By Elhanan Miller
new Islamist party is to be launched in Gaza this week, modeled after the Salafi Egyptian Al-Nour party, which garnered some 28% 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.
“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.
