Nick Blanford has a good great article on the Lebanese Salafi movement in the CSM. See a recent MediaShack post on this topic. Are these groups peaceful like they say or are they merely in a formative period, waiting to build up their strength? That’s the million dollar question.
Although the feuding factions in Tripoli formally reconciled two weeks ago, Rifaat Eid, son of the leading Alawite politician in Lebanon, says that, as a member of a pro-Syrian minority in Lebanon, he fears the potential of the Salafis. “The Salafis are like kittens when they are weak, but when they are strong they become like tigers,” he says.
Egypt’s Nabin Ad-Deen says “hell no these groups aren’t peaceful.” Last week, he had a piece in an Egyptian paper arguing that the Egyptian Salafi movement is going to eventually reveal its true character- Al-Qaeda style fanaticism, so the Government should stop cultivating them as a tool against the Muslim Brotherhood before its too late.
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