1 00:00:00,150 --> 00:00:06,990 Good evening. Thanks to the Village Centre and thanks to you again for the invitation. 2 00:00:07,590 --> 00:00:10,890 And thanks to Thomas for the famous presentation. 3 00:00:12,060 --> 00:00:13,620 It's very kind of you. 4 00:00:14,100 --> 00:00:19,350 You said you were my friend, so I guess everyone knows at this point that you don't believe anything that you said because this is just friendship. 5 00:00:20,520 --> 00:00:33,900 But thank you. I start my talk with the description of three events that happened in Egypt, more or less at the same time, and that was in April 2012. 6 00:00:34,290 --> 00:00:36,480 So we're going back a little while. 7 00:00:38,040 --> 00:00:49,140 April 2012 was the run up to Egypt's first presidential post-revolution election, and the country was boiling with politics in Cairo. 8 00:00:49,170 --> 00:00:56,610 The Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Morsi, was organising his last big electoral meeting in Abdeen, next to the former palace. 9 00:00:58,020 --> 00:01:03,570 And the Line-Up for the event was striking, some would say surprising. 10 00:01:03,960 --> 00:01:07,080 Mohammed Morsi did, of course, give a full speech. He was the candidate. 11 00:01:07,530 --> 00:01:13,530 But before and after the show was run by two sheikhs, both of whom were clearly identified with Salafism, 12 00:01:14,220 --> 00:01:19,050 Mohammed Abdul Masood, a prominent Salafi figure from Cairo's Shubra neighbourhood. 13 00:01:20,090 --> 00:01:26,460 And suffered because he was a member of what became known in the 2000 as the Muslim Brotherhood said if you wake. 14 00:01:28,060 --> 00:01:33,530 Outside the electoral meeting as you left place the books of Right of a Sajani, 15 00:01:33,550 --> 00:01:37,660 another sheikh, a member of the Brotherhood Salafi wing, were being sold a large stables. 16 00:01:39,540 --> 00:01:42,510 One of those was on the left of Mohammad, adopted Wahab. 17 00:01:43,320 --> 00:01:48,300 Another one argued that the Brotherhood was a Salafi organisation and that Salafis should support it. 18 00:01:49,850 --> 00:01:56,240 In the line-up, shall you? A character who until the 2000, had been considered as the Muslim Brotherhood's global mufti. 19 00:01:56,300 --> 00:02:00,890 Too close to quote from Yakub Scott Peterson. Well, he was nowhere to be found. 20 00:02:00,920 --> 00:02:06,710 He was completely absent. And indeed, what remained in Qatar, he actually never officially backed Mohammed Morsi. 21 00:02:08,150 --> 00:02:11,420 Around the same time as this was happening with Mohammed Morsi, 22 00:02:11,660 --> 00:02:18,680 Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh was a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood who had left the organisation and had decided to run for president. 23 00:02:19,070 --> 00:02:22,820 And as you know, he would end up force with 70% of the vote. 24 00:02:23,630 --> 00:02:31,490 So Abdel Fattah was organising his own electoral meeting in Alexandria with the support of Egypt's biggest Salafi organisation. 25 00:02:32,240 --> 00:02:40,460 That that was set up for you. All of this was happening as the streets of Cairo were recovering from clashes in front of the army headquarters, 26 00:02:40,910 --> 00:02:44,660 led by supporters, led by supporters of another Salafi sheikh, 27 00:02:45,110 --> 00:02:48,860 Hassan Saleh Abouzeid, a maverick Salafi husband, 28 00:02:48,860 --> 00:02:55,980 had decided to run for president and an enormous social movement had taken shape around his split in early 2012. 29 00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:04,280 The streets of Egypt's main cities were full of posters to Hasan, and some of the early polls ranked him first among all presidential candidates. 30 00:03:04,940 --> 00:03:10,280 It was his exclusion from the presidential race in early April by Egypt's electoral 31 00:03:10,280 --> 00:03:15,620 commission on the grounds of the alleged dual American Egyptian citizenship of his mother. 32 00:03:16,070 --> 00:03:24,600 That prompted the clashes with his supporters. I'm telling those stories because they reflect how in the post-war revolutionary period, 33 00:03:24,900 --> 00:03:30,570 Salafism had become the dominant and unavoidable religious idiom in Egyptian politics, 34 00:03:31,080 --> 00:03:36,210 an idiom even adopted by groups and individuals that historically had had little to do with Salafism. 35 00:03:36,540 --> 00:03:44,790 Starting with the Muslim Brotherhood. How did this come to be, and what consequences did this have for Egypt's political transition? 36 00:03:46,710 --> 00:03:49,170 My argument here is that in Egypt, 37 00:03:49,230 --> 00:03:57,060 2011 was the culmination of two parallel and completely distinct processes that collided in the wake of the revolution. 38 00:03:57,900 --> 00:04:01,050 The first of these processes is well known and well studied. 39 00:04:01,290 --> 00:04:09,420 It is the political process that led a mostly young generation of activists, most of whom had little to do with Islamism and even less with Salafism. 40 00:04:10,020 --> 00:04:15,270 To trigger a succession of events that would end was the ouster of Hosni Mubarak on the 11th of February. 41 00:04:16,380 --> 00:04:21,000 But the second of those processes is much less studied and took place within a much longer time frame. 42 00:04:21,720 --> 00:04:30,840 That process is what I called the hedge harmonisation of Salafism with an Egypt's religious sphere explaining how this humanisation came to be. 43 00:04:30,960 --> 00:04:38,370 It's a daunting task, and I have just finished a book about this, but what I do here is that I briefly sum up some of my main arguments. 44 00:04:39,690 --> 00:04:44,790 But first, let's start by defining Salafism and explaining why it needs to be considered 45 00:04:44,790 --> 00:04:48,990 as a phenomenon analytically distinct from the Muslim Brotherhood's Islamism. 46 00:04:50,640 --> 00:04:58,530 In the Egyptian context, Islamism and Salafism both emerged in the 1920s in an organised form as two possible outcomes of 47 00:04:58,530 --> 00:05:03,510 the movement of Islamic reform that have taken hold in the country since the late 19th century. 48 00:05:04,980 --> 00:05:06,750 Established in 1928, 49 00:05:07,170 --> 00:05:14,880 the Muslim Brotherhood was Islamism as first organised manifestation and it would remain the matrix of Islamism throughout the 20th century. 50 00:05:16,110 --> 00:05:20,790 What is less known, though, is that two years before, in 1926, 51 00:05:21,090 --> 00:05:29,520 Egypt's first Salafi organisation had been established on sort of Sunni Ahmadiyya that supporters of the Prophet's tradition. 52 00:05:30,210 --> 00:05:34,440 And from now on I would call them unsatisfied, as they usually called in the Egyptian debates, 53 00:05:35,820 --> 00:05:40,350 the two organisations, the brothers and also the Senate would remain at odds. 54 00:05:40,740 --> 00:05:45,780 For all of their history. And although also the sooner was smaller than the brotherhood in size, 55 00:05:46,260 --> 00:05:50,940 both organisations would come to exert a massive influence over Egyptian society. 56 00:05:52,620 --> 00:06:01,080 Salafism here can be defined as both a religious discourse and initially, at least as what I refer to as a grammar of action. 57 00:06:02,370 --> 00:06:06,930 In terms of religious discourse, Salafism represents a ultraconservative version of Islam, 58 00:06:07,380 --> 00:06:13,330 inspired by a select number of medieval and more modern authors from even Samia 59 00:06:13,350 --> 00:06:18,120 and his students even pay homage to the cathedral to Mohammed than Abdel Wahab, 60 00:06:18,120 --> 00:06:23,160 the co-founder of Saudi Arabia and his later intellectual peers. 61 00:06:24,930 --> 00:06:32,210 What characterises Salafi religious discourse is its strict and uncompromising definition of the Muslim creed the archetype. 62 00:06:33,610 --> 00:06:38,410 Based on that definition, the adherents of Islam's dominant theological school, 63 00:06:38,740 --> 00:06:44,230 the Ashes, opponents of the ushering school, but also the Sufis and of course, the Shia. 64 00:06:44,830 --> 00:06:48,970 All of those are not considered to be proper Muslims and sometimes not Muslim at all. 65 00:06:50,440 --> 00:06:55,360 That attitude, all creeds, goes with a ultraconservative reading, reading infidel, 66 00:06:56,170 --> 00:07:03,010 supporting the set of social practices that would become seen in the 20th century as distinctively Salafi. 67 00:07:03,550 --> 00:07:12,910 For instance, regarding women who most, but not actually all Salafis consider should cover their faces in public of music, 68 00:07:13,270 --> 00:07:16,280 which is banned except for acapella chants. 69 00:07:16,300 --> 00:07:19,630 The famous Nasheed's and Nasheed pro-reform. 70 00:07:20,410 --> 00:07:26,530 Or regarding Christians, for instance, whom, according to Salafis, it is forbidden to congratulate on their religious holiness. 71 00:07:26,830 --> 00:07:32,270 And you would see that in Egypt, you would see the Brotherhood putting up signs congratulating Christians on Christmas, but Salafis wouldn't do that. 72 00:07:32,300 --> 00:07:37,030 So, you know, those are practices that would distinctively set Salafis apart. 73 00:07:38,760 --> 00:07:44,820 This ultra conservative religious discourse often goes with what I've called a distinctive grammar of action. 74 00:07:45,510 --> 00:07:56,700 And I'm using that term on boring it from pragmatic sociology of authors like Russell Lemieux, liberal, dusky, etc. 75 00:07:58,240 --> 00:08:03,280 Some of these believe that the reform of the Ummah should happen primarily through the purification 76 00:08:03,280 --> 00:08:08,530 of the Crete and the propagation of the purified creed through education and preaching. 77 00:08:09,730 --> 00:08:14,620 This is what a leader and very famous Salafi figure Sheikh Mohammed, must have had been. 78 00:08:14,620 --> 00:08:19,990 And Ambani called a post the epitome of purification and education. 79 00:08:21,250 --> 00:08:26,500 This explains why Salafis have generally shunned oppositional politics. 