholarly communities have emerged in the last few decades, modeling Saudi scholastic icons.⁷
   
• Madkhali Salafism, also referred to as Jameya Salafism,⁸ disagrees with other schools’ standpoint on rulers, hailing the religious legitimacy of current regimes via a minimalist definition of what is a legitimate political order in Islam. Obedience to ruling regimes, even if they are unjust and do not apply sharia, is a religious obligation as long as they are not committing a clear act of infidelity. The Madkhalis reject oppositional politics as a violation of sunna, viewing collective partisan action as religiously innovative, power-seeking, and evil. Their manhaj of change is exclusively an educational one. Madkhalis regard themselves as the guardians of true Salafism and aggressively debunk other Salafists. Extremely loyal to regimes but intolerant of other Salafists and any opposition, Madkhalis are responsible for the reputation of Salafists as submissive regime proxies.⁹
   
• Jihadist Salafism equates monotheism with combatant transnational jihad against un-Islamic regimes to establish a purely Islamic state that upholds religious sovereignty and undoes injustices inflicted upon Muslims.
   
• Traditional Salafism, including al-Jamiya al-Sharia (Sharia Association) and Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyyah (Guardians of Prophetic Sunna), dates back to the early twentieth century and is mainly occupied with religious pedagogy and charitable work. Closely screened by the state as early as Nasser’s era, adherents have no political capital.
   
• Like Scholastic Salafism, Haraki (active) Salafism considers the Islamic illegitimacy of ruling regimes clear, but it also considers organized collective action necessary to replace, albeit peacefully, any existing un-Islamic status quo. The Salafist Call, among other groups, represents this sub-school. Beginning in the late 1970s, these Salafists have adopted a unique manhaj haraki, that is, a special method of change distinguishable from both the gradualist reformist politics of the Muslim Brotherhood and the violent insurgency plans of jihadists. Organized change, according to this thinking, should be peaceful, normative, and from below.¹⁰ Haraki Salafism thus can be seen as a selective merging of the Salafist creed and the Brotherhood’s manhaj of action.

The Salafist Call

The key proponent of the haraki manhaj in Egypt is the Salafist Call, originally founded as the Salafist School in the 1970s in Alexandria. It has become the most powerful Salafist group in Egypt over the past three decades. Though it shares general characteristics of the Salafist manhaj, the Call maintains considerable differences with other sub-schools: with Madkhalis on opposing rulers and methods of action; with takfir (excommunication) supporters and its conditions; with Cairo Haraki Salafists on issues of religious sovereignty and collective action; with jihadist groups on questions of belief and the use of force; and with the Muslim Brotherhood on methods of change.¹¹

The Call’s agenda focuses on four main stages¹²:

• Constructing a standardized Islamic doctrine according to the Salafist framework, methodology of inference on questions of theology and law, and dismantling existing heterodox Islamic beliefs
   
• Engaging in spiritual refinement of ethics and worship, and religious education through Islamic socialization
   
• Preaching the Salafist manhaj across society, trying to spread Salafist values peacefully and curb the ones deemed un-Islamic, including laws, habits, dress codes, and social, gender, and family relations
   
• Applying sharia and the rule of Islam when conditions have become ripe as a product of previous stages; collective action should bring together existing work on charity and social welfare, social and communal solidarities, initiatives for commanding good and forbidding evil, and sharia-based conflict resolution and alternatives to secularist financial transactions

As for the most appropriate shape of this collective action, the Call favored the creation of a disciplined organization long before the 2011 uprising, probably under the influence of the literature by Brotherhood ideologues such as Sayyid Qutb and his brother Mohamed.¹³

The Call also spurned the notion of collective action within state-controlled religious structures and went on to establish its own independent organization with key distinguishing conditions. Among them are publicity, peaceful action, and no secrecy in transparent collective action; no conflict with the regime to prevent any damage or costs; and—unlike the murshid (supreme guide) in the Brotherhood—no oaths of allegiance to top leaders. Also, decisions are to be justified through rigorous religious decisionmaking, rather than elite command; respect must be shown to sheikhs while keeping legitimate disagreements;¹⁴ and pluralism of duties, tasks, programs, specializations, views, and cooperative integration are to be based on the same manhaj and fundamentals of al-Salaf al-Salih. There is to be no group fanaticism: the Call exists for administrative purposes not political leadership or power; loyalty to it is not a condition of Muslim faith.

This last description, however, it is worth questioning. The Call’s literature often refers to itself as a microcosm of the state rather than simply an administrative institution.¹⁵

Pre-2011 Organization

The organization long predated the 2011 uprising. It made various attempts at legalization in 1985–1986 by creating al-Furqan Institute for preachers and Sawt al-Dawa (the Voice of the Call) magazine. Social committees became increasingly active after the 1992 Cairo earthquake, providing charity and relief until 1994. The regime initially left the apolitical Call alone. Indeed, the regime even benefited by the Call taking upon itself to combat jihadist and Qutbist influence.¹⁶

In 1994, however, the regime cracked down on the organization for security reasons. Its institute for preachers and its magazine were shut down. Many important sheikhs and activists were temporarily arrested and later banned from traveling without prior permission or appearing on religious TV channels. Some sheikhs were forbidden to give sermons except in a few mosques in Alexandria.

Afterward, some sheikhs called for suspending the Call’s administrative structure. But Sheikh Yasser Borhami, a founding father of the Call, and his protégés decided instead to move the structure underground. By evading security forces, the Call’s networks survived a 1994 official ban and subsequent waves of suppression in 1998 and 2002.

