Mainstreaming extremism

Last month a new player was born into the world of sectarian politics in Lebanon. Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, the Imam of Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque in the southern city of Sidon, was for the first time given a national audience, his speech to a rally of some 2,000 Salafist Sunni Muslims in Downtown Beirut on March 5 broadcast across the spectrum of Lebanese satellite TV stations, his words printed in newspapers and websites affiliated with all the country’s sectarian power centers. Overnight, Sheikh Assir became the face of the Salafist movement in Lebanon. Until last month, the strongest association most Lebanese had with the word ‘Salafi’ was the siege of Nahr Al Bared in 2007, when a group of heavily armed, mostly-foreign Sunni extremists waged a four-month war with the Lebanese army at the Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli, leaving many hundreds dead and wounded, tens of thousands displaced and