80 00:08:26,980 --> 00:08:37,000 For them, no change can come from above. Before, society has been religiously purified at the level of both discourse and drummer of action. 81 00:08:37,030 --> 00:08:40,810 Salafism is thus this thing from Islamism as represented by the Muslim Brotherhood. 82 00:08:41,230 --> 00:08:49,510 The Brotherhood understands reform as fundamentally a political process, one that ends with the creation of an Islamic state. 83 00:08:49,810 --> 00:08:53,830 The thing is, though, that the summit of the Brotherhood later taken on by other groups, 84 00:08:55,360 --> 00:09:01,900 and that has prompted the brothers to enter the political sphere as active participants from quite early on in their history, 85 00:09:01,990 --> 00:09:07,450 as you remember, has a lot of himself run for election, for elections already in the early 1940s. 86 00:09:08,770 --> 00:09:13,960 Salafis, in return, see politics as corrupting and unnecessary at this stage, 87 00:09:14,500 --> 00:09:20,950 and again, quoting from Satan and banning what they say is being a see us advocacy us. 88 00:09:21,550 --> 00:09:28,180 The good policy is to abandon politics or to step away from politics. 89 00:09:30,340 --> 00:09:37,630 Salafis have thus usually thought a modus vivendi with the different regimes as a way to protect their preaching enterprise. 90 00:09:39,490 --> 00:09:43,720 Finally, in terms of Islam, there are also clear differences between Salafis and brothers. 91 00:09:44,410 --> 00:09:47,890 While Salafis see religious reform as their primary goal. 92 00:09:48,280 --> 00:09:56,740 As I've said, the brothers main focus is political reform. And for the brothers, Islam is a given, not an ideal to be reached. 93 00:09:57,310 --> 00:10:04,030 And the goal for the brothers is therefore to try to unify conservative Muslims across their differences around a common political goal. 94 00:10:04,900 --> 00:10:07,510 This is therefore clear from the trajectory of hasn't been there. 95 00:10:07,510 --> 00:10:13,920 For instance, who welcomed Sufis and he was a former Sufi himself who was active in rapprochement efforts, 96 00:10:13,930 --> 00:10:21,070 agreed with the Shia for instance, and that him already at the time the harsh criticism of the Sunni Salafis. 97 00:10:23,800 --> 00:10:25,810 Explaining what I called the hedge. 98 00:10:25,810 --> 00:10:34,210 Harmonisation of Salafism requires an analysis of the shifting relations within the triangle of actors made up of the state Islamism and Salafism. 99 00:10:34,310 --> 00:10:40,750 Right. That's the triangle I'm looking at that that hedge embolisation took place in different stages. 100 00:10:41,290 --> 00:10:45,340 And I'm going to walk you through these different stages, and I'll have to be quick again. 101 00:10:45,730 --> 00:10:49,150 That will be much more detailed in the book that will come out next year. 102 00:10:50,990 --> 00:10:55,820 From the 1940s to the 1940s from the 1920 sorry, to the 1940s, 103 00:10:57,080 --> 00:11:02,659 the Egyptian Salafis main effort was geared towards publishing and thus making accessible to a large 104 00:11:02,660 --> 00:11:09,810 audience the writings of a select group of authors that form the backbone of their Corpus Ibn TV calling, 105 00:11:09,980 --> 00:11:14,060 even getting it from Wahab, Suleiman, even Salman, etc., etc. 106 00:11:14,990 --> 00:11:20,180 Most of these authors were little known in Egypt before the 1920s, and when they were, 107 00:11:20,750 --> 00:11:26,960 they were generally denounced by the country's dominant Islamic tradition represented by Al-Azhar. 108 00:11:28,040 --> 00:11:39,080 The Salafi effort was thus aimed not only at rehabilitating its authors, but also at saturating the emerging book markets with their writings. 109 00:11:40,990 --> 00:11:49,390 The early Egyptian Salafis displayed an impressive entrepreneurial ethos that made their publishing campaign eventually quite successful. 110 00:11:50,050 --> 00:11:53,680 Despite the radical opposition of Al-Azhar and at the time, you know, 111 00:11:53,680 --> 00:11:58,600 some of the more senior civil authorities are constantly denouncing what they see as the corrupting 112 00:11:58,600 --> 00:12:03,370 enterprises of the Salafis were digging into the tradition to bring out divisive works, 113 00:12:03,370 --> 00:12:04,120 etc., etc. 114 00:12:04,120 --> 00:12:11,770 That's the language, of course, that is used by some of the most prominent Shias that Azhar at the time she that this was one of the many many names. 115 00:12:13,660 --> 00:12:18,220 What Ibn Casey is famous to fear, for instance, and everyone today knows the see. 116 00:12:18,310 --> 00:12:22,870 And Kathy, you're right, it's the most famous. Exactly. The Koran these days, considered so. 117 00:12:23,470 --> 00:12:28,120 Well, it was only published in 1924 in Egypt for the first time. 118 00:12:28,960 --> 00:12:32,470 And at the time, it was not very known. 119 00:12:33,640 --> 00:12:36,880 It would take a few decades for it to become seen as the reference in theatre, 120 00:12:37,360 --> 00:12:46,180 pushing aside as a luxury i al-balawi and even who used to be considered until the early 20th century as the core representatives of the Shah, 121 00:12:47,890 --> 00:12:57,010 counter-intuitively, the coming to power of the free officers and later Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954 turned out to be a blessing for the Salafis. 122 00:12:58,420 --> 00:13:06,520 Most of the country's Islamic associations were either banned like the Muslim Brotherhood or put under the heavy control of the state. 123 00:13:07,910 --> 00:13:13,970 I love her was also domesticated, especially after the 1961 nationalisation law. 124 00:13:15,560 --> 00:13:23,000 Among the only organisation that were spared from repression were the Salafi organisations, starting with Sara Sidner, who, 125 00:13:23,210 --> 00:13:30,140 since they shunned institutional politics and did not hesitate to sing the praises of the new regime, were never seen as a threat. 126 00:13:31,040 --> 00:13:39,110 In other words, Nasser's religious policies created an immense void in the religious sphere, and that void was partly filled by the Salafis. 127 00:13:40,310 --> 00:13:46,550 During the Nasser era, they also continued their publishing enterprise, but with even less competition than before. 128 00:13:48,170 --> 00:13:51,800 One interesting I reviewed from the time, for instance, 129 00:13:51,950 --> 00:14:02,210 is that of the first major international conference on even time that took place in Damascus in 1958 to celebrate the unification of Egypt and Syria. 130 00:14:02,510 --> 00:14:07,430 That's interesting, right? To celebrate what was seen at the time as an Arab nationalist projects project, 131 00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:13,100 even trivia would be the figure that would kind of link the two countries together. 132 00:14:13,100 --> 00:14:17,010 And, you know, even to me, it was a Syrian style part of his life in Egypt, was jailed in Egypt. 133 00:14:17,510 --> 00:14:23,780 He was seen as a symbol of that. But the fact that the figure of him in time would take so much importance is also a sign of the times. 134 00:14:28,060 --> 00:14:33,040 So as I said. Right, they continued their publishing enterprise. But was even less competition than before. 135 00:14:33,790 --> 00:14:40,580 And. Salafi spaces became the only non-state religious spaces available in the country. 136 00:14:41,870 --> 00:14:48,200 That explains why the Egyptian religious revival of the late 1960s sprung from Salafi spheres. 137 00:14:49,310 --> 00:14:54,650 It is a fact that most of those who would become the leaders of the 1970s Islamic 138 00:14:54,650 --> 00:14:59,060 organisations in Egypt had their early religious socialisation as Salafis, 139 00:14:59,690 --> 00:15:10,100 either with an onset of some knock off or on Sunni mosques or within mosque pertaining to another organisation called Sharia, 140 00:15:11,330 --> 00:15:19,430 which in the 1960s had also adopted a clear Salafi outlook more than an Islamic revival. 141 00:15:19,910 --> 00:15:23,850 This was a Salafi revival and a Salafis. 142 00:15:24,110 --> 00:15:32,630 Many of these activists were initially more focussed on questions of correct creed and Islamic behaviour than they were on questions of politics. 143 00:15:33,560 --> 00:15:38,270 And this is obvious from the student groups that emerged in Egyptian universities. 144 00:15:38,840 --> 00:15:45,290 The famous Jemaah Islamiyah, which actually only became politicised during the second half of the 1970s, 145 00:15:45,560 --> 00:15:48,920 and especially after Sadat's famous trip to Jerusalem in 1977. 146 00:15:49,970 --> 00:15:58,040 Before that, their demands concern gender segregation, stopping classes for prayer, or removing Sufi content from religious classes. 147 00:15:59,450 --> 00:16:04,730 Here, I think that there's actually some kind of historical problem in the literature carving that periods. 148 00:16:05,810 --> 00:16:13,760 Most of that literature reads the 1970s decade retrospectively from Sadat's assassination 149 00:16:13,760 --> 00:16:19,340 in 1981 and analyses that decade as leading eventually to the assassination of Sadat. 150 00:16:20,270 --> 00:16:28,940 And by doing so. It emphasises the figure of side put up as the main inspiration for the activists of that decade. 151 00:16:29,900 --> 00:16:33,650 And yes, I'm not debating that the writings that said would have had importance. 152 00:16:33,680 --> 00:16:36,110 They did have a major importance in the seventies. 153 00:16:36,320 --> 00:16:44,510 But only at a later stage and on a generation whose religious understanding was already informed by a Salafi vision. 154 00:16:46,460 --> 00:16:56,300 Let's look at the timeline here. It is only in 1973, 1974, that the largest group of Muslim Brotherhood detainees were released from prison. 155 00:16:57,290 --> 00:17:00,950 And this is once then YouTube's writings became known to a larger audience. 