1 Sacred Confronts Profane: The Salafi Political Experience in Egypt, 2011–2013 Douglas H. Garrison, MA In the three years since the wave of uprisings popularly referred to as the “Arab Spring” swept across North Africa and the broader Middle East, the consistent electoral victories of Islamist political parties stands out as among the more remarkable, if unsurprising, developments in regional politics. Close observers of the region and its public spheres long foresaw and documented the mobilizational capacities and social capital of Islamist activist organizations, such as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia’s Ennahda. 1 The victories of both groups in parliamentary elections—Tunisia in 2011 and Egypt in 2012—were both expected and widely predicted. 2 What did take analysts by surprise, however, was the electoral participation and success achieved by Salafi 3 political parties, particularly in Egypt. That groups once strongly associated with positions ranging from apolitical or moderately activist to vehemently anti-political or strictly quietist captured nearly one-quarter of the seats in Egypt’s two houses of parliament caught observers both inside and outside Egypt off guard. 4 In their preoccupation with debating the Muslim Brotherhood’s commitment to democracy, analyzing the prospective policies of a government headed by the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), or examining the Brotherhood’s tense relationship with Egypt’s military–bureaucratic establishment, nobody really saw the Salafis coming. 5