““After the fall of Mubarak, Salafist groups had been sprouting throughout Egypt. Nobody knew where they came from. But they were blamed for a string of deadly attacks on Copts and their churches, as well as against the shrines of Sufi Muslims— the latter number in the millions and are considered by the Salafis infidels because they worship local saints.7 Salafis hijacked mass demonstrations against a newly appointed Coptic governor in the southern city of Qena, soon swelling the numbers from a few thousand to tens of thousands. Many waved the Saudi flag.8 And in July 2011, they descended on Tahrir Square in the hundreds of thousands in the biggest demonstration since the revolution and demanded that Egypt be declared an Islamist state with strict, Saudi-style religious laws.9 That broke a postrevolutionary pact with the liberal, leftist, and secular groups that had led the uprising.””