156 00:17:02,840 --> 00:17:07,400 So we do know that the 1970s generation was already active on campuses by that. 157 00:17:10,930 --> 00:17:20,590 There were two consequences here. First, that activist generation as a result of the troops, you know, influence at a second stage, as I said, 158 00:17:21,160 --> 00:17:28,860 yes, it did become gradually politicised, mixing its early Salafi vision with some of its political ideas. 159 00:17:29,890 --> 00:17:34,000 And that produced a brand of political Salafism that was at the time, 160 00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:40,000 an entirely new thing breaking from the old Salafi grammar of action that I mentioned earlier. 161 00:17:40,240 --> 00:17:47,110 Right. And the same thing happened exactly at the same time in Saudi Arabia with the birth of the Sahwa, 162 00:17:47,110 --> 00:17:55,300 which was the subject of the book I did before that one second, the Brotherhood when they came out of jail in 73, 74. 163 00:17:55,330 --> 00:18:01,000 They were actually shocked to discover that a new generation of activists had emerged in their absence, 164 00:18:02,020 --> 00:18:08,530 and they would direct all their efforts at trying to co-opt that new generation of activists to revive the Brotherhood. 165 00:18:09,220 --> 00:18:14,560 And to do so, they would themselves have to adopt a clearer Salafi outlook. 166 00:18:15,070 --> 00:18:19,450 This is the moment when basically Muslim Brotherhood members started doing that. 167 00:18:20,590 --> 00:18:25,240 I mean, again, not one but many brothers in their forties, fifties didn't have one. 168 00:18:26,260 --> 00:18:31,209 So that was the moment when, again, they felt that they needed not just in their appearance, 169 00:18:31,210 --> 00:18:34,830 by the way, but what they would say and how they would present their project. 170 00:18:35,020 --> 00:18:41,620 And they would feel the need to use Salafi references that would speak to that generation. 171 00:18:44,130 --> 00:18:47,630 The Brotherhood ended up being reborn, but with a Salafi element within it. 172 00:18:48,930 --> 00:18:58,080 And from the eighties and nineties, the Brotherhood would become increasingly divided on the question of Salafism, with a growing Salafi wing, 173 00:18:58,620 --> 00:19:05,130 especially among the new generation of religious figures such as those that I mentioned at the beginning of my talk. 174 00:19:05,790 --> 00:19:16,290 Support Hegazi wrote for the society. And on the other hand, as opposed to those, the old generation of scholars of the Brotherhood, 175 00:19:16,290 --> 00:19:23,250 such as Mohamed al Ghazali or Yusuf Corado, who actually wrote against the influence of Salafism in those decades. 176 00:19:23,400 --> 00:19:29,910 And you have two books actually from from causality from the eighties, denouncing what he sees as the creeping influenced Salafism. 177 00:19:30,240 --> 00:19:40,140 So it was indeed a debate within the Brotherhood. By the late 2000s, the leadership of the Brotherhood was clearly leaning towards the Salafis, 178 00:19:40,710 --> 00:19:47,800 and that was another sign of the growing Salafi hegemony. This is what my friend, the deceased Hassan Tamam. 179 00:19:47,820 --> 00:19:52,550 Some of you who follow Egypt probably know his name and he left us in 2011. 180 00:19:52,560 --> 00:19:58,850 He was one of these Egyptian scholars who really, you know, 181 00:19:59,640 --> 00:20:06,570 provided an enormous amount of study to that question of political Islam in Egypt in the 2000 and and really, 182 00:20:06,570 --> 00:20:08,370 you know, brought up a lot of new things. 183 00:20:09,060 --> 00:20:15,330 So for some, in 2010, wrote an article which you called to salute the required right on what he called the certification of the Brotherhood. 184 00:20:15,450 --> 00:20:23,420 And he was looking at these types of phenomenon within the Brotherhood. So let me go back to the late 1970s and leave the Brotherhood aside for. 185 00:20:24,480 --> 00:20:33,180 In 1981. That decade, yes. Did end with activists identifying with what they would call a radical radical politicised Salafi worldview, 186 00:20:33,510 --> 00:20:36,660 Lutheran Jihad and Jemaah Islamiyah that things to group that killed Sadat. 187 00:20:36,930 --> 00:20:39,240 Well, they did kill Sadat in 1981. Yes. 188 00:20:40,110 --> 00:20:48,180 And that led to a widespread repression of all activists done as well as a change of era with the coming to power of Mubarak. 189 00:20:48,330 --> 00:20:50,940 And Mubarak, as you know, would stay in power for the next 30 years. 190 00:20:51,990 --> 00:20:56,730 The Mubarak era would see Salafism continue its process of religious hedge harmonisation. 191 00:20:57,480 --> 00:21:03,840 During the 1970s, Salafism have become the dominant idiom within Egypt's religious activist milieu. 192 00:21:04,980 --> 00:21:11,430 From the 1980s, Salafism would gradually become a mass phenomenon, reaching all parts of Egyptian society at large. 193 00:21:12,440 --> 00:21:15,900 That is the difference between the seventies and what happened from the eighties. 194 00:21:16,950 --> 00:21:21,990 And what happened from the eighties was the result of a number of dynamics, which I'll mention briefly here. 195 00:21:23,430 --> 00:21:25,110 First in the late seventies, 196 00:21:25,290 --> 00:21:33,810 the first grassroots activists therapy organisation had been established and it was called First and Madrassas Sellafield, the Salafi School. 197 00:21:34,380 --> 00:21:37,590 And later on that was Sellafield, the Salafi Court. 198 00:21:39,360 --> 00:21:45,390 The organisation was created by members of the Alexandria branch of the student Jemaah Islamiah, 199 00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:51,930 who were unhappy with the decision of many other Jemaah Islamiyah members to join the Brotherhood. 200 00:21:53,160 --> 00:22:00,240 In contrast, the founders of the DAR was Salafi. You were hoping to bring Salafism back to its original premise of action, 201 00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:05,820 purification and education while shunning any political involvement and thus 202 00:22:06,150 --> 00:22:10,770 to break from the politicisation that Salafism had undergone in the 1970s. 203 00:22:11,850 --> 00:22:17,760 What made them different from inside of some another told you that there was another Salafi group that was organised since 1926. 204 00:22:17,910 --> 00:22:19,440 So what's the difference with the new guys? 205 00:22:20,100 --> 00:22:28,440 What's made them different then is that they had learned from their years as student activists of a number of things which they took with them. 206 00:22:29,820 --> 00:22:34,290 Well, answer the signal, which at that point had become a pretty sleepy institution. 207 00:22:34,980 --> 00:22:39,930 Well, unsolicited, it was more akin to what I would call the traditional league of almost, 208 00:22:40,020 --> 00:22:43,649 you know, Robitussin, which is a common form of organisation in the Muslim world. 209 00:22:43,650 --> 00:22:51,660 Right. So on Sundays, something had become kind of a sleepy legal dilemma that that was sort of fear was designed as a grassroots 210 00:22:51,780 --> 00:22:59,730 preaching movement with a relatively complex architecture resembling that of the Muslim Brotherhood to some extent. 211 00:23:00,540 --> 00:23:04,350 And that obviously the fire even has a guide, as you know. And he's called the column. 212 00:23:04,800 --> 00:23:11,220 He's the Salafi equivalent of some kind of Muslim writes the youth column, by the way, to tell you the story, 213 00:23:11,220 --> 00:23:21,000 because a poem was the title given in the old days in the medieval times to the rector of a school. 214 00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:28,680 Right. So in claiming Jose is I mean, his name comes from he's the son of the client of the madrassa founded by it. 215 00:23:28,680 --> 00:23:31,150 And Jose. Right. Hence the name. Right. 216 00:23:31,170 --> 00:23:36,630 So the name calling is important because it's known it in 5 minutes, an omen that refers to someone who heads a school. 217 00:23:37,020 --> 00:23:41,430 And as I told you at the beginning, they were called the Salafi school. So and they took on that. 218 00:23:41,700 --> 00:23:50,040 But he kind of acts as a mentor of the group in ways that are certainly different from the Brotherhood and claiming that it's the same. 219 00:23:50,040 --> 00:23:53,040 But they also have their guiding figure. Right. 220 00:23:54,630 --> 00:24:00,900 And the new methods of mobilisation that the DA was sort of adopted from its student years. 221 00:24:01,290 --> 00:24:08,490 Explain in large part why within three decades the DA sort of became the largest Salafi group in Egypt, 222 00:24:08,910 --> 00:24:12,300 with a membership only second in number to the Muslim Brotherhood. 223 00:24:14,310 --> 00:24:21,900 In addition to that was said, a few smaller Salafi groups, sometimes more politicised, continued to exist during the Mubarak era. 224 00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:29,730 So what we had was a blooming grassroots Salafism here it with one central group that was sort of fear, which was bigger than all the others. 225 00:24:29,940 --> 00:24:36,750 And then smaller Salafi communities. Some of them, you know, are continuing the kind of more politicised Salafism of the 1970s. 226 00:24:38,790 --> 00:24:42,810 There are two reasons for this blooming of Salafism on under Mubarak. 227 00:24:44,030 --> 00:24:48,590 The first has to do with what I would call the political economy of Salafism during those years. 228 00:24:50,210 --> 00:24:55,850 I'm sure you've noticed, and you've probably been surprised that I haven't mentioned Saudi Arabia much yet in that talk, 229 00:24:56,840 --> 00:25:01,969 and that is actually on purpose, because I believe that the role of Saudi Arabia in the development of Egyptian 230 00:25:01,970 --> 00:25:05,810 Salafism is actually largely overrated in the academic and non academic literature. 231 00:25:07,220 --> 00:25:13,220 Yes. So you did play a role. I'm not denying that they did it, but they did at certain moments. 232 00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:16,670 Right. One of those moments actually was not the one you would expect. 