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Salafists urge ultraconservative Islam on post-Arab Spring governments
Washington Post ^ | Oct. 7, 2012 | William Booth, Karin Brulliard and Abigail Hauslohner
After Arab Spring, Salafists are building influence — at polls and at gunpoint - The Washington Post
Yay, you fucking liberals just made this planet a little less free. How does it feel. Bastards.
Washington Post ^ | Oct. 7, 2012 | William Booth, Karin Brulliard and Abigail Hauslohner
After Arab Spring, Salafists are building influence — at polls and at gunpoint - The Washington Post
---CAIRO The elections that followed the Arab uprisings elevated Islamists out of decades of repression and into the regions 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 countrys new freedoms with gusto, the emerging Islamist order has a serious flaw: It isnt 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 countrys courts will fully implement Islamic law. But that is not true. They are ready.
Sabers 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. . .
Yay, you fucking liberals just made this planet a little less free. How does it feel. Bastards.