Neo-Salafists win Kuwaiti poll

Sunni Islamists gain in Kuwait poll

Sunni Islamists have made a strong showing in Kuwait's legislative election, while minority Shia gained one more seat, according to results released on Sunday. Official results from four districts and unofficial returns from the fifth showed that the Islamic Salafi Alliance and its allies won at least 10 seats in Saturday's poll.

A dangerous precedent in a country whose neighbor, Iraq, has Sunni Muslims currently engaged in a life-or-death struggle against neo-Salafist elements. Those well-organized and well-funded elements had been warmly welcomed into the Sunni insurgency against the US-backed government in the beginning, but eventually outlived their welcome through their overt extremism and careless targeting of fellow Muslims in attacks. The Sunni Awakening Council was thus formed with the singular purpose of ridding Iraq of its neo-Salafist cohort, though Nuri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq, reportedly dislikes these tribal formations because of their refusal to co-operate more fully with the Shia regime.

Kuwait's Islamic Salafi Alliance is closely affiliated with the Society of the Revival of Islamic Heritage (RIH), or Jamiat Ihya at-Turaz al-Islami, that has been implicated in numerous terrorist attacks in countries ranging from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to Azerbaijan, Albania, and Bosnia. More ominously, the RIH promotes what Christopher Deliso identifies as a pro-Wahhabist, pro-Saudi agenda that is inimically hostile to the traditionalist, moderate and far larger constituency of Muslims.

In Kuwait's election, the Islamic Salafi Alliance won seats at the expense of a marginally more tolerant form of neo-Salafism, represented by the Islamic Constitutional Movement. The latter is affiliated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (for more on the different strands of neo-Salafism, see Three flavors of Salafism), a movement that its founder, Hassan al-Banna at the very least tried to portray in a more inclusive light:

[The Brotherhood is] a Salafiya message, a Sunni way, a Sufi truth, a political organization, an athletic group, a scientific and cultural union, an economic enterprise and a social idea.

There is little doubt that pan-Arabism has been replaced by a stateless, pan-ideological movement toward puritanism which would not necessarily be a bad thing if not for the political violence it anticipates for its enemies (Muslim and non-Muslim). Worse, these enemies are often painted as 'enemies of Islam'.

Political ascendancy figures largely in the overall strategy of such ideological groups, as I discussed in an earlier article, Plotting Islamism's success.

Empowering radicals is never a good idea. All in all, bad news for Kuwaiti women, the Shia minority and most importantly, the entire region.