233 00:25:17,180 --> 00:25:25,610 It wasn't the 1920s and thirties when Onset of Sun was founded and King Abdulaziz was trying to normalise, 234 00:25:26,660 --> 00:25:32,130 you know, what a day in the days was called? Wahhabi Islam, Salafism, Saudi Islam, whatever you want to call it. 235 00:25:32,150 --> 00:25:35,360 You know, just after he'd taken it, conquered Medina. Right. 236 00:25:35,360 --> 00:25:39,770 And and, you know, that there was a hostile reaction from many parts of the Muslim world, 237 00:25:40,010 --> 00:25:45,940 because the you know, as in the times of the Ottomans, the Wahhabi or the Salafis were seen as extreme right. 238 00:25:45,950 --> 00:25:49,480 So he was trying to make himself known and make his Islam known and make himself known, 239 00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:53,840 which led to him supporting certain groups such as ISIS and Egypt. 240 00:25:54,230 --> 00:25:57,710 But what's interesting is that this is a known yet oil Saudi Arabia. 241 00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:02,120 It's not the oil money of the 2020s and thirties. It's not huge sums. 242 00:26:02,120 --> 00:26:05,480 But he's sending money grants. The answer is indeed. 243 00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:09,320 And helping them with manuscripts, which is crucial. Right. 244 00:26:09,410 --> 00:26:13,430 Because what unsettles Sunni those, remember, is publishing books that are not found in Egypt. 245 00:26:14,030 --> 00:26:17,360 And the Salafi networks going through Saudi Arabia and especially the Hejaz, 246 00:26:17,540 --> 00:26:27,500 would play a big role in providing them with some of these medieval books that they would later publish to constitute the 20th century Salafi corpus. 247 00:26:30,350 --> 00:26:35,509 So yes, there was Saudi support at some moments yet. 248 00:26:35,510 --> 00:26:42,950 For instance, in the 1970s, the Islamic revival that I described was actually Salafi for the reasons that I explained. 249 00:26:42,980 --> 00:26:49,070 And as you could see, those reasons happened before Saudi Arabia exerted any influence over it. 250 00:26:49,190 --> 00:26:55,549 Right. It was, you know, the events of the forties and Nasser coming to power and the elimination of the other groups. 251 00:26:55,550 --> 00:27:02,750 You felt you was not involved in them. So the 1970s revival was Salafi before the Saudis could influence it, 252 00:27:03,110 --> 00:27:07,010 not think that the Saudis didn't try to influence it afterwards, especially after 1973. 253 00:27:07,370 --> 00:27:08,750 But he was already sort of. Right. 254 00:27:08,990 --> 00:27:19,580 And this is also where, you know, I think some of because demography is problematic or so going back there right after the eighties, 255 00:27:19,580 --> 00:27:22,910 the role of Saudi Arabia to me in the Gulf become a bit more clear. 256 00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:35,480 Right. And that role would be to make Egyptian Salafism economically sustainable by allowing Salafis to connect to a booming economic space. 257 00:27:36,710 --> 00:27:41,210 And that would help solve one of the issues that Salafis face in a country like Egypt. 258 00:27:43,660 --> 00:27:47,380 Because their conservative views prohibit them from entering many careers. 259 00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:53,499 When you're a Salafi, you don't want to work for a secular state, so you can't you can't have a state job in Egypt. 260 00:27:53,500 --> 00:27:57,550 It's pretty common to have a state job anyway. 261 00:27:57,700 --> 00:28:03,100 Even if you decided that, well, I really need that state job, they probably wouldn't take it as your bit. 262 00:28:03,370 --> 00:28:05,450 So you wouldn't you wouldn't be accepted. 263 00:28:05,500 --> 00:28:12,880 The way you look, if you're a Salafi, would also avoid service jobs because you could be in contact with the other gender. 264 00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:17,050 And so that would put you in situations that you would not accept as a Salafi. 265 00:28:17,890 --> 00:28:19,719 So basically what you have done, you know, 266 00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:26,050 the preferable way of earning a living for Salafi is business as long as it is as it is in business of right. 267 00:28:26,110 --> 00:28:33,790 Business and things that are there. And the Gulf provided them with such excellent business opportunities either 268 00:28:33,790 --> 00:28:37,630 because they would go to the Gulf or because they would do business with Saudis, 269 00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:45,040 with Saudi companies from within Egypt. And many of these Salafis import export with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. 270 00:28:45,040 --> 00:28:47,620 They did these types of things, so they would use those connections. 271 00:28:49,090 --> 00:28:57,610 Here again, I would partly disagree with the dominant narrative that sees Egyptian Salafism as a result of Egyptian work migration to the Gulf. 272 00:28:58,300 --> 00:28:59,710 I'm not denying that this happened. 273 00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:05,500 Of course, you did have Egyptians who went to work in the Gulf and came back instead of denying that there are plenty of cases. 274 00:29:05,770 --> 00:29:12,490 But at the same time, we shouldn't forget that many of those who actually were Salafis before they went and it was being Salafi, 275 00:29:12,670 --> 00:29:16,450 that open careers for them in Saudi Arabia because they could connect to that network. 276 00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:21,280 So again, I think here again, you know, the story has been a little bit imbalanced, right. 277 00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:29,050 So my argument here is that the Gulf, more than creating the Egyptian Salafi phenomenon, made it economically sustainable. 278 00:29:29,290 --> 00:29:33,880 Right. And I think that was crucial in the blooming of Salafism in those years. 279 00:29:34,930 --> 00:29:40,450 Now, let's look at the second reason why I which I believe explains the Salafi boom during the Mubarak era. 280 00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:46,389 And that second reason is the regime's strategy of considering the Salafis as a 281 00:29:46,390 --> 00:29:50,410 lesser evil in comparison to the Brotherhood and to the other Islamist groups. 282 00:29:51,580 --> 00:29:55,840 Though the Salafis would sometimes face repression, they were generally less persecuted, 283 00:29:56,320 --> 00:30:00,880 and they actually sometimes benefited from the benevolence of the security apparatus. 284 00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:08,139 And you have plenty of stories about how state security on the dollar would help Salafis take hold of 285 00:30:08,140 --> 00:30:12,910 a neighbourhoods which it feared was too supportive of the Brotherhood or of the get on Islamist. 286 00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:19,030 So those stories are plenty. That strategy became particularly obvious in the 2000, 287 00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:27,520 when Salafis were granted the right to open a large number of satellite TV channels broadcasting online at the national satellite. 288 00:30:28,390 --> 00:30:31,480 And of course, that was something that the Brotherhood could never even dream of. 289 00:30:32,830 --> 00:30:36,220 That was completely impossible for the president to do any such thing. 290 00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:39,760 So the fact that the Salafis could open those channels was a key political decision. 291 00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:45,940 By the late 2000. Those channels were the most popular channels among Egyptian viewers. 292 00:30:46,210 --> 00:30:52,660 And watching them as one entered a shop or home was unavoidable for anyone visiting Egypt in the late 2000. 293 00:30:52,860 --> 00:30:55,540 I don't know if some of you have seen this, but I'm sure you have if you've been that. 294 00:30:56,380 --> 00:31:06,130 So at that point, Salafi sheikhs like Mohammed Hassan Abu Wani, Mohammed Hassan Yakubu, they have become household names for Egyptians. 295 00:31:07,900 --> 00:31:11,710 By late 2010 were just a few months before the revolution. 296 00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:18,040 Salafism had become so religiously hegemonic that the regime finally reconsidered its earlier strategy. 297 00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:22,299 In October 2010, four months before the revolution, three doesn't know that. 298 00:31:22,300 --> 00:31:30,490 Of course, in October 2010, the suspension of broadcasts was pronounced against some of the most popular Salafi channels. 299 00:31:31,030 --> 00:31:35,470 And a massive campaign denouncing Salafi influence was launched in the Egyptian press. 300 00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:45,670 And that campaign was, of course, aggravated in the wake of the terrorist attack on a Coptic church in Alexandria on Coptic Christmas in January 2011. 301 00:31:45,730 --> 00:31:50,170 Three weeks before the revolution in January 2011. 302 00:31:50,500 --> 00:31:56,649 A week, ten days after that attack, a magazine like Alamosa, which is one of these Egyptian magazines, 303 00:31:56,650 --> 00:32:01,150 a little bit of tabloids in many ways was quite read, as has an audience. 304 00:32:01,780 --> 00:32:04,660 So I just thought we would put, for instance, Yasser Mohammed, 305 00:32:04,690 --> 00:32:13,240 the strong man of the dog whistle reveal on its front page with the title The The Most Dangerous Man against Egypt. 