'Blurring the lines'

"... The struggle between Hamas’s Muslim Brotherhood strain and the Salafists, whose name derives from the Arabic for “forefather”, denoting their wish to emulate the behaviour of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions, is decades old. The Brothers’ movement was born in Egypt, the Salafist one in Saudi Arabia, and the duel has long reflected the way their motherlands vie for regional influence. Brotherhood preachers are pragmatic and have less bushy beards. The Brotherhood’s mentor, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, is said to enjoy listening to recordings of Egypt’s matronly diva, Um Kalthoum, which send Salafists into paroxysms of puritanical anger. Across the region, the Muslim Brotherhood challenge rulers much like a civil-rights movement. Salafists, by contrast, accept their governments, unless they deem them non-Muslim, which the more activist jihadist types tend to do with remarkable ease. Then they try to blow them up.

But the lines separating the two schools are increasingly blurred. Across the region many share similar experiences. When Egypt suppressed the Brothers in the 1950s, many found refuge in Saudi Arabia, where the movements cross-fertilised. Repressive Arab regimes have dumped both lots in the same prison cells, where they study and pray together. Under Salafist influence, the Brothers have adopted more classical jargon; and the recent Arab uprisings have helped the Brothers sway fellow Salafis into pondering whether civil opposition might not be better at changing regimes than setting off bombs.

...... Some of Hamas’s rank and file are susceptible to the Salafist message. Video-clips of Salafist preachers circulate among them. In the welcome note on his website, the head of the Hamas-run interior ministry’s “commission for political and moral guidance” calls for a global caliphate. Hamas prison guards have helped captured Salafist leaders to escape. And Hamas has refrained, for fear of a backlash, from its past practice of dragnet detentions. One of the four men Hamas says it is seeking in connection with Mr Arrigoni’s kidnapping may be one of its own Gaza policemen. For Hamas, which wants to be both a government and a “resistance” movement, purging Gaza’s Salafists increasingly means purging itself..."