Salafi surge in Syria

The new face of Syria’s opposition, Moaz Al Khatib, is a mild-mannered reformist cleric with whom western governments say they can do business. But when it comes to rebels fighting the regime on the ground, the religious figure to whom many turn is of a different style.

He is Shaikh Adnan Arour, a fierce and more radical Salafi who has been a godfather of sorts for the revolution, dedicating his programme on a Saudi television channel to the uprising, and propagating a more puritanical form of Islam.

He sheds tears, he cracks jokes, he curses regime supporters and fires up the fighters, urging them to press on. His influence is such that he was co-opted into the leadership of some of the military councils.

“When people are dying and their children are slaughtered, people turn to religion, and he’s got a way of reaching out to them,” says one rebel spokesman, who is not a fan of the shaikh. “And he was collecting money in mosques and sending it to Syria, which created a following for him.”

However much of the west wants Arab societies to produce leaders with whom its feels comfortable, the turmoil in the region in the past two years has allowed for the emergence of less pleasant political actors. The most worrying is the Salafis, whose objective is the establishment of sharia, or strict Islamic law.

The fall of authoritarian regimes has offered Salafis, a desparate movement that had hitherto maintained a low profile, a rare opportunity to organise and agitate.

Even before a Libyan group was accused of attacking the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11 2012, the Salafis were grabbing headlines. The more peaceful groups have been lobbying for the strict implementation of sharia in constitution-drafting processes; the more radical have sought to impose their vision by force, destroying Sufi shrines in Libya and attacking unveiled women and artists in Tunisia. In its most extremist fringe, the movement produces jihadis such as Syria’s Jabhat Al Nusra, which the US recently labelled a terrorist group tied to Al Qaida.

In Morocco, where the king has not been challenged by a popular uprising but responded to demonstrations with constitutional changes that brought a moderate Islamist party to government, several prominent Salafi clerics were released from prison. One is said to be working on establishing a political organisation.

“Salafis are the new thing because they are becoming more politically visible - before they were invisible, and in some countries non-existent,” says Thomas Pierret, an Islamist expert at the University of Edinburgh. “Periods of revolution produce this kind of phenomenon.”

The Salafi surge is seen by secular-minded Arabs as the biggest threat to democratisation in the region, with the Islamists’ Saudi-style vision particularly damaging for the development of women’s rights. But the Salafis are also a significant complicating factor in the more moderate Islamists’ early experiments in governing.

Mainstream groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood find themselves pulled towards more hardline views by the Salafis while also facing pressure for greater moderation by the liberal opposition.

“The major challenge to stability in the Arab world ... lies only partially in the transition to democracy from autocracy,” says Kamran Bokhari of Stratfor, the political consultancy. “Greater than that is the challenge mainstream Islamists face from a complex and divided Salafi movement.”

The Salafi movement dates back to the 19th century. It developed as an attempt to reform Islam by returning to more literal interpretations of the religion prevalent in the days of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) (Salaf means “early Muslim” in Arabic).

Although it has gained notoriety in the past decade because of its violent fringe - the so-called Salafi jihadis who join groups such as Al Qaida or, more recently, Syria’s Jabhat Al Nusra - it is the more traditional, non-politicised form that has most widely spread across the Arab region in recent years, aided by funding of schools, books and television channels.

In the past decade, countries such as Morocco, Tunisia and Syria have cracked down on most forms of the ideology. But others, including Egypt, adopted a more complex approach, clamping down at times but also using the movement to counter more politically mature mainstream groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Under the ousted Hosni Mubarak regime in Cairo, Salafi television stations were licensed and some preachers became household names, appealing particularly to the poor. The Salafis also took up some of the same tactics as the Muslim Brotherhood, setting up charities that provide social services to impoverished areas.

In Syria, Salafi rebels say the revolution has allowed them to express religious sentiment the regime had forced them to suppress. They insist the fact they were forced to take up arms does not make them jihadis bent on fighting a global war. Two years into the conflict, however, they have welcomed into their ranks well-trained and disciplined fighters from Al Qaida in Iraq because they bring much-needed financing and military expertise. These fighters have formed the core of the Jabhat Al Nusra, which has attracted jihadis from abroad.