306 00:32:13,690 --> 00:32:16,570 That's interesting. That's a complete shift in the discourse right back then. 307 00:32:19,740 --> 00:32:26,160 Some of them had reached the apex of its influence, but the political tide was beginning to turn against it. 308 00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:32,460 And that is when the Salafis were saved by a miracle with which they had absolutely nothing to do. 309 00:32:32,800 --> 00:32:38,400 And that miracle is called the Egyptian revolution. And when I say they actually had nothing to do with the revolution, it's even more than us. 310 00:32:39,060 --> 00:32:46,080 For the most part, Egyptian Salafis were fundamentally against the revolution, calling on their followers to stay at home during the protests. 311 00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:51,990 That was, for instance, the position of the DA was that a feel for the revolution was worthless. 312 00:32:52,680 --> 00:33:02,730 As one of their sheikhs, Mohammed Ismail Mukundan then famously explained what good can changing the ruler do if the society remains the same? 313 00:33:05,310 --> 00:33:11,460 The only Salafis who took part in the event were the smaller, politicised Salafi groups that I mentioned before, 314 00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:16,650 and they did represent much smaller numbers, but they did take part, right? 315 00:33:17,490 --> 00:33:22,760 And those Salafis joined the politicised ones about three days into the revolution. 316 00:33:22,770 --> 00:33:27,660 You remember that if you have the timeline of the revolution in mind starts in the 21st, on the 28th, 317 00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:32,910 the Muslim Brotherhood joins, and that is more or less when some of these smaller, politicised Salafi groups join as well. 318 00:33:33,420 --> 00:33:37,350 At the same time as the Brotherhood strikes and among them, among these people, 319 00:33:37,350 --> 00:33:43,680 it's like Salafis who join is Mohammed Abdel Maqsood, who I mentioned at the beginning, the Salafi Shia from Shubra, 320 00:33:43,860 --> 00:33:48,990 quite a big name in Cairo among the of committee of Cairo and how something that looks like 321 00:33:49,350 --> 00:33:52,680 whom I mentioned as well who would become the revolutionary Salafi talk about later on. 322 00:33:52,890 --> 00:33:56,460 Right. So this is the moment when these this tiny faction of Salafis join. 323 00:33:57,870 --> 00:34:02,550 Yet the non-participation of most Salafis in the revolution has no impact on their popularity. 324 00:34:02,700 --> 00:34:08,490 Right. And as soon as the revolution succeeded, Salafis were among the first to reap the fruits of it. 325 00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:14,620 Within days of Mubarak's fall, massive Salafi conference were organised across all regions. 326 00:34:14,700 --> 00:34:21,809 Right. And Salafis couldn't do it with massive conferences under Mubarak. They had they had the margin of of movement that was tolerated. 327 00:34:21,810 --> 00:34:25,320 But big conferences was not something that Mubarak would allow them to do. 328 00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:26,300 So now they could do this. 329 00:34:26,310 --> 00:34:36,690 And what they did soon as the revolution ended was to organise in Alexandria, the man who is one, you know, big Salafi conferences all across Egypt. 330 00:34:39,500 --> 00:34:43,250 Right at the time of the revolution at the top of this made to unify all Salafis. 331 00:34:43,250 --> 00:34:49,010 Despite the differences between the more and the less politicised ones, two religious bodies were created. 332 00:34:49,790 --> 00:34:53,930 The first is called the largest short allama, the Consultative Council of the LMA. 333 00:34:54,890 --> 00:35:03,950 And the second one, which I'll focus on here, which is more important school, which is like the Committee for Rights and Reform. 334 00:35:05,420 --> 00:35:09,389 That body is particularly interesting to study as an arena of interest. 335 00:35:09,390 --> 00:35:12,410 Salafi conflict was created right at the end of the revolution. 336 00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:20,660 It included members of the DA Setterfield politicised Salafis like Mohammed Abu Masood and members of the Muslim Brotherhood Salafi. 337 00:35:22,670 --> 00:35:27,020 It quickly appeared that each party was trying to use the body to further its own interests. 338 00:35:27,540 --> 00:35:31,700 That was considered that since it was the country's largest Salafi organisation, 339 00:35:32,060 --> 00:35:36,530 it should take the leading role in unifying the Salafis and that all Salafis should support it. 340 00:35:38,060 --> 00:35:43,250 In contrast, the politicised Salafis claimed leadership by putting forward their participation in the revolution, 341 00:35:43,550 --> 00:35:49,100 thus trying to compensate their smaller or smaller numbers with this kind of newfound legitimacy. 342 00:35:50,630 --> 00:35:51,080 Finally, 343 00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:58,490 the members of the Salafi of the Muslim Brotherhood are trying to channel Salafi support to the Brotherhood and use the comedy for that purpose. 344 00:35:59,450 --> 00:36:05,960 It didn't take long for this initial attempt at unity to collapse and for each Salafi faction to go its own way. 345 00:36:06,980 --> 00:36:12,410 First, the die was sort of. Let's look at it. The group that always shun politics told you that. 346 00:36:12,950 --> 00:36:14,690 And but in the wake of the revolution, 347 00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:20,540 some of the members of the diverse portfolio argued that the group now needed some form of political representation. 348 00:36:21,740 --> 00:36:23,390 After much internal debate, 349 00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:34,520 the Nour Party has the new was established in June 2011 and it received more than 25% of the votes in the parliamentary election a few months later, 350 00:36:34,760 --> 00:36:36,770 coming only second after the Muslim Brotherhood. 351 00:36:37,430 --> 00:36:43,130 And that showed the Salafis impressive ability to convert that religious capital into political capital. 352 00:36:44,670 --> 00:36:48,629 After initial tensions and interrogations on the purpose of a Salafi party. 353 00:36:48,630 --> 00:36:51,700 And I won't delve into this here because that would make me long. 354 00:36:52,350 --> 00:37:00,060 What happened is that the sheikhs at the door was Salafi turned the party into a lobbying arm for their religious organisation. 355 00:37:00,750 --> 00:37:05,970 What I mean when I say lobbying arm is that the shoes of the dollar Salafi never changed their grammar of action. 356 00:37:06,690 --> 00:37:14,460 They didn't believe in change or both. And they never envisioned the nor party as a vehicle to seize power or to establish an Islamic state. 357 00:37:15,270 --> 00:37:22,680 For them, the party's main function was to defend the interests of the religious association behind it, 358 00:37:23,160 --> 00:37:29,040 defend what they call Muslim hatred, their rights. And that was the whole thing that came in their discourse all the time. 359 00:37:30,450 --> 00:37:38,680 So for them, it was all about preserving the control over their mosques and creating the conditions for an expansion of that religious control rights. 360 00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:46,950 I have sometimes compared this approach to institutional politics, to that of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties in Israel. 361 00:37:47,100 --> 00:37:48,780 If you see that comparison right, 362 00:37:49,140 --> 00:37:55,140 because those parties also care first and foremost about the preservation and the expansion of their religious institutions, 363 00:37:55,500 --> 00:38:01,140 and they are not interested in exerting political power per say, which explains why they would make, you know, 364 00:38:01,230 --> 00:38:10,200 shifting alliances depending on whom they can get the right promises from and give their votes or their voices enough in the 365 00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:19,110 parliament to the party or the leader that says we're going to give you what you want to go with function very similarly, 366 00:38:19,170 --> 00:38:24,540 which will also later on explain many of the shifting alliances has been more of the no party. 367 00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:30,180 So in that sense, I have argued that the no party is not an Islamist party. 368 00:38:30,720 --> 00:38:34,080 And that takes us back to my earlier distinction between Salafism and Islamism. 369 00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:38,580 Right. I think it's a misconception to analyse the more partisan Islamist party, because it is not. 370 00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:42,720 And and you cannot understand what they do if you see them through that lens. 371 00:38:44,130 --> 00:38:50,250 In any case, what I'm trying to get at here is that understanding the no parties approach to politics is key to understanding 372 00:38:50,250 --> 00:38:56,280 why the sheikhs of the downfall of you would end up turning new into a combat machine against the Brotherhood. 373 00:38:56,430 --> 00:38:58,830 Right. Let me explain that point again. 374 00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:05,760 As I said, the sheikhs main focus is the preservation and expansion of their religious institutions, and they don't want to exert power. 375 00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:13,350 For them, the nightmare scenario is a muslim Brotherhood electoral victory through which the brothers would end up seizing the state, 376 00:39:13,830 --> 00:39:15,360 and after they seize the state, 377 00:39:15,630 --> 00:39:23,550 stop converting their political capital into religious capital by appointing brotherhood sheikhs and imams to every position into religious sphere, 378 00:39:24,120 --> 00:39:27,930 thereby weakening the Salafi presence and putting the Salafi project in danger. 379 00:39:29,250 --> 00:39:33,750 Counterintuitively, the Salafis feel much more at ease with a secular regime, 380 00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:39,450 which at least doesn't compete with them in the religious sphere, which in their view, is the only thing that actually matters. 