As the death of a U.S. ambassador in Libya demonstrates, the ultraconservative Salafi movement is pushing to the forefront in the politics of the Middle East.
BY CHRISTIAN CARYL
By now you've probably heard. Just a few hours after
an angry mob of ultraconservative Muslims stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, the U.S.
ambassador to Libya waskilled during a protest in the city of
Benghazi. Both riots were provoked by the news that an anti-Muslim group
in the United States has released a film that insults the Prophet Mohammed. In Egypt,
the protestors hauled down the U.S. flag and replaced it with the same black
banner sometimes used by Al Qaeda. Shades of Iran, 1979. Scary stuff.
Both attacks are utterly
outrageous. But perhaps the United States shouldn't have been caught completely
off guard. The rioters in both cases come from the region's burgeoning Salafi
movement, and the Salafis have been in the headlines a lot
lately. In Libya, over the past few months, they've been challenging the recently elected government by
demolishing ancient Sufi shrines, which they deem to be insufficiently Islamic.
In Tunisia, they've been attacking businesses that sell alcohol and
instigating nasty social media campaigns about the country's female competitors
in the Olympics. In Syria's civil war, there are increasing reports that the opposition's wealthy Gulf
financiers have been channeling cash to Salafi groups, whose strict
interpretation of Islam is considered close to the puritanical Wahhabism of the
Saudis and others. Lately Salafi groups have been gaining fresh prominence in
parts of the Islamic world -- from Mali to Lebanon, from Kashmir to Russia's North
Caucasus.
Some -- like journalist
Robin Wright, who recently wrote a New York Times op-ed on the subject -- say that this means we
should be really, really worried. Painting a picture of a new "Salafi
crescent" ranging from the Persian Gulf to North Africa, she worries that
this bodes ill for newly won freedoms after the revolutions of 2011. Calling
the rise of the new Salafi groups "one of the most underappreciated and
disturbing byproducts of the Arab revolts," Wright says that they're now
"moving into the political space once occupied by jihadi militants, who
are now less in vogue." "[S]ome Islamists are more hazardous to
Western interests and values than others," she writes. "The Salafis
are most averse to minority and women's rights."[[LATEST]]
Others, like Egyptian
journalist Mustafa Salama, dismiss this as hysteria. "The reality of
the movement is that it is fragmented, not uniform, within Salafis there are
various ideologies and discourses," Salama writes. "Furthermore being
a Salafi does not boil down to a set of specific political preferences."
The only thing that unites them, he argues, is their interest in returning to
the beliefs and practices of the original Islamic community founded by the
Prophet Mohammed -- a desire that, in itself, is shared by quite a few
mainstream Muslims. (The Arabic word salaf, meaning "predecessors" or
"ancestors," refers to the original companions of the Prophet.) This
doesn't mean that they're necessarily opposed to freedom and democracy. During
the revolution in Egypt, he says, some Salafis were "protecting Churches
in Sinai and elsewhere from vandalism and theft" at considerable risk to
themselves, though the fact wasn't reported in the Western media.
If the first death of a U.S.
ambassador in two decades is any indication, it's probably time that the world
starts paying attention to this debate. I think there are several points worth
mentioning.
First of all, however we
define them, these new "populist puritans" (as Wright aptly refers to
them) are enjoying an extraordinary boom. Though solid numbers are hard to come
by, they're routinely described as the fastest-growing
movement in modern-day Islam. Unlike
the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's Salafis barely figured in the political
landscape during the Mubarak years -- then stormed onto
the scene to capture a quarter of the
vote in the country's first democratic election last year. Their share of the
vote could well increase, given that the new Brotherhood-led government is likely
to have problems making good on the ambitious promises it's made to Egyptian
voters over the past year. Their rapid rise in Tunisia is especially startling,
given that country's relatively relaxed atmosphere toward religion.
Indeed, if the history of
revolutions shows us anything, it's that transformative social upheavals of the
kind we've seen in the Arab Spring don't necessarily favor the moderates. On
the day that the Shah left Iran in 1979, it was by no means a foregone
conclusion that the radical forces around Ayatollah Khomeini, who followed his
innovative theory of clerical rule, would end up running the country. Secular
socialists, communists, liberal democrats, democratic nationalists, moderate
Islamists, and even other rival Shiite clerics were all vying for power. But Khomeini
ultimately triumphed because he offered forceful, uncorrupted leadership with a
simple message -- "Islamic government" -- that cut through the mayhem
with the authority of faith. Lenin understood the same political dynamic: Hence
his ruthlessly straightforward slogan "Bread, Peace,
Land," which was perfectly calculated to appeal to
Russians wearied by anarchy, war, and social injustice.
The Salafi notion of
returning to the purity of 7th-century Islam can have the same kind of draw for
some Muslims exasperated by everyday corruption and abusive rule. Syria offers
a good example. If you're going up against Bashar al-Assad's helicopter gunships
armed with an antique rifle and a few rusty bullets, you'll probably prefer to
go into battle with a simple slogan on your lips. "Power sharing for all
ethnic groups in a liberal parliamentary democracy" might not cut it --
especially if you happen to be a Sunni who's seen your relatives cut down by Assad's
murderous militias. This isn't to
say that the opposition is now
dominated by Salafis; far from it. But it's safe to assume that the longer the
war goes on, the more pronounced the extremes will become.
At the same time, the Sunni
Salafis are a major factor in the growing global polarization of the Islamic
community between Shiites and Sunnis. (The French scholar of Islam Olivier Roy argues that the intra-Muslim rivalry between
the two groups has now become even more important than the presumed
confrontation between Islam and the West.) The fact that many Salafis in
various parts of the world get their financing from similarly conservative
elements in Saudi Arabia doesn't help. Perversely enough, Iranian propaganda is
already trying to portray the West as backers of Salafi extremism
in order to destabilize Tehran and its allies. We'll be seeing a lot more of
this sort of thing in the future, I'm afraid.
In short, no one should
count on the Salafis to go away any time soon. So how should the outside world deal with
them -- especially if they're
going to go around storming foreign embassies?
I think the answer is
two-pronged. First, don't generalize. Not all Salafis should be treated as beyond the pale. Salafis who are
willing to stand by the rules of democracy and acknowledge the rights of
religious and cultural minorities should be encouraged to participate in the
system. With time, voters in the new democracies of the region will
discriminate between the demagogues and the people who can actually deliver a
better society.
Second, don't allow radicals
to dictate the rules for everyone else. This is why the outcome of the current
political conflicts in Tunisia and Libya are extremely important for the region
as a whole. In both countries, voters have now had the opportunity to declare
their political preferences in free elections, and they have delivered pretty
clear messages. Libyans voted overwhelmingly for secular politicians,
while Tunisians chose a mix of moderate Islamists and
secularists. But the Salafis in both places don't seem content to leave it at
that, and are trying to foment instability by instigating a culture war.
What's encouraging is that
we're beginning to see some pushback from ordinary Libyans and Tunisians who don't want to submit to the logic of
radicalization -- not to mention scholars at the Arab world's most prestigious
university, also in Cairo. Don't be fooled by the rabble-rousers. The story in
the Middle East is still more interesting than the stereotypes.
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