“Salafism offers answers that others could not. These include a straight-forward, accessible form of legitimacy and sense of purpose at a time of substantial suffering and confusion; a simple, expedient way to define the enemy as a non-Muslim, apostate regime, as well as access to funding and weapons,” says a recent report on Syria’s Salafis published by the International Crisis Group, an organisation that studies conflicts around the world. “At a time when [rebel] groups struggled to survive against a powerful, ruthless foe and believe themselves both isolated and abandoned, such [Salafi] assets made an immediate, tangible difference.”

Experts warn against generalising, pointing out that the ideology can have an impact on political behaviour in different ways. “You will find Salafis who preach what they never practised and others who are more committed,” says Omar Ashour of the University of Exeter.

In Egypt, the broad social movement that existed before the 2011 revolution gave rise to Salafi political parties. The biggest of these, Nour, won more than 25 per cent of the vote in the first democratic parliamentary elections in 2011. “Before the revolution we were there, doing social work, our ideology spreading by the day, and we were not violent so our movement also reassured people,” says Mohamad Nour, a party representative.

The Salafi battle in Egypt has focused largely on winning votes and pressing for a more Islamic agenda in the constitution. Liberals have voiced dismay that the charter put to a vote in December gives clerics some authority over the interpretation of legislation and provides insufficient guarantees of equality for women. Some Salafi politicians have called for the marriage age to be lowered, further enraging women’s organisations.

The Salafis in Tunisia are less numerous and less organised, factors that analysts say account for behaviour including a more aggressive attitude towards women.

“In Tunisia, Islamic activism in general was impossible under an extremely repressive regime, and the Salafis were very loose networks of young people with no identified leadership, no institution, nothing,” says Pierret. “So in the end, you have thugs who make trouble at universities and attack people in streets.”

The fact that secularism has been more deeply entrenched in Tunisia than in Egypt, moreover, adds to the frustration of the Salafis and drive them towards more aggressive behaviour.

In Libya, meanwhile, analysts say it is difficult to judge the weight of the Salafis but the threat they pose has been more pronounced than elsewhere because they organised themselves into militias during the 2011 revolt against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. They have resisted attempts to strip them of their weapons by the weak central government that emerged during the political transition.

But the Salafis’ emergence as the loudest, most troublesome political operators has also caused a backlash, with crowds turning on the Libyan Ansar Al Sharia group, for example, after it was accused of staging the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.

In Tunisia, pressure has mounted on the interim government, dominated by the moderate Al Nahda Islamist party, to adopt tougher measures towards the Salafis. In Egypt, an image of piety and moral purity was undermined by scandals, including the case of one MP who lied about a nose job and another found in a compromising position with a young woman.

Syria’s Salafis, including Shaikh Arour, have come under growing criticism for damaging the image of the revolt against the regime of Bashar Al Assad. The rebel spokesman says many in the opposition are aware that figures such as this must be contained. “He has a big project, to be the religious authority in a future Syria. He’s not a calm person and he is becoming a threat.”

Yet, the fragmented nature of the movement, and its various and still mutating trends, means policy making is difficult. While no one argues against the need for a harder line to be taken by some governments against Salafis involved in violence, it is their long-term treatment that poses a quandary, particularly in countries in transition.

Many liberals in the Arab world would like to see the ideology suppressed. But Tunisia’s leading Islamist leader, Rached Ghannouchi, has argued that Salafis must not be demonised, even if their religious thinking is misguided.

“It’s not easy,” says Ashour. “Any attempt to ban them or crack down on them will cause more harm in the long term because they will turn to violence, and you will see the sense of victimisation more ingrained. At the same time, any tolerance to attempted infringements on women’s rights and minority rights ... will also be damaging in long term.”

His expectation is that the movement will damage itself as more open political systems take root in the region. “Salafi [ideology] was growing because it was more or less never allowed to be under public scrutiny or in power institutions,” he says. “Once it gets there, with all its promises to relieve economic problems and guide society to heaven, I think it will start dwindling.”

Financial Times