381 00:39:41,100 --> 00:39:45,389 This is key to understanding why the new party Salafis did all they could through up to a 382 00:39:45,390 --> 00:39:49,890 year and a half of the Egyptian transition to undermine the brothers they run against them. 383 00:39:49,890 --> 00:39:52,050 In the parliamentary elections of late 2011. 384 00:39:52,470 --> 00:39:59,700 In the presidential elections of May 2012, they decided not to present the candidate, and that's coherent with not wanting to exert power. 385 00:40:00,240 --> 00:40:07,560 But they also decided not to back Mohammed Morsi. And instead they opted for another, more liberal Islamist candidate, 386 00:40:08,910 --> 00:40:14,160 Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a former MP member who left because he was on a more liberal line. 387 00:40:15,540 --> 00:40:22,170 Obviously, they didn't they didn't do this out of love for Abdel Fattah, whose religious views they shared even less than Morsi's. 388 00:40:25,710 --> 00:40:31,920 But Abdel Fattah was the only candidate carrying somehow the Islamic label that had any chance of winning. 389 00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:37,740 And if he had won, he would have been a weak president, which was perfect for Salafis, 390 00:40:37,950 --> 00:40:44,010 who would be the only cohesive group supporting him, thereby being able to instrumentalize him for their own purposes. 391 00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:54,090 When Abul-fotouh failed in the first round and the second round turned out to be between Mohamed Morsi and former Mubarak Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. 392 00:40:54,990 --> 00:41:02,250 Noor Salafis felt that they had no other choice if they wanted to maintain credibility with their base to support Mohamed Morsi. 393 00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:10,580 And they call for a multi vote. Finally at the very end, Yasser Mohammed, though. 394 00:41:10,820 --> 00:41:15,800 But at the same time, the as I said, the sheiks obviously preferred a shuttle option. 395 00:41:16,340 --> 00:41:19,810 So now they were torn between what they could say and what they actually preferred. 396 00:41:19,820 --> 00:41:26,030 Right. But it would have not sounded good to their base to support the guy who was the former Mubarak prime minister who was a known secularist. 397 00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:30,079 Right. So they called for a Morsi vote. 398 00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:33,770 But in the days before the announcement of the results, 399 00:41:34,040 --> 00:41:42,469 famous visit from one of the big sheikhs of the dollar said Yasir Mohammed was made to Ahmed Shafiq to tell him that in the end, 400 00:41:42,470 --> 00:41:47,510 you know, his victory was desirable and that of course, if he was to win, the Salafis would be behind him. 401 00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:57,950 Eventually, of course, a year into the Morsi presidency, as you know, the more party supported the military coup against Morsi. 402 00:41:58,340 --> 00:42:05,629 And if you remember the famous speech by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the 30th July 2013, you remember he's speaking. 403 00:42:05,630 --> 00:42:12,170 And behind him, there's a bunch of people sitting there is the and also there is the Coptic Pope. 404 00:42:12,180 --> 00:42:17,540 There is the representative of tomorrow that the youth group that supported the coup supported the demonstration 405 00:42:17,540 --> 00:42:23,450 that led to the coup and galmudug represent because of the no part is that right in that picture. 406 00:42:25,310 --> 00:42:31,920 This all shows you how the party with its almost 120 movies turned out to be 110 407 00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:37,729 to 110 turned out to be a headache for the Brotherhood during the whole of 2011. 408 00:42:37,730 --> 00:42:42,250 2013. Yet. This was not the only Salafi headache for the Brotherhood. 409 00:42:42,310 --> 00:42:48,490 There was a second Salafi headache because late 2011 would see the rise of another major Salafi phenomenon, 410 00:42:49,180 --> 00:42:53,260 the so-called revolutionary Salafi movement led by himself, Abu Smadi. 411 00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:58,930 What I mentioned at the beginning of my talk, if you remember, as opposed to the door, 412 00:42:58,930 --> 00:43:02,830 was that if your husband was a politicised Salafi, you were taking part in the revolution. 413 00:43:03,220 --> 00:43:06,580 He was also a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood. 414 00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:10,570 He had pertained to the Salafi wing of the Brotherhood and later he had abandoned the organisation. 415 00:43:11,770 --> 00:43:16,810 No, Hazem was turning into a charismatic grassroots leader who never missed the protest on the. 416 00:43:17,260 --> 00:43:24,220 He was always there with this crowd, and he was gaining immense support among religious Egyptians, both Salafis and Islamists, 417 00:43:24,580 --> 00:43:31,570 while denouncing the Brotherhood and the dark side of the US political sell-outs who had abandoned any commitment to the Islamic project. 418 00:43:32,050 --> 00:43:37,300 He was doing something with Islamic populism, if you want. He's above all in what you would call Islamic populist, right. 419 00:43:37,810 --> 00:43:41,050 But in the name of Salafism, again, using the same Salafi reference. 420 00:43:42,070 --> 00:43:48,760 More importantly, he was a presidential candidate who was ranked first in some of the polls in early 2012. 421 00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:52,570 And people who've been in Egypt at the time remember Hazem being absolutely everywhere. 422 00:43:52,690 --> 00:43:56,080 And this lasted for a few months in Egypt. You know, you couldn't avoid his picture. 423 00:43:56,110 --> 00:44:02,979 It was just everywhere. It's interesting how easily we forget because a lot of people forgot about that moment. 424 00:44:02,980 --> 00:44:10,000 But that was has a moment in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood was thus facing a major Salafi competition 425 00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:15,280 coming from both the Salafis and its party have been more and haasan's revolutionary Salafi movement. 426 00:44:15,790 --> 00:44:20,140 And this had two important consequences on the Brotherhood's behaviour. 427 00:44:21,350 --> 00:44:29,690 First, the brothers started relying massively on Salafi religious figures, both as a way to appeal to the broader Egyptian public, 428 00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:33,720 but also as a means of countering the Salafi criticisms directed against them. 429 00:44:34,970 --> 00:44:38,540 The religious figures of the Brotherhood's Salafi wing were note taking centre stage. 430 00:44:39,350 --> 00:44:45,020 In addition, the Muslim Brotherhood met alliances with some of these smaller, politicised Salafi groups that I mentioned, 431 00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:52,790 such as the one led by Mohammed Abu Maqsood and other Maqsood, would become a frequent speaker at Brotherhood events. 432 00:44:53,180 --> 00:44:59,150 As in the story I told you again at the beginning of the talk. This would continue throughout the Morsi presidency. 433 00:44:59,390 --> 00:45:03,860 And just two weeks before the coup on the 15th of June 2013, 434 00:45:04,310 --> 00:45:12,920 Morsi was presiding a major Salafi conference organised in Cairo's stadium to support jihad in Syria. 435 00:45:13,220 --> 00:45:17,540 Rights and present were all the pro and the Salafis, 436 00:45:17,540 --> 00:45:22,790 either from the Salafi wing or from all these politicised Salafis who decided to side with the army. 437 00:45:23,720 --> 00:45:29,090 But also figures from Saudi Arabia, such as Mohammed Al Arif and others, would come directly from Saudi Arabia, 438 00:45:29,090 --> 00:45:39,319 though it's interesting that that conference was often cited by anti-Morsi figures as a proof of the alleged fact that Morsi represented the country. 439 00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:46,610 And that was part of the language elements that you'd find, you know, in the wake of the coup to justify why the coup was needed. 440 00:45:46,820 --> 00:45:53,510 So that kind of gave arguments to the other side. Second, I'm looking at two consequences here. 441 00:45:53,510 --> 00:45:56,990 So what's the second consequence on the Brotherhood's behaviour? 442 00:45:57,650 --> 00:46:02,070 Well, the second consequence was that of. Oh, no. 443 00:46:02,190 --> 00:46:04,710 Sorry. I moved too quick on the second half. I was good. 444 00:46:04,980 --> 00:46:09,330 No, I just wanted to stress again with you something here before moving to the second consequence. 445 00:46:09,870 --> 00:46:13,620 That, again, let me stress that this was not what many had expected. 446 00:46:14,010 --> 00:46:17,339 Right. That Morsi would end up being surrounded by side effects. 447 00:46:17,340 --> 00:46:20,100 Right. I mean, most and especially would have thought like, again, 448 00:46:20,110 --> 00:46:26,760 someone like you A that we would play a major role in the post 2011 and the religious configuration. 449 00:46:26,880 --> 00:46:31,740 I mean, he was in the end, as I said, the global mufti, he was the most well-known figure of the Brotherhood. 450 00:46:32,610 --> 00:46:39,149 And yet the Salafi climate that was prevailing then made him completely sidelined and he actually protested against it. 451 00:46:39,150 --> 00:46:42,270 And, you know, he was not happy with the events was going on in Egypt. 452 00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:48,930 Second, so I'm going to my second point that the second consequence, the Salafi competition to the mob, 453 00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:54,330 also impacted the decisions made by the army, and that would have far reaching consequences. 