New Islamist party emerges in the Gaza Strip

A new Islamist party is to be launched in Gaza this week, modeled after the Salafi Egyptian Al-Nour party, which garnered some 28 percent of the vote in the 2011 parliamentary elections.

The new party, also to be called Al-Nour, will officially be announced on October 11.

In a press statement issued Monday, the party declared that it would be the political front of the Salafi Da’wa, a social movement focused on preaching a pristine form of Islam. Its headquarters will be in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis.

As opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood, which bred Hamas and has advocated political involvement in state affairs, the Salafi movement typically features a militaristic strand, known as Salafiya Jihadiya, and a social welfare and proselytizing movement. The participation of Nour in the Egyptian parliamentary elections of 2011 was a new experiment in Salafi political engagement.

“We wish to come to power through official and legal means, just like any other party,” Abdul Karim Fusaifas, one of the party’s founders, told the Turkish Anadolu News Agency. “We advocate a Salafi premise which strives to implement Islamic Sharia through peaceful means, not violent ones.”

Muhammad Abu-Jami’, another party founder, told Ma’an new agency Monday that his party has no organizational affiliation with its Egyptian namesake.