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Nour Party infighting reveals wider cracks within Salafist movement
[Al Ahram] Recent changes within Salafist Nour Party may reveal larger conflicts within Egypt's disperate Islamist groups. While the party seems to be falling apart, inter-party tensions also suggest that different camps within the Salafist movement may be drifting further apart from each other.
Not necessarily a bad thing. And since Salafists are taqfiri in nature, perhaps there will be a bit of bloodletting along with the drifting.
On Wednesday, the Nour Party's supreme committee announced that it had withdrawn confidence from party chairman Emad Abdel-Ghafour, replacing him with El-Sayid Mostafa Hussein Khalifa. Abdel-Ghafour, for his part, reportedly retaliated by calling for the dismissal of supreme committee members.

The decisions come after days of conflict over whether the party's internal elections should be held on schedule. While Abdel-Ghafour had demanded that elections be postponed until Egypt's new parliament is voted in, the party's supreme committee insisted on going ahead with the polls as planned.

In response, Abdel-Ghafour and his supporters -- known as the 'Reformist Front' within the party -- filed a lawsuit aimed at halting elections for hundreds of Nour Party posts, including that of secretary-general.

Accusations have flown between members of the supreme committee and Abdel-Ghafour's reformist camp, with the latter stating on Twitter that he had decided to expel supreme committee members after learning of their alleged links with former members of ousted president Hosni Mubarak
...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011...
's National Democratic Party.

Among those expelled from the party by Abdel-Ghafour is former Nour MP Ashraf Thabet and official party spokesperson Nader Bakkar. In a party statement on Wednesday, the two were accused of holding talks with former presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq.

Meanwhile,
...back at the wine tasting, Vince was about to start tasting his third quart...
 supreme committee members have circulated a petition stating that Abdel-Ghafour had been expelled from the party due to his readiness to join President Mohamed Morsi's advisory team.

Several supreme committee members -- including Thabet, who was expelled by Abdel-Ghafour -- had been staunch critics of the notion of making electoral alliances with the Moslem Brüderbund or of joining Morsi's government or presidential team. Given this position, the party had earlier declined offers to take up the environment portfolio in the Morsi-appointed government.
Posted by: Fred 2012-09-28
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=352860