454 00:46:54,870 --> 00:47:02,220 First was the decision made in late March 2012 to present a candidate to the to the presidential election, 455 00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:06,000 despite the fact that the Brotherhood had promised throughout 2011 that they 456 00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:11,729 would do that as a way of reassuring the country's non-Islamist forces here. 457 00:47:11,730 --> 00:47:19,050 The pressure, the pressure exerted by Hasan for the Abu Ismail and his presidential campaign played a major role. 458 00:47:19,680 --> 00:47:22,919 And obviously the Muslim Brotherhood did not know that he would be excluded from the race. 459 00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:30,329 Then the Muslim Brotherhood generally feared that this uncontrollable maverick who can claim to carry 460 00:47:30,330 --> 00:47:36,389 with them the deep Islamic project would eventually be elected because he would be a nightmare for them. 461 00:47:36,390 --> 00:47:42,980 They would have no control over him. There would be an Islamist president, so they would, you know, get the blame, if anything worthwhile. 462 00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:48,120 And so at some point they decided that if there was to be an Islamist president, that it would be better if it was one of them. 463 00:47:49,050 --> 00:47:50,940 And so they decided to run. 464 00:47:51,240 --> 00:47:58,530 That was not the only reason, but that was, I think, the main reason why they decided to run on breaking the promise that they had made a year before. 465 00:47:58,620 --> 00:48:04,649 And and again, that was a big thing when they decided to break their promise that obviously the 466 00:48:04,650 --> 00:48:08,340 fact that they run eventually opened the way to the standoff with the Army, 467 00:48:08,640 --> 00:48:11,700 because that was kind of a red line that had been set by the Army from the beginning. 468 00:48:13,650 --> 00:48:21,930 The second consequence here was the decision by the Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to adopt a heavily Islamist constitution, 469 00:48:22,950 --> 00:48:24,840 and that was in December 2012. 470 00:48:25,350 --> 00:48:33,360 And by adopting that constitution, by relying on the Salafi votes and the constitutional assembly to make up a majority, 471 00:48:33,870 --> 00:48:39,060 despite the decision of most non-Islamist members of the Assembly to boycott the vote, 472 00:48:40,110 --> 00:48:44,549 that was in part the result of the religious bidding game between brothers and Salafis, 473 00:48:44,550 --> 00:48:49,560 in which the brothers was constantly under threat of being accused of being insufficiently committed to Islam. 474 00:48:50,550 --> 00:48:57,990 That was in part also the result of the sense of false security that being able to constitute a majority was the Salafis gave to the brothers. 475 00:48:59,340 --> 00:49:05,549 And the irony is that the Noor party backstopped the brothers as soon as the Constitution was adopted by joining the 476 00:49:05,550 --> 00:49:14,970 opposition and the form that was forming with the National Salvation Front at the time and the right after the Constitution, 477 00:49:14,970 --> 00:49:18,990 would the new party would move towards the opposition and eventually form some 478 00:49:18,990 --> 00:49:24,210 kind of united front and attacking the coup that would bring down Morsi. 479 00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:28,290 So the constitutional moment was central in that development. 480 00:49:29,130 --> 00:49:35,940 It is the moment when the non-Islamists feeling existentially threatened by the new constitution broke, was in, 481 00:49:36,210 --> 00:49:42,600 was institutional politics, and decided that the only way for them was to knock at the doors of the barracks and get the army in. 482 00:49:44,250 --> 00:49:49,470 So let me conclude here what has been a long and danced administration? 483 00:49:49,830 --> 00:49:53,549 What I've tried to show is how and why the religious head harmonisation of Salafism 484 00:49:53,550 --> 00:50:00,300 happened in the decade until 2011 and how this affected the 2011 political dynamics. 485 00:50:01,290 --> 00:50:05,550 I think this is a crucial element that has not been sufficiently taken into account. 486 00:50:06,000 --> 00:50:14,130 For instance, in the now common comparison between the political trajectories of Egypt and Tunisia in the wake of 2011. 487 00:50:15,150 --> 00:50:21,120 In Tunisia, it is in part the weakness of Salafism that allowed the Islamist party another to be the sole 488 00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:27,510 representative of Islamic politics and to adopt a centrist strategy in the Egyptian configuration. 489 00:50:27,810 --> 00:50:34,830 With the dominance of Salafism in the religious sphere and all the consequences that it had, something similar was highly unlikely to happen. 490 00:50:37,870 --> 00:50:47,310 I. What's a couple of last words, but I won't be long on the post 2013 Salafi configuration in Egypt. 491 00:50:48,780 --> 00:50:54,860 There is no doubt that Salafism remains a strong religious discourse in Egypt. 492 00:50:54,960 --> 00:50:59,100 I think the discourse remains, you know, has still a lot of prevalence, 493 00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:06,180 but the post-revolutionary politics have cost Salafi figures and movements a tremendous lot. 494 00:51:06,690 --> 00:51:13,139 And I think now we should distinguish between the discourse and many of these elements of the Salafi discourse that have been present, 495 00:51:13,140 --> 00:51:19,200 pervasive in in the Egyptian religious fear for so long that they are still very much there. 496 00:51:19,770 --> 00:51:26,370 And the actors, the Salafis themselves, are the movements that have lost enormously from the post-coup era, 497 00:51:26,520 --> 00:51:31,979 despite the fact that the political by the way, they backed the coup, but Sisi was not kind to them. 498 00:51:31,980 --> 00:51:35,790 In the end, they are not in jail, which, you know, these days in Egypt is quite a good thing. 499 00:51:35,910 --> 00:51:39,300 I mean, very few Islamic actors can say that they are not in jail at this point, 500 00:51:39,870 --> 00:51:48,150 but their ability to protect, you know, the interest of the preaching movement at this point are very weak. 501 00:51:48,420 --> 00:51:53,610 They've maintained some of their mosques, but they have no opportunity for extension. 502 00:51:53,610 --> 00:51:58,920 They have no satellite channels. I mean, all of these tools that they had back in the days are gone at this point. 503 00:51:59,220 --> 00:52:03,270 We'll see how this of what this produces in the long term. 504 00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:10,200 This point, what I can see again is that Salafist discourse is still strongly rooted in the Egyptian religious sphere. 505 00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:14,700 But again, its main actors and figures at this point have been considerably weakened. 506 00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:19,130 Of course, their supporters themselves also have turned away from them quite a bit. 507 00:52:19,170 --> 00:52:25,950 Right. I think the many of the Salafi supporters couldn't really understand what the Salafis leaders were doing. 508 00:52:26,100 --> 00:52:33,329 I think, you know, many of these genuinely, you know, committed Salafis who believe that this was a project that was going to save the mind. 509 00:52:33,330 --> 00:52:38,069 And so their sheikhs, you know, taking one side and then the other and then shifting. 510 00:52:38,070 --> 00:52:41,730 And of course, the sheikh said the logic for it, they knew they thought they knew what they were doing. 511 00:52:42,300 --> 00:52:45,810 But again, that was not something that their followers understood very well. 512 00:52:46,800 --> 00:53:03,130 I'll finish here and thank you. Thank you very much, Stephane. 513 00:53:03,310 --> 00:53:07,150 By the way, I'm going to sit here and I think we can do the Q&A from here. 514 00:53:07,150 --> 00:53:11,590 We just try and speak up. No, not at all. 515 00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:18,549 It's it was absolutely fascinating. 516 00:53:18,550 --> 00:53:22,090 And I can't wait to read that book. Thanks. 517 00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:27,790 So if you look away, I'm going to hack into your computer and back to the file. 518 00:53:31,390 --> 00:53:36,310 I mean, you're doing at least three big things in this project. 519 00:53:36,350 --> 00:53:50,650 Your one thing is you're chronicling a very important period in Egyptian history and a sort of time around the 2011 revolution. 520 00:53:52,450 --> 00:54:00,490 Secondly, you are identifying and writing the history of the previously almost uncovered strand of Egyptian. 521 00:54:02,900 --> 00:54:05,270 Social and religious history, namely the Salafi movement. 522 00:54:06,840 --> 00:54:18,420 And in doing so you are setting off a series of historiographical earthquakes and we can debate how high they are on the Richter scale, 523 00:54:18,450 --> 00:54:24,120 but some of them are pretty, pretty significant. We can go we'll go into that, I think, in the in the Q&A. 524 00:54:24,870 --> 00:54:37,499 But I want to just kick off the discussion by using my privilege in asking you about the kind of the 525 00:54:37,500 --> 00:54:43,500 transition from Saudi to Egypt in your in your kind of intellectual and personal intellectual journey. 526 00:54:44,850 --> 00:54:57,840 So my question is, what were the what was the most or the most surprising things that you discovered about Salafism as you entered a new country? 527 00:54:58,620 --> 00:55:06,330 And relatedly, this then this goes more to sort of the the method, the process of research like, 528 00:55:06,540 --> 00:55:13,650 well, in what ways where was doing research in Egypt different from doing research in Saudi Arabia? 529 00:55:14,630 --> 00:55:17,900 Thank you. Thank you so much for your kind words and for the questions. 