By 2004, all arrested sheikhs and activists had been released from prison. Between 2004 and 2011, the Call maintained a decentralized administrative structure with limited communications. During this period, Borhami engaged in exceptionally active networking and recruiting across the country—enabling his future domination over the Call.

In April 2011, the Call was finally legally licensed in Alexandria as al-Dawa Association. It followed national social associations laws, and its structure and budget became subject to legal oversight. In contrast to the Brotherhood, this was a distinguishing step toward normalized relations with the state.¹⁷ The Call restructured its organization and formalized its register, incorporating several local charities that were loosely affiliated with it and briefly considering business investments to finance the association.¹⁸

During this period, the Call has thrived in different spaces. Its significant social capital has been based on widespread mosque networks and its role in mediating local conflict resolution processes. Its inclusion of youth and women into a clear, singular educational and intellectual framework has been unique among Salafists.¹⁹ Its organizational upward-mobility work with youth has also been notable.²⁰ The Call’s scope of activities has stretched across Alexandria, Matrouh, Beheira, Beni Suef, Fayoum, and other Delta governorates.

The Amreya district west of Alexandria offers an example of the Call’s organizational capabilities, developing popular trust by immersing itself in local culture and vernacular politics. In Amreya, the Call’s most significant tool has been the sharia conflict resolution committee that has mediated conflicts over land, family feuds, crimes, financial quarrels, and sectarian strife. The committee’s appeal stems from its rigorous methodologies for adjudication, impartiality, attention to local traditions and family networks, reputation of moral integrity of the Call’s sheikhs, an incompetent state judiciary, and a lack of other nonstate alternatives.²¹ Similar patterns were common in other zones.²²

Current Official Organization

The association is structured according to governorate, sector, neighborhood, zone, and mosque levels. Three official bodies are particularly important:

• A 220-member shura council acts as the Call’s parliament and general assembly. It is elected by local governorate shura councils and is responsible for major decisions and the board of directors.
   
• A sixteen-member board of directors acts as the executive body. Parallel structures are created at the local level in different governorates. After deliberation, decisions are made according to majorities.
   
• A six-member board of trustees presides over the association and is authorized to call for a general assembly to change the board of directors. The board of trustees’ membership is exclusive to the six founding fathers. Currently, the organization’s head is Mohamed Abdel Fattah, commonly known as Abu Idris. Of the five other founders, Muhammad Ismail al-Muqaddim and Yasser Borhami act as deputies, and Said Abdel-Azim, Ahmed Farid, and Ahmed al-Houtaiba are members of the board. (A seventh founding father of the Call, Emad Abdel-Ghafour, left the country in the late 1980s.) The six are widely revered religious sheikhs and preachers. Individually and together, they act as the religious points of reference for the Call.

Unofficial Hierarchies

Notwithstanding this official structure, powerful hierarchies exist within each tier. Within the first tier, al-Muqaddim and Abdel-Azim have little real organizational clout. The rest enjoy both religious and organizational power. Borhami has the most significant support because he has been the main architect of the organizational networks of the movement since the 1980s. The sheikhs and leaders of key organizational portfolios who make up the second tier are largely his associates.²³ The third tier is mostly executive administrators and activists in charge of running the association’s daily affairs.²⁴ Finally, groups of professionals in the business and private sector are also loyal to the Call’s sheikhs. They act as effective liaisons with politicians and media in the interactive political sphere.²⁵ The key criteria for upward mobility within the movement are religious scholarship, personal trust, and organizational agility.

The Call’s organizations in many ways attempted to mimic that of the Brotherhood’s, but the Call was not as successful.²⁶ This could be attributed to the inadequacy of its networking methods on university campuses,²⁷ lack of strong allegiance to leaders, and comparably lower logistical, communication, and financial resources.²⁸ Furthermore, this “MBification” of the Salafist Call diverted the focus from initial Salafist concerns like scholarly production.²⁹

Post-Uprising Transformations of the Egyptian Salafist Schools

A revolt that flouted the Salafists’ expectations and even drew considerable participation among the Salafist grass roots left clerics in disarray. Madkhalis and many Scholastic Salafists preferred to resume their pre-2011 apolitical profiles. Harakis were initially reserved about electoral political participation,³⁰ but, out of fear of losing youths to other emerging Islamist parties, they agreed to immediate participation within the new democratic politics.³¹ Reconfiguring the religious-political sphere was seen as a nightmare that needed to be countered by all possible means. Besides, participating within the newly established democratic system was clearly preferable to dictatorship. Democracy would provide for the public and private freedoms needed to allow for Salafist proselytizing, as well as an inclusion within national policy making processes to counter the influence of secularists.

Salafists were left with three recourses: First, rather than compete among each other, they could support fellow Islamists against secularist competitors. Unorganized Salafists in Cairo and the Delta region, with little organizational competency and meager resources, initially opted for this choice, allying with the Brotherhood for their political experience and competence. Second, they could welcome a role as Islamist transnational revolutionaries. Radicalized youth as well as ex-jihadists and Qutbists opted for actions ranging from violent jihadism to revolutionary protest politics, championing uncompromising interpretations of “Islamist politics.” (The most notable example was the popular campaign of ex-presidential hopeful Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. In the lead-up to the May 2012 presidential elections, an extremely popular Abu Ismail phenomenon—modern in tools, Salafist in appearance, populist in discourse—claimed to best appreciate the revolutionary potentials of the country and the capacities of Islamist mass mobilization to undermine the old state. While other key Islamist actors had opted for the electoral compromise as early as March 2011, Abu Ismail’s campaign signaled a challenge to formal politics by young Islamist networks who shunned formal Islamist organizations.) Third, they could crea