Raphaël Lefèvre, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, is currently preparing a paper on Salafism in Lebanon. Since October 2016, Lefèvre has been the Rank-Manning Junior Research Fellow in Social Sciences at Oxford University. He is also the author of Ashes of Hama: the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria (London, Oxford University Press & Hurst, 2013), which was ranked number two as the best book of 2013 on Middle East politics by Foreign Policy magazine.
Lefèvre, who lived for a time in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli where he conducted his research, discusses the emergence in the mid-2000s of a more militant Salafi movement in Lebanon. He also talks about the role of the Syrian conflict in the transformation of the Lebanese Salafi movement, and how prisons have played a role in the radicalization of militants. He spoke with Diwan in mid-May.
