The al‑Nour Party (), or "Party of The Light", was one of the

political parties A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

created in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

after the

2011 Egyptian Revolution The 2011 Egyptian revolution, also known as the 25 January Revolution (;), began on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police holiday" as a statement against ...

. It has an ultra-conservative, Islamist ideology, which believes in implementing strict

Sharia Sharia, Sharī'ah, Shari'a, or Shariah () is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition based on Islamic holy books, scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran, Qur'an and hadith. In Islamic terminology ''sharīʿah'' ...

law. It has been described as the political arm of the Salafi Call Society, and "by far the most prominent" of the several new

Salafi The Salafi movement or Salafism () is a fundamentalist revival movement within Sunni Islam, originating in the late 19th century and influential in the Islamic world to this day. The name "''Salafiyya''" is a self-designation, claiming a retu ...

parties in Egypt, which it has surpassed by virtue of its "long organizational and administrative experience" and "charismatic leaders". Its political aim is to establish a

theocratic Theocracy is a form of autocracy or oligarchy in which one or more deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries, with executive and legislative power, who manage the government's daily a ...

state on the lines of

Wahhabism Wahhabism is an exonym for a Salafi revivalist movement within Sunni Islam named after the 18th-century Hanbali scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. It was initially established in the central Arabian region of Najd and later spread to oth ...

like in

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

. Saudi Arabia was found to be the main financer of the party according to the public German television news service ARD. In the 2011–12 Egypt parliamentary elections, the Islamist Bloc led by al‑Nour party received 7,534,266 votes out of a total 27,065,135 correct votes (27.8%). The Islamist Bloc, of which al-Nour was a member, gained 127 of the 498 parliamentary seats contested, second-place after the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. Al‑Nour Party itself won 111 of the Bloc's 127 seats. In December 2012/January 2013, a new Watan party led by Emad Abdel Ghaffour splintered off from Al-Nour. From January 2013 the party gradually distanced itself from President

Mohamed Morsi Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa Al-AyyatThe spellings of his first and last names vary. survey of 14 news organizations plus Wikipedia in July 2012July 2013 coup which overthrew Morsi. By 2020, its support had badly eroded and in September of that year, Al-Nour failed to win any seats in the Egyptian Senate election.

History

"For decades" before the

2011 Egyptian revolution The 2011 Egyptian revolution, also known as the 25 January Revolution (;), began on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police holiday" as a statement against ...

, Salafists "stayed away" from politics and focused on "religion and inviting people for prayer".

2011 Revolution

Al‑Nour was set up after the revolution, when the interim military government allowed the formation of new parties, and legally recognized on 13 June. It was established by one of the largest Salafist groups in Egypt, the Salafist Call (''Al-Da'wa Al-Salafiyya''), also known as the Al-Dawaa movement. (The Salafi philosophical movement has been associated with literalist, strict and puritanical approaches to Islam.) The Salafi Call group started in the 1970s and was firmly established in the 1980s in

Alexandria University Alexandria University () is a public university in Alexandria, Egypt. It was established in 1938 as a satellite of Fouad University (the name of which was later changed to Cairo University), becoming an independent entity in 1942. It was known as ...

after students refused to join the

Muslim Brotherhood The Society of the Muslim Brothers ('' ''), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood ( ', is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar, Imam and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Al-Banna's teachings s ...

, leading to clashes that impelled the Salafis to institutionalize their activities within the city.Al-Nour Party
Jadaliyya. Retrieved 19 December 2013. The Salafis in the past had refused to take part in politics because they believed that the political system that existed at the time was un-Islamic, though they were concerned with politics from an Islamic point of view relating to daily Egyptian life. During the revolution, they did not support the uprising because "the Americans would have ordered Mubarak to massacre them all", according to a party spokesman. After the revolution, the Salafis decided to take part in politics in order to protect the Islamic identity of Egypt, based on the fundamentals of Islam, the

Quran The Quran, also Romanization, romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a Waḥy, revelation directly from God in Islam, God (''Allah, Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which ...

and

Sunnah is the body of traditions and practices of the Islamic prophet Muhammad that constitute a model for Muslims to follow. The sunnah is what all the Muslims of Muhammad's time supposedly saw, followed, and passed on to the next generations. Diff ...

