The Salafist Front, a member of the National Front to Support Legitimacy (NASL), has set 28 November for its so-called “Islamic” revolution. The Front says it is cooperating with other Islamist groups to stage demonstrations “in all the streets of Egypt”. It has not, however, revealed either the rallying points or direction of its marches though it claims to have drawn-up a plan to confront Ministry of Interior forces on the day. “We will not let the Ministry of Interior break up the demonstrations like they did the sit-in at Rabaa Al-Adawiya. There's a plan that will be carried out with security forces when they intervene to break-up the demonstration,” says Salafist Front spokesman Mohamed Galal. “We will be carrying Qurans through every street. We have the ability to defend ourselves during any confrontations with security forces. Thousands of youths will rally to our call.” Salafist Front coordinator Khaled Said says the day “will bring Kandahar II to all the governorates of the republic”. A massive demonstration consisting entirely of Islamists in the period after immediate wake of the 25 January Revolution was quickly dubbed the Friday of Kandahar. Said claimed Salafist youth will turn out “in all their force”, turning a deaf ear to cautions issued by the Salafist Calling and its political wing the Nour Party. The Salafist Front is a breakaway faction from the Salafist Calling. “Islamists will move in all the squares. They have a plan to confront security forces,” he added. Other Salafist groups are distancing themselves from the Front and criticise its demand for revolution. The Ansar Al-Sunna Al-Mohamediya group, in a statement to the press, rejected what it described as “the sinful call” from the Salafist Front and urged Egyptians not to respond in order to prevent bloodshed. Ansar Al-Sunna Al-Mohamediya is the oldest Salafist organisation in Egypt, founded by Mohamed Hamed Al-Fiqi, a pioneer of the Salafist movement in Egypt, in 1926. Its spokesman rejected all calls to defy the state and stressed the need to renounce violence and promote security and stability. The Salafist Calling's political wing, the Nour Party, condemned the Front's call for demonstrations on 28 November as an “instrument to destroy the stability and security of the state”. Nour Party president Younis Makhyoun said his party opposed the Front's call which was deliberately pushing young people into the furnace of destruction. Sheikh Nabil Naim, a former leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organisation, claims the Salafist Front's real aim is “to procure more money for Islamist groups, especially the Islamist militia groups, so that they can continue their terrorist operations”. The scheme is doomed to fail, says Naim, not least because the Salafist Front has no political or religious weight. He pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood, which had boasted of its mobilisation power, has failed in all its bids to stage demonstrations. Sheikh Mohammed Said Raslan, another Salafist leader, says elements from ISIS have infiltrated Egypt to take part in the 28 November demonstrations. He called on Egyptians not to respond to the Salafist Front's campaign and to bear in mind what is happening in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya. “The aim is to license murder and degradation, to dismantle armies and to sow chaos and bloodshed,” he said. Official Muslim agencies in Egypt have condemned the Front's campaign for revolution as “against Islam”. Ibrahim Negm, advisor to the Grand Mufti of Egypt, said the call for demonstrations on 28 November “betrays sterile thinking and wild reasoning”. “It flies in the face of the laws of behaviour of the Egyptian people who do not look backwards unless it is to derive lessons from the past and to seek inspiration to strengthen their drive to build the future.” In a press conference Negm described the call to carry Qurans in demonstrations as “a flagrant mixture of religion and political ends” and “a throwback to the methods that stirred historical turmoil during the period of the emergence of the kharijites in early Islamic history, who turned against the Fourth Caliph of Muslims Ali ben Abi Taleb, God bless him”. “Such acts will reap nothing but society's hatred and contempt for those who perform them.” Negm accused “groups that pretend to be affiliated with Islam” of using “religious slogans in order to make cheap political gains”. Minister of Awqaf Mukhtar Gomaa also used the term “kharijites” in his condemnation of the Salafist Front's campaign. “When we refer to the people in the Salafist Front as ‘kharijites' we are not being unjust. They are the ones who are being unjust by using the Quran politically. If our enemies seek to distort Islam they will not be able to distort it as much as these people who engage in murder and destruction in the name of Islam while wearing banners on which is written ‘There is no god but God'.” Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb characterised the Salafist Front's calls a “new trick” by extremists. Sheikh Al-Tayeb added that the aim of the demonstrations is to destabilise the state. While the Salafist Front's campaign elicited harsh denunciations in Egypt, the Egyptian Revolutionary Council, created by the Muslim Brotherhood and based in Turkey, proclaimed its support for the move. Though NASL, of which the Salafist Front is a member, has not issued any statements indicating whether it will take part in the demonstrations, Ali Baker, an expert on Islamist movements, believes some NASL members will take part. Prime among them is the Muslim Brotherhood though, according to Baker, it will not do so in an open or official capacity. In spite of the censure from other Salafist circles and Muslim officials the Salafist Front continues to promise a massive revolutionary wave on 28 November spearheaded by discontented Salafist youth. Government security agencies are stepping up measures to tighten security in anticipation of violent clashes.
