Two campaigns recently launched by two Egyptian Salafist groups to confront "extremism and explosions" have raised questions as to whether the campaigns will achieve their set goals. Although it seems quite difficult to uproot extremism and stop militant attacks, which have increased steadily since the ouster of Islamist president Mohammad Morsi in July last year, the campaigners seem determined to accomplish their mission. Egypt's Al-Jama'ah al-Islamiyah (Islamic Group) said in a statement that it had launched a campaign to combat "religious extremism and explosions" after an increase in the attacks targeting army and police forces and rendering them as "infidels". The statement added that "the group worryingly observes the on-going confrontation getting fiercer and the increasing support for extremist religious ideology." The group denounced the procedures taken against those opposing the current regime after the removal of Morsi from power. "But at the same time we cannot turn a blind eye to the violence and explosions that stem from fundamentalist religious ideology," it said. The statement noted that the group will hold seminars and publish studies to "cultivate a culture of non-violence". Meanwhile, Chairman of Al-Da'wah al-Salafiyah (Salafist Call) in the north coastal city of Alexandria Sheikh Mahmoud Abdel-Hamid said in a statement that his group has been training 250 Islamic preachers "so that they can play an active role in confronting Takfiri (the act of accusing a Muslim of infidelity) ideology that has become rampant". He added that the training of preachers was part of a campaign called "threats facing the Egyptian society" that is aimed at combatting "religious extremism, explosions and corruption". In the meantime, the so-called moderate front for confronting religious extremism and political violence said it would launch a campaign entitled "Egypt is one nation" to combat what it called "religious extremism and political violence". The front, which includes a number of defectors from the Jihad Organization, the Islamic Group and the Muslim Brotherhood, said it would begin with holding a series of public conferences to urge discarding violence and fighting Takfiri thoughts. In press statements on 24 February, the front's general coordinator Sabrah al-Qasimi said the campaign was mainly aimed to confront the Takfiri ideology and the small armed groups which he said were formed by the Muslim Brotherhood to attack army and police forces. He said members of these armed groups are mainly recruited via Jihadist websites and social networking sites. These moves by Salafist groups are said to be taken in coordination with the government. This comes just few days after the Ministry of Awqaf (religious endowments) held a seminar last month (August, 2014) in Cairo to discuss the danger of Takfiri ideology. The Ministry invited 150 Muslim world personalities to take part in the two-day seminar. Muhammad Mukhtar Jum'ah, the minister of Awqaf, said the theme of the seminar is one that is very much needs attention these days as there is a need for confronting Takfiri ideas and some Fatwas that are issued inconsiderately. Takfir has become an ideology embraced by extremist movements to justify the killing of anyone who does not fulfill their criteria of "true" belief. Yemeni renowned Islamic preacher Habib Ali al-Jifri says there are two main reasons for the cancerous spread of Takfiri ideology in parts of the Muslim world. The first one is the rejection of the diversity of opinions. "This diversity is often a result of the application of scholars' independent legal judgement (ijtihad) to religious textual evidence that is non-definitive in its meaning," he says. "This leads to two things: an increased inability for the representatives of religion to embrace changes in the world from one perspective, and an expansion of the spheres of war in the Muslim world from another," he adds. The second reason, according to Al-Jifri, is the association of "non-belief" with killing and deviancy. Such tendency fails to recognize the Sharia's legal distinction between a combatant disbeliever and a civilian one, he says.