. Leading Salafi preacher Yasser Borhamy switched to the political participation side after Mubarak's ouster, saying "Islam must become involved of all aspects of life, even the political, and the Islamic movement must unite". According to analyst Muneer Adeeb, Islamists in Egypt had "their political heyday after the 2011 revolution because they were the most organized political force then." But issues important to Salafists—such as whether antiquities (pyramids, etc.) should be destroyed, the subordination of women and non-Muslims—were later to prove problematic in contemporary politics.

2011-2012 Elections

Al‑Nour was recognised as an official party after it had obtained its license in June 2011, led by Emad Abdel Ghaffour. The Salafi Al‑Nour reportedly did well in the parliamentary election (111 seats), in part because of loyalty it won from voters with the many Salafi-sponsored charitable activities: help for the sick and the poor; financial assistance to widows, divorcées, and young women in need of marriage trousseaus; and abundant religious instruction. In the 2012 presidential election,

Hazem Salah Abu Ismail Hazem Salah Abu Ismail (born 16 June 1961) is an Egyptian lawyer, Islamic preacher and politician who ran in the 2012 Egyptian presidential election and founded the Flag Party. Abu Ismail was born in Giza in 1961 and graduated with a law degree ...

, who while not officially affiliated with the party was considered to be the candidate of the Salafi movement, was disqualified to run. Without any clear Salafi candidate, the al-Nour Party settled on moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh on 28 April 2012. However, the party declared its support for Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi in the second and final election round between Morsi and Ahmed Shafeek, the last prime minister appointed by Mubarak.

Party split

However, in September 2012, Ghaffour was suspended from the party, and elections for a new party leader were expected soon after. He was reinstated as the head of the party following a 10-hour meeting by the party in early October 2012. Ghaffour resigned as party chairman on 29 December 2012 and in January 2013 formed the rival Watan Party.

2012–2013 Egyptian protests

Although initially a political ally of the MB's Freedom and Justice Party, the al-Nour Party soon came to join the mainly secular opposition, and were an active force in the

2012–13 Egyptian protests 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to sp ...

that resulted in the

2013 Egyptian coup d'état The 2013 Egyptian coup d'etat or the Counter-revolutionary, Counter-revolution is an event that took place on 3 July 2013. Egyptian army chief General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi led a coalition to remove the democratically elected President of Egypt ...

and consequent ouster of President Morsi. Following what al-Nour described as a "massacre" on the dawn of 8 July, when pro-Morsi demonstrators were attacked and at least 54 were left dead, al-Nour in protest withdrew from talks to choose an interim prime minister. Nevertheless, al-Nour has not expressed support for the return of Mohamed Morsi to power. The party has advised the interim government on ministerial candidates. The al-Nour Party has supported the draft constitution that will be voted on in the 2014 constitutional referendum.

Lawsuit against Islamic parties

The al-Nour Party is one of the eleven Islamic parties targeted by a lawsuit in November 2014, when an organization named ''Popular Front for opposing the Brotherhoodization of Egypt'' sought to dissolve all political parties established "on a religious basis." A lawsuit against the party was dismissed on 22 September 2014 because the court indicated it had no jurisdiction. The Alexandria Urgent Matters Court however ruled on 26 November 2014 that it lacked jurisdiction. A case on the dissolution of the party was adjourned until 17 January 2015 and further postponed until 21 February 2015. Another court case that was brought forth to dissolve the party was dismissed after the Alexandria Urgent Matters Court ruled on 26 November 2014 that it lacked jurisdiction. A lawsuit was rejected by the Parties Court and referred back to a lower court because the only entity qualified to argue for the dissolution of a party is the leader of the political parties commission.

