In 1983 a member of the brotherhood was executed in Tripoli, and in 1986 a group of Brotherhood adherents was arrested after the murder of a high-ranking political official in Benghazi. The Muslim Brotherhood had spread throughout Libya, but were particularly strong in the cities of Benghazi, Bayda, Derna and Ajdabiya. Gaddafi challenged the Brotherhood to establish itself openly in non-Muslim countries and promised its leaders that, if it did, he would financially support its activities. No support was ever forthcoming. Gaddafi stressed the universal applicability of Islam, but he also reaffirmed the special status assigned by Muhammad to Christians. He likened Christians to misguided Muslims who strayed from the correct path. Furthermore, Gaddafi assumed leadership of a drive to rid Africa of Christianity as well as of the colonialism with which he associated it, despite the fact that Christianity's presence in Libya long predates Islam or its presence in much of Europe. Saints and brotherhoods Islam as practiced in North Africa is interlaced with indigenous Berber beliefs. Although the Sufi orthodoxy preached the unique and inimitable majesty and sanctity of God and the equality of God's believers, an important element of Islam for centuries has been a belief in the coalescence of special spiritual power given by god to particular living human beings. The power is known as Barakah, a transferable quality of personal blessedness and spiritual force said to lodge in certain individuals. Those whose claim to possess barakah can be substantiated—through performance of apparent miracles, exemplary human insight, or genealogical connection with a recognized possessor—are viewed as saints. These persons are known in the West as marabouts, a French transliteration of al murabitun (those who have made a religious retreat), and the benefits of their baraka are believed to accrue to those ordinary people who come in contact with them. The true Islamic way of saints became widespread in rural areas; in urban localities, Islam in its Sunni form prevail. Saints were present in Tripolitania, but they were particularly numerous in Cyrenaica. Their baraka continued to reside in their tombs after their deaths. The number of venerated tombs varied from tribe to tribe, although there tended to be fewer among the camel herders of the desert than among the sedentary and nomadic tribes of the plateau area. In one village, a visitor in the late 1960s counted sixteen still-venerated tombs. Coteries of disciples frequently clustered around particular