An article in today's
Wall Street Journal gives context to the recent deadly clash (see
prior posting) between Salafist Muslims and Coptic Christians. Here is an excerpt from the analysis:
The rise in sectarianism has appeared in parallel with an increasingly vocal Salafi movement—a fundamentalist Islamic ideology that tends to view non-Muslims as less deserving of full civil rights in an idealized Muslim society.
On some level, the violence is an effort to intimidate Christians whose protection by the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak was perceived by many as preferential treatment, said Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a human-rights group that has been monitoring sectarian violence in Egypt....
Despite sharing a few common political goals, such as the desire to see Sharia law incorporated into the Egyptian legal system, the Salafists' fundamentalist outlook is distinct from the Brotherhood's merely conservative ideology.
Strict Salafis consider more moderate Islamists, such as the Brotherhood, as "innovators" whose practice of the faith includes new or foreign concepts that were introduced into the religion long after the Prophet's death.