Post-Morsi coup political decline

After the overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammad Morsi, Salafi parties supported the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who in turn courted them, despite the hard line he generally took against political Islam. But in the 2015 House of Deputies elections, Al-Nour won only 12 seats out of a total of 596, and in the September 2020 parliamentary elections, Al-Nour failed to win any seats in the Egyptian Senate, (they won 45 seats in the Senate elections of January 2012). Some of the reasons given for the party's poor performance were the closure of mosques (a common gathering place and "the main sphere of activity for the Salafists") due to Covid, "hostile propaganda" from their cousin Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood, anger over Salafist cooperation with Sisi, and very low voter turnout in the first election (14%) and runoff (10.25%). Political scientist Akram Badreddine of Cairo University notes also a general decline in voter support for "political parties with religious backgrounds".

Political orientation

Al‑Nour Party is an ultra-conservative Islamist party maintaining a strict version of Islam, known as the

methodology. Salafis believe in practising Islam as it was practiced by the

Islamic prophet Prophets in Islam () are individuals in Islam who are believed to spread God's message on Earth and serve as models of ideal human behaviour. Some prophets are categorized as messengers (; sing. , ), those who transmit divine revelation, mos ...

Muhammad Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...

, his companions, and the later generations. Their main source of governance is strictly based on the Quran and the Sunnah.

Religion

The religious foundation and structure of al-Nour party is based almost entirely on the

interpretation of Islam. Al-Nour believes the principles of Islamic Sharia should be the main source of legislation. However, the party promises that it will allow Christians to have their own separate laws for their internal matters.

Israeli–Palestinian conflict

The party has stated it is committed to the 1979

Egypt–Israel peace treaty The Egypt–Israel peace treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., United States, on 26 March 1979, following the 1978 Camp David Accords. The Egypt–Israel treaty was signed by Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, and Menachem Begin, Prime Minist ...

as a binding international agreement and would be willing to hold negotiations with

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. At the same time, al‑Nour said it seeks amendments to the agreement and opposes normalization with Israel. Specifically, an al‑Nour spokesman stated, "We call for full Sinai rights for Egypt and for our brothers in Palestine and occupied lands, and we see this as directly related to the agreement." Regarding normalization, an al‑Nour statement read, "The party strongly objects normalization and dialogue attempts and establishing relations with an entity sraelwhich wants to wipe off our identity, occupies our lands, imposes a siege on our brothers and strongly supports our hangers."

Perspective on loans

Al‑Nour Party had stated in September 2012 that it would not oppose a loan from the

International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution funded by 191 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of las ...

to the Egyptian government, although Islamic law bans the paying of interest. The party argued that the loan is vital to Egypt's economy in the current period and that there is no other alternative, citing the Islamic saying "Necessities permit what is banned". However, the party had changed opinion in February 2013, saying the IMF loan agreement requires an approval from a body of senior scholars at

Al-Azhar University The Al-Azhar University ( ; , , ) is a public university in Cairo, Egypt. Associated with Al-Azhar Al-Sharif in Islamic Cairo, it is Egypt's oldest degree-granting university and is known as one of the most prestigious universities for Islamic ...

. The party's members suggested other alternatives to foreign borrowing such as reforming subsidy system, dispensing with highly paid advisers and offering

Sukuk Sukuk (; plural of ) is the Arabic name for financial certificates, also commonly referred to as "sharia compliant" bonds. Sukuk are defined by the AAOIFI ( Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions) as "securitie ...

(financial certificates) that Islamic financing experts claim will attract billions of pounds to the country.

Notable people

* Galal al-Morra

References

External links

''BBC'' profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nour Party 2011 establishments in Egypt Conservative parties in Egypt Far-right political parties Islamic political parties in Egypt Organisations of the Egyptian Crisis (2011–2014) Political parties established in 2011 Salafi Islamist groups Social conservative parties Sunni Islamic political parties