530 00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:22,790 Well, the research was very different in a way. Yes. 531 00:55:23,810 --> 00:55:29,960 In Saudi, there was too little. In Egypt, it was too much in Saudi. 532 00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:38,810 It was very difficult to get people to speak. And when you managed to get a source, you were so happy with it, you know, and it would pose, 533 00:55:39,140 --> 00:55:42,620 you know, methodological problems because you would always have to find a second source. 534 00:55:42,620 --> 00:55:47,720 And that was difficult when you only wanted to write when the oral history has roots, you know, just for some guy. 535 00:55:48,020 --> 00:55:53,090 You need to have enough. And in Saudi Arabia, the difficulty was getting, you know, rights. 536 00:55:53,300 --> 00:55:57,740 And and that took me quite a bit of effort. Egypt is a country. 537 00:55:57,950 --> 00:56:02,569 Everyone talks all the time. And and all these guys produce books. 538 00:56:02,570 --> 00:56:07,040 I mean, there is even the genre, you know, the you know, the memoirs of an Islamist is a story. 539 00:56:09,020 --> 00:56:12,740 So people talk and tell a similar story in ten different ways. 540 00:56:13,550 --> 00:56:17,930 So with Egypt, the difficulty is the huge amount of material, right? 541 00:56:18,020 --> 00:56:21,290 Which is what that project would be ten years, I mean, 11. 542 00:56:22,460 --> 00:56:29,180 And because there's so much because, you know, all of this, the thing is, you know, you sort of you need to collect hundreds and hundreds of books. 543 00:56:29,180 --> 00:56:32,750 You know, there's so many people you can interview. I was lucky to be doing the interviews. 544 00:56:34,700 --> 00:56:39,350 Basically most of my interviews from 2010 to 2013, which was the best not to speak to anyone. 545 00:56:39,860 --> 00:56:43,760 It was, of course, people were busy with the revolution and you have to forgive them for that. 546 00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:46,040 But when they could get a moment of the revolution, 547 00:56:47,050 --> 00:56:53,030 they would they would say they would tell you what you wanted because they think there was no state security watching over your shoulder anymore. 548 00:56:53,180 --> 00:56:59,089 So people felt a sense of security that they had never felt. So people talked through very openly what they thought. 549 00:56:59,090 --> 00:57:07,309 And and so, so. So yeah, it was a it was a it was it was an interesting experience. 550 00:57:07,310 --> 00:57:09,620 I mean, and very different from the one I had in Saudi. 551 00:57:11,030 --> 00:57:19,940 Of course, the difficulty was that after 2013, then the field became closed because as soon as the military regime came, 552 00:57:20,810 --> 00:57:26,420 it became increasingly difficult to deal with. I mean, many of the guys in the book are in prison or in exile. 553 00:57:26,420 --> 00:57:32,420 At this point. Only the core group of Salafis remain in Egypt, but they're convinced that they're going to be next. 554 00:57:32,720 --> 00:57:36,140 I mean, you know, the even the downside, if you guys did everything right, 555 00:57:36,140 --> 00:57:40,970 they backed Sisi for every presidential election to come up with signs for Sisi. 556 00:57:41,300 --> 00:57:44,130 But they know that when the regime needs a scapegoat, they're next in line. 557 00:57:44,300 --> 00:57:48,890 You know, the regime is going to need to get good at this point because the Muslim Brotherhood scapegoat is losing steam at this point. 558 00:57:48,890 --> 00:57:52,150 You know, one kind of the big Muslim Brotherhood conspiracies doesn't look so big anymore. 559 00:57:52,580 --> 00:57:59,030 So you need to find a new conspiracy because these sorts of regimes only live off conspiracies or imagined conspiracies. 560 00:57:59,450 --> 00:58:03,530 So the Salafis know that they're in a position where they are very scared at this point. 561 00:58:03,950 --> 00:58:06,110 So you can still see the ones who are abroad. 562 00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:14,420 But again, they might be disconnected from the fields, which is why I'm also focusing very much on the pre 2013 moment. 563 00:58:15,200 --> 00:58:19,100 Also because the post 2013 moment is the moment when politics are done. 564 00:58:19,720 --> 00:58:22,490 I mean, there's really not much to study. 565 00:58:22,850 --> 00:58:29,470 I mean, when there is I'm not saying this, but what I'm saying is, you know, the kind of you know, I mean, it's a different thing today. 566 00:58:29,510 --> 00:58:35,270 You have to study the regime because the regime is what happens. There's no institutional political arena we're studying. 567 00:58:35,330 --> 00:58:38,299 Maybe the parliament would be interesting just to understand, you know, 568 00:58:38,300 --> 00:58:44,600 the type how the security services are playing games by, you know, using coalitions against each other. 569 00:58:44,600 --> 00:58:47,750 But there's no political parties anymore in Egypt. There's no. 570 00:58:48,230 --> 00:58:52,910 So it's a very different Egypt today. Back to your first question. 571 00:58:54,530 --> 00:59:02,060 Well, I started studying Egypt at the beginning because I was interested in trying to understand. 572 00:59:04,780 --> 00:59:13,180 Saudi religious influence abroad. And I ended up concluding that it was really not as big as what people thought. 573 00:59:13,660 --> 00:59:17,950 Right. I mean, I was there and I'm not denying that, you know, Saudi money did have. 574 00:59:18,370 --> 00:59:23,380 But but there are plenty of in genius Egyptian dynamics that explain why. 575 00:59:23,470 --> 00:59:31,150 And then the regime is I mean, if someone is to blame, the blame needs to be given them or blame anyone. 576 00:59:31,330 --> 00:59:37,510 My job, I'm academic. You know, if someone is if someone is in a sense, responsible, right for the right, it's a lot for them. 577 00:59:37,750 --> 00:59:42,640 It's as much the Egyptian regime as it is the Saudis, because the Egyptian regime has played many, many games with the Salafis. 578 00:59:43,240 --> 00:59:47,590 So, again, you know, it was all part of the configuration in which the Salafis and the Salafis were really smart. 579 00:59:47,620 --> 00:59:51,489 By the way, I mean, you might think whatever you want if that rubber of action, 580 00:59:51,490 --> 00:59:57,520 but it was coherent until 2011 and it always spurred them from harm, allowed them to continue their project. 581 00:59:57,790 --> 01:00:02,379 Project they were convinced would save the country because Salafis are convinced of what they do there. 582 01:00:02,380 --> 01:00:07,900 Do not in a sense, I, you know, take their claims for granted in that sense. 583 01:00:07,900 --> 01:00:13,150 I think they think they are believers in what they do, even when they do things that we know that we don't understand. 584 01:00:15,550 --> 01:00:22,280 So. So I ended up discovering that Saudi Arabia's influence was not the big question. 585 01:00:22,380 --> 01:00:27,140 They was a side question in the end. Let's say that what was at the beginning of the core question only became a 586 01:00:27,140 --> 01:00:30,950 side question about the Donald said if he has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia, 587 01:00:30,950 --> 01:00:34,130 for instance. Which is it? Because they have nothing to do? The Saudis don't like that. 588 01:00:34,640 --> 01:00:38,840 I interviewed the guy who represented them in Saudi Arabia for ten years in the 2000. 589 01:00:39,050 --> 01:00:42,260 And the guy told me, no one speaks to me like I did. We don't we're not taken seriously. 590 01:00:42,830 --> 01:00:46,250 There's one side does one guy from the Council of Film School, Mohammed, 591 01:00:46,250 --> 01:00:51,020 this made him condemn who has a lot of connections in Saudi Arabia as a person. 592 01:00:51,170 --> 01:01:00,410 He's taken seriously by Saudi Salafi scholars. But that was sort of his organisation was not the traditional Saudi scholars. 593 01:01:01,070 --> 01:01:06,080 Nuance understood, not from the from the old days and their connection to Egypt was and so to some that 594 01:01:06,620 --> 01:01:10,340 the regime didn't really like the downside of fear because it was an organised group. 595 01:01:10,560 --> 01:01:16,960 You know, it was Jamal. The very idea of Salafis becoming a Jamal was not great news for the Saudi regime. 596 01:01:16,970 --> 01:01:22,160 They don't want this type of inspiration to get into Salafism and the Saudis tend to do the same thing. 597 01:01:22,580 --> 01:01:30,020 So in that sense, you know what happened after 2011, for instance, you hear plenty of Egyptians telling you it was common at the time. 598 01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:35,209 Salafis are 25% because of Saudi money. Not true. I don't I don't think there's much Saudi money. 599 01:01:35,210 --> 01:01:41,120 They think they have a big constituency in the country. Lots of rich people giving them money, lots of businesses. 600 01:01:41,120 --> 01:01:45,970 Yes, maybe some Saudi money. But I don't think Saudi money was was, was this is it. 601 01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:52,130 And when they back the coup in 2013, again, lots of people would tell you they did so because the Saudis told them to do so. 602 01:01:52,400 --> 01:01:56,140 The Saudis wanted Morsi out. I think they did it because of the reasons which I explained. 603 01:01:56,270 --> 01:02:00,430 They were like Morsi for their own reasons. They didn't need the Saudis to tell them not to like. 604 01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:03,860 Right. Of course. Then to convert with the Saudis. Yes. And do this. 605 01:02:04,250 --> 01:02:08,149 But but again, convergence doesn't mean that these actors are necessarily you know, 606 01:02:08,150 --> 01:02:14,560 there's not a Politburo of Salafism in Riyadh with a guy, you know, calling Salafis across the world to tell them, do this and do that. 607 01:02:15,230 --> 01:02:22,190 So so, yeah, I think Egypt is a good case, is why there is not this Wahhabi conspiracy run from Riyadh. 608 01:02:22,400 --> 01:02:22,730 Right.