In Egypt, a Conservative Appeal Transcends Religion

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By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: December 10, 2011

SHABRAMANT, Egypt — Voters attending a political rally by ultraconservative Islamist sheiks might expect a pious call for strict religious rule — banning alcohol, restricting women’s dress, cutting off the hands of thieves.

But when a few hundred men gathered last week in a narrow, trash-strewn lot between the low cinderblock buildings of this village near Cairo, what they heard from the sheiks, known as Salafis, was a blistering populist attack on the condescension of the liberal Egyptian elite that resonated against other Islamists as well.

“They think that it is them, and only them, who represent and speak for us,” Sheik Shaaban Darwish said through scratchy speakers. “They didn’t come to our streets, didn’t live in our villages, didn’t walk in our hamlets, didn’t wear our clothes, didn’t eat our bread, didn’t drink our polluted water, didn’t live in the sewage we live in and didn’t experience the life of misery and hardship of the people.”

“Brothers,” he continued, “we, the Salafis, the founders of Al Nour Party, were part of the silent majority.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/world/middleeast/salafis-in-egypt-have-more-than-just-religious-appeal.html