Via Foreign Policy:
The protestors who stormed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, where the U.S. Ambassador and three others were killed last night, belonged to a group called the Ansar Al-Sharia Brigade. Ansar al-Sharia is part of the ultraconservative Salafi movement in Libya, but until the attack on the consulate they were better known for acts of vandalism against inanimate objects — namely, ancient Sufi shrines, representing a brand of Islam rejected as blasphemous by these ultraorthodox Muslims. (The image above shows their destruction at the Sidi Abdel Salam al-Asmar al-Fituri mosque in Zliten on August 25.)
Yet the Salafi campaign to “cleanse” Libyan Islam of what they view as pernicious cultural influences has far more in common with the attack on U.S. diplomats than might at first seem apparent. In both cases the ultraconservative Salafis are aiming to undercut Libya’s new democratically elected government, which they also deem to be insufficiently Islamic.
Starting last November, Libyan Salafis have staged a series of attacks on Sufi shrines around the country. But the campaign really began to go into high gear in August, when the extremists attacked several shrines in quick succession. On August 25, Ansar al-Sharia even deployed an excavator todestroy the Sidi Al-Sha’ab Mosque (which contained the tomb of a Sufi saint) in the center of Tripoli, unchallenged by government security forces.