In Lebanon, puritanical Sunnis and a reputed playboy team up in politics
Salafists, accused of being terrorists in other parts of the Arab world, are moving into the mainstream with the help of leading politician Saad Hariri in exchange for bolstering his religious base.
Reporting from Tripoli, Lebanon — When it comes to strange Middle East bedfellows, Lebanon's latest political partnership may be the most unlikely: The leader of one party has a reputation as a playboy with ties to neoconservatives in the Bush administration. The other group is widely viewed as a community of extremists whose puritanical strain of Sunni Islam inspired Osama bin Laden.
Lebanon's Salafists, often equated with terrorists in much of the Arab world, have teamed with Saad Hariri and his mainstream Future Movement to become part of the country's political order.
"They used to be very marginal," Benedetta Berti, a terrorism specialist at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, said of the Salafists. "Now, they have to be taken into account by any political movement. They have become a significant political force. Not by number, but in terms of the political impact they could have."
The curious experiment, in one of the Arab world's most democratic political systems, could have implications for the rest of the region. In Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Algeria, Salafists are often tossed into dungeons.
"One of the main reasons Salafists join the jihadist . . . and terrorist groups is because of alienation and marginalization," said Mustafa Allouch, a Future Movement lawmaker from Tripoli. "They don't find any hope for expressing their ideas. It's better to accept all types of ideas and put them under the light so they don't grow in the darkness."
But some wonder whether the Salafists are evolving into a democratic political bloc or gaming the system to expand their reach and achieve their extreme goals, which include the radicalization of Sunni Muslims throughout the Middle East.
Salafists are rooted in a 12th century movement within Sunni Islam that argues for a strict interpretation of the Koran. Funded in part by conservative Sunni religious organizations in the Persian Gulf, Salafist mosques and teachings have spread quickly across the Muslim world.
While most other preachers around the Middle East discreetly espouse their puritanical Salafist version of Islam at mosques or prayer groups, adherents in Lebanon are slipping into the mainstream. Sheik Mazan Mohammed openly proselytizes and rails against the political order as he sells spare auto parts out of his small shop in the Bab al Tabbaneh district of this northern port city.
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