THE Salafists have long been sending some controversial and even contradictory messages to society. With the start of the revolution, the Salafists were the first to criticise the revolutionaries for revolting against the ruler, considering this a sinful act. However, with the success of the revolution, they got into the scene and presented themselves as a political partner especially after creating their political party of Al-Nour. Although they benefited from the revolution by obtaining a good percentage of the seats in the first parliament of November 2011, they turned against the civil revolutionary powers, accusing them of infidelity. This was accentuated after they formed a coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in the parliamentary and presidential elections as well as in drawing up the constitution. However, their stance has changed with the MB's attempt to dominate the different governmental departments and institutions. Herein, Al-Nour party made an initiative for settling differences between the ruling regime and the opposition powers represented in the National Salvation Front (NSF) based on forming a new national unity government to lead the coming elections. The Presidency ignored Al-Nour's initiative as well as suddenly dismissing the Salafi leader Khaled Alam Eddin from the advisory board of the president, accusing him of misusing authority, This outraged the Salafists and deepened the division between yesterday's allies. Strangely, many of the subsequent statements made against the MB ruler by the Salafists had many common points with those were of the civil opposition powers. However, at the time that the President made his call for the citizens to vote for a new parliament by the end of April, the Salafists took an approach that is totally different from that sought by the civil opposition. When the NSF announced its boycott of the coming elections for not including sufficient guarantees for their fairness and transparency, the Salafists decided to participate in the polls but not in coalition with the MB but a competitor and rival to it. The NSF took this stand under the pretext of ensuring soundness of the political process as a whole and not just gaining some seats at the parliament. The Salafists considered it as the right opportunity to gain a high percentage of the seats in the coming parliament depending on the growing public hatred of the MB. Through their boycott, the NSF intends to prevent the MB rulers and the coming parliament from acquiring legitimacy, while the Salafists, by their participation, mean to prevent the MB from monopolising rule. The point is what if the majority of Egyptians responded to the boycott call and refrained from heading to the ballot boxes to cast their votes for any of the two sides? Who would lose the most: the MB that ignored the demands of the opposition to ensure their participation or the Salafists that might gain many seats in a parliament of questionable legitimacy?
