A radical faction within Egypt's most conservative Islamist party is breaking away, threatening to pull the nation's politics further rightward ahead of a vote to elect a new Parliament.
The split is also fracturing the Islamist Nour Party, which has allied with President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood but is more religiously conservative.
The next polls are critical because the new Parliament will draft laws fleshing out Egypt's new Islamist-tinged constitution. That charter, approved last month in a national referendum, leaves wide room for legislators to interpret Islam's role in the state, particularly with regards to the enforcement of public morality, say some of the document's opponents.
Emad Abdel Ghafour, the former head of the Nour Party, the main political representation for the austere Salafi Islam, said Tuesday that he and hundreds of defectors from the Islamist Nour Party would form a new party called Al Watan, or Homeland.
Nour-led Salafi parties won more than 25% of seats in Egypt's first postrevolutionary parliamentary polls that ended in early 2012, before courts dissolved that legislature.
Mr. Ghafour also said his new party would ally with a party led by Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, a firebrand former presidential candidate who commands a loyal—his detractors say fanatical—following of ultraconservative Islamist activists.
The defections could weaken Nour and strengthen the more radical parties ahead of legislative elections, whose results will form the basis of the new state.
Mr. Abu Ismail differs from Nour less in his positions than his practice of politics. Unlike mainstream Salafis, Mr. Abu Ismail has shown a reluctance to compromise, calling for the immediate imposition of Islamist law. He also advocates more strongly for public gender separation, champions Iran's Islamist state and calls for an end to Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.
The new party confers a political legitimacy on Mr. Abu Ismail, whose rabid populism and extreme conservatism had isolated him from even the most conservative of Salafi politicians.
Mr. Abu Ismail "offers a more revolutionary form of Salafism," said Shadi Hamid, an Egypt expert at the Brookings Doha Center. "It's a fundamental difference in how to practice politics."
Nadar al Bakkar, a Nour Party spokesman, said Mr. Ghafour's new party wouldn't hurt the popularity of the Salafis, whose religious practice is similar to the form of Islam followed in Saudi Arabia. He described the new party as a fringe group and Mr. Abu Ismail as a radical with little real popularity.
But Mr. Abu Ismail commands the loyalty of thousands of followers, known as "Hazemoon" after the name of their leader, whose unquestioning obedience frightens many Egyptian liberals.
In the past several months, Hazemoon have surrounded courts, television stations, newspapers and party offices that have challenged Mr. Morsi's Islamist government.
The government hasn't specified a date for the parliamentary elections, but they are legally required to be held two months after Egyptians ratified the new constitution. Mr. Morsi, however, has suggested the polls could be delayed until as late as June.
Mr. Abu Ismail's combative politics could form an important part of Islamists' political arsenal during inevitable conflicts between the new Parliament and Egypt's secular-leaning judiciary.
In a subtle dig at the more cooperative Nour Party he once led, Mr. Ghafour said in a news conference Tuesday that his new Al Watan Party would be committed to the "work" rather than the "talk" of implementing Shariah, or Islamist, law.
Though Mr. Abu Ismail is leading his own party, Mr. Ghafour shared the dais with him in announcing Al Watan's founding, underscoring the close alliance.
Mr. Ghafour offered little explanation for his break with the party he helped found. But some Nour Party members said his departure was more about power than ideology: Mr. Ghafour incited controversy when he tried to unilaterally veto decisions taken by the party's 19-member ruling panel.
"As the second-largest part in the country, we cannot accept driving the party with no democracy and not taking the opinions of the supreme committee," said Amr Al Makki, a supreme committee member.
Yousri Hamad, a former Nour leader and founding member of Mr. Ghafour's Al Watan party, said Mr. Ghafour left Nour over "political and administrative differences." The Brookings' Mr. Hamid said the move could splinter the vote and cut Nour's support. Mr. Hamad said the new party would expand Salafists' voter appeal. "The ideas we are founding the party upon will most likely give us votes outside